Dracula, scarier than the movie

The fabled Bram Stoker novel "Dracula" has become the "Kleenex" for horror writing, and since it's likely nobody who knows the story has ever read the book, to say it's about the stereotype ... yeah, he's sort of the guy from the cartoon.

If you have no idea about the book, it was written in the late 1800s by the Irish novelist and from all I've learned, was considered great literature for its time, but a commercial flop. Several reasons for that, but the main was that Stoker's character was too damned compelling to ignore.

So everyone wrote their own version of it and as the new century turned into a form of technology with the advent of the motion picture, the character came to life. Stoker died broke. Everyone had stolen his story.

Sad that his own masterpiece sucked the blood out of his creation.

Bela Lugosi -- not the real Dracula

What's emerged since that 120 years is a pithy repetition of the vampire, a sullen creature with latent homosexual tendencies and an urge to overpower helpless females. God forbid, romance writers can't profit from that!

Dracula as a character is an asshole. He turns his solicitor Jonathan into a virtual prisoner and makes plans to spread the wealth of bloodsucking across all of London, not unlike that of the capitalist banker who ... oh, ever mind.

Stoker's work has been analyzed. It's pure genius. It's scary as hell. Read it. Stop inventing new forms of the original.

Here's an excerpt, which might deal with the Count and might not. It's early in the book from the log of a ship that crashes ashore in a brutal storm.

... and in the dimness of the night I saw it, Him! God, forgive me, but the mate was right to jump overboard. It was better to die like a man. To die like a sailor in blue water, no man can object. But I am captain, and I must not leave my ship. But I shall baffle this fiend or monster, for I shall tie my hands to the wheel when my strength begins to fail, and alone with them I shall tie that which He, It, dare not touch. And then, come good wind or foul, I shall save my soul, and my honour as a captain.

What was IT, you ask ... 

Don't write a vampire novel. Respect the greatness of the original Vlad the Impaler.