March 2020: Covid left the global populace struggling to fill the isolating void of shutdown.  Many learned new skills.  Others fired up their streaming channels and shot-gunned film after film and television series after television series.  As a suicide-prevention and crisis-intervention counselor, I broke overtime records after our volunteers had retreated to the safety of their homes. I would work twelve-hour shifts, have six off, and then go back in for eight more. Quite the whirlwind, right?  Finally, libraries established online programs like the one offered by the Rosenbach Library which was right up Tucker Christine’s street.

Since childhood, Christine had read Dracula several times, so how could he resist “Sundays with Dracula,” a virtual 27-week dive into Stoker’s novel?  Edward G. Pettit, the Rosenbach Sunstein Manager of Public Programming organized the course along with a revolving cast of co-hosts, using editor Leslie Klinger’s The New Annotated Dracula.  Along the way, some asked if there was a database listing all the stories inspired by Dracula.  Surprisingly, there was not, so Christine created one and after weeks of collecting and collating established a site to house it.  The list comprises 270 novels, 224 short stories, and 30 plays.  Updates arrive periodically, so fans will want to check and recheck for new offerings.  This later inspired Christine to begin Dracula Beyond Stoker: A Fiction Journal Dedicating to Celebrating and Continuing the Legacy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

So far, four main issues are available with several sub-issues and what Christine terms “One Bites,” single-story releases worthy of your attention.  Each issue focuses on singular aspects of Dracula. For example, issues have been dedicated to Renfield, Lucy Westenra (The Bloofer Lady), and the Brides of Dracula.  Most stories are original, but Christine also has sprinkled in classics such as Ralph Milne Farley’s “Another Dracula?” from Weird Tales (September and October 1930) and Wayne Rogers’s “Dracula’s Brides”  (1940). Stoker enters the fray with his “Dracula’s Guest,” published by his widow years after his death. Issues also contain poetry, and readers can find non-fiction articles from Chris McAuley, who with Dacre Stoker founded the Stokerverse gaming venture, and Brian Forrest, otherwise known as Toothpickings.

I’m amazed by the creativity displayed throughout each issue.  Writer John Kiste has transformed Dracula into a standup comedian with his “Dracula for One Night Only,” in “Pernicious Portland Podcast, the Bloofer Lady becomes a podcast host, and in “Renfield, M.E. everyone’s favorite bug eater is a medical examiner and crime solver.  I’m enjoying Henry Herz’s ongoing DNR Series, the adventures of consulting detective Dracula and his assistant, the militarily trained Ray Renfield. However, Issue #4, the Brides of Dracula, deserves special attention.

Stoker doesn’t tell us much about his weird sisters, and theories abound about how one might be Countess Dolingen who appears in “Dracula’s Guest,” a story that Stoker originally had planned as a chapter in Dracula before deciding differently.  How far could writers take a concept with so little starting ground?  To amazing limits. Standouts include L.L. Garland’s “We Daughters of the Night,” Emily Elledge’s “The Sisters Weird,” and Jeremy Megargee’s “Babies in Bags.”  Really, though, there’s not a bad story among the lot, and these imaginative authors are having immense fun and generating infectious joy.  All this press’s output is worth your time, but this one’s just so much beyond.

I noticed that Tucker Christine describes his journal as the flagship product of his press, so I asked him what else he has for his audience.  He’s described his submission policies while announcing themes for future issues, but he hopes possibly to move Dracula Beyond Stoker Press into other areas as well:

I hope to do DBS projects outside of the journal. Several novels have been out of print for too long, foreign novels that have never been translated, and short-story series that have never been collected. I want to do some of these in the vein of a high-end press like Centipede or Cemetery Dance. I’ve been working on several of them on the sly and in the background since before we even started the journal, simply because even if nothing ever comes of them publicly I want copies for myself. But the journal currently takes up more time than I ever anticipated, and I don’t know when I’ll have time to track down the rights and complete these projects. Maybe after we cycle through all of the character issues and before we move on to other themes?

Given his motivation so far, I have faith that he’ll continue providing entertainment to Dracula fans worldwide.