Gnashing my teeth.

I hate it when other people have good ideas that I should’ve had. Hate it even more when they make it work.

I was idly wondering the other day whether there might be a story or even a payday in a George Orwell/H.P. Lovecraft mash up. Got a lot of feedback telling me that Charlie Stross had it covered with his Laundry series.

Sort of, Charlie. Sort of.

So that idea is still ticking away, mostly because Lovecraft’s stuff is pretty much in the public domain now. (1984 is already public domain in Australia and Canada, but not the US or UK.)

Then I saw this cheeky mofo had done a cool substack with Dracula, and I was like, “Gah! Why didn’t I think of that.”

The idea for Dracula Daily came to Kirkland when he reread the novel in 2020. His daughter, Judy—who was just 10 years old at the time—took an interest in the plot and routinely asked for updates. "That summer, she was saying, ‘What’s happening in Dracula?’ That’s what started the process of delivering it [bit by bit]," Kirkland says. "I was like, ‘Jonathan is trying to figure out how to leave the castle. Meanwhile, Mina and Lucy don’t know about it yet." As this ritual continued, Kirkland wondered what it might be like if everyone took Judy’s reading approach. "Once the idea was planted, I thought, I’m gonna do it and see if anyone else wants to read it this way too."

Spoiler alert: they do. As it turns out, arranging Dracula in chronological order—with all of its letter, diary entries, and newspaper clippings—makes the story much easier to digest. Over the past three years, Dracula Daily has birthed a fandom of Dracula lovers, new and old, who are eager to sink their teeth into the spellbinding tale.