Bram Stoker

Dacre Stoker, a Canadian citizen and resident of the United States is the greatgrandnephew of Bram Stoker. He is also the godson of H.H.G. Dacre Stoker, the Irish commander of the AE2 submarine, whose tactics were instrumental at Gallipoli in World War I.

​

Dacre, who now calls Aiken, South Carolina home, grew up in Montreal, Quebec and attended Selwyn House and Bishops College School. After graduating from St. Lawrence University in 1981 he took a teaching position at Appleby College in Oakville, Ontario, followed between 1993 and 2003 by teaching and administrative positions at Aiken Preparatory School in South Carolina. During his college and teaching years in Canada, he was a member of the Canadian Men's Modern Pentathlon Team, and then became coach of the Canadian Men's Modern Pentathlon team for the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea in 1988.

​

Dacre is married to Jenne Stoker, a native of South Carolina, and is the father of two children. He is co-owner of the Aiken Tennis Ball Company, which manufactures and sells balls internationally for the game of Court Tennis, or Jeu de Paume, and serves as Vice President of the United States Court Tennis Association. He is also a member of the Transylvania Society of Dracula, the London Dracula Society, and the Horror WritersAssociation. Dacre is an avid fly-fisherman, and court tennis player, having been introduced to both sports by his late father, Desmond Stoker, and subsequently passing the love of

both sports on to his son, Parker.

​

Although Dacre has always enjoyed reading—mostly adventure, historical fiction and horror—he did not first read Dracula until he was at university. His interest in Dracula resurfaced in 2003, when a mutual friend introduced him to screenwriter Ian

Holt. Dacre decided to collaborate with Ian on a sequel to Dracula, and with the help ofresearcher, Alexander Galant, they set out to bring Bram Stoker’s original themes and characters from Dracula back to life. The resulting novel, Dracula the Un-Dead, was released in October of 2009 and sold to 26 publishers around the world, appearing on the New York Times bestseller list, USA Today’s 2009 Fall Preview, and Time Magazine’s “Quick Picks”. The Thriller Writers Association chose the novel as a 2009 finalist in the category of Best First Novel.

​

Researching Bram’s one hundred and twenty-five hand-written notes for Dracula at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia was both inspirational and informational for Dacre. In addition to the notes for Dracula, the Museum holds a 1448 Nurnberg Edition of Dracula stories, illustrated with the well-known “Forest of the Impaled” scene. The stories behind these two pieces of Dracula history, and their both ending up in the same museum, are inspiring in themselves.

​

Dacre’s most recent work, Dracul, written with J.D. Barker serves a prequel to Bram’s Dracula. Released in the U.S. by J.P. Putnam’s Sons, in early October 2018, the historical thriller takes place between 1847 and 1868, and makes the most of Dacre’s research, painting a very accurate picture of Bram and his siblings as they come face to face with a dark and evil truth they thought existed only in the old Irish tales.

 

Dracul has as one source, Bram Stoker's Lost Journal: The Dublin Years, published in 2012, the centenary of Bram Stoker’s death. A collaboration edited by Dacre and Dr. Elizabeth Miller, the Lost Journal features previously unpublished Stoker Estate papers, which have been in the possession of the family for the last century. The book makes the most of Dr. Miller’s unparalleled background as a Dracula scholar and Dacre’s knowledge and perspective of Stoker history.

​

Dacre ’s research continues to take him on countless trips to the places Bram Stoker and his family spent their lives and to the locations featured in Dracula and Bram’s other fiction, confirming again and again that Bram’s “fiction” was based on

many, many facts.