By a lot of measures, I was a pretty average parent. To date, the kid has not turned out as a start athlete or prodigy, but he’s also not a deadbeat or a convict. Much like his mother, he seems to be pretty happy hanging out around the top of the bell curve.

But one thing I did do right is instill a love of stories in him. He tends more to movies and audio dramas, but a few classes in college apparently convinced him he is not the group project type and he prefers to work alone. This means he has evolved into a rather adept writer. I am continually surprised by what he turns out (especially since most of the time when I look at him I see a kid who is maybe 10 years old tops and doesn’t know words like “epistolary”). As you will see, he is also far more modern-minded than I am.

All of which is to say that his love of stories, especially horror, and skill at writing mean that I am taking a break today and handing this spot over to him for some musings on Dracula.

My exposure to the story of Dracula was spread out over several years. Like anyone, I was familiar with Bela Lugosi’s theatrical take on the Count, and as the years went on, I saw more and more adaptations of Bram Stoker’s story (from the 1979 John Badham–directed, Frank Langella–starring romantic take to the 1992 “horror epic” from Francis Ford Coppola)  without ever having engaged with the classic text.

It wasn’t until COVID hit that I first took an interest in the novel, thanks to the newsletter Dracula Daily, where the epistolary structure of the novel is brought into the 21st century as a series of emails you can sign up to receive from May 3 to November 7, essentially reading the story in real time.

What struck me most about reading the story this way was the temptation to “read ahead.” This tale has been around for almost 130 years, and I already knew the ending, of course, thanks to countless films. Yet, it still managed to thrill me and keep me hooked for almost eight months, and I know I was not alone in this fascination. In 2023, the newsletter had more than 240,000 subscribers near the end of its run in October, and I’m so glad to be among that number.

What Bram Stoker would say about this new audience is anyone’s guess, but I like to think he’d be fascinated, maybe even a little amused, by the way his work has been given new life through modern technology. What began as a Victorian novel of diary entries, letters, and newspaper clippings now thrives in the digital age as e-mails that arrive in your inbox just as the characters might have written them. The immediacy of this format deepened my appreciation of the suspense and pacing that Stoker so carefully crafted.

Instead of reading Dracula in one long sitting or rushing through to the climax, I was made to sit with each moment—to feel Jonathan Harker’s dread grow day by day and to watch the slow unraveling of Lucy’s fate. That daily rhythm made the horror feel more personal, more intimate, and somehow more real. It was the best learning experience: It taught me a lot without feeling like a lesson.