Just published by Hungry Tiger Press comes my illustrated volume of five bloody stories by Bram Stoker,
Dracula's Guest and Other Deadly Tales.Today Bram Stoker is famous as the author of the classic vampire novel Dracula. Before that novel was published, Stoker cut the first chapter from the manuscript. That first chapter, "Dracula's Guest," is the title story in this new collection of the best of Stoker's short horror stories. Of course, the name Dracula has plenty of name recognition, which means publishers like to use it on book covers.
I first illustrated the story "Dracula's Guest" for publication back in the late 1990s. While not my favorite Stoker story, it provides a decent amount of spine tingling, and I've long been happy with my illustrations for it. So "Dracula's Guest" returns with my drawings of Jonathan Harker and his first experience with vampiric terror.
Stoker wrote the story "A Star Trap" as a chapter in a book about life in the theatre. The story originally saw publication not as a horror story, but as a theatrical anecdote. However, it's sufficiently gruesome to justify inclusion in a book of "deadly tales."
Illustrating this story required research into theatre history of the mid-19th century. Stoker himself was a 19th-century theatrical manager, who worked for the celebrated actor Henry Irving. Stoker's theatre knowledge permeates "A Star Trap." The mechanical device known as a star trap, a type of trapdoor used for shooting an actor up through a stage floor to appear dramatically and suddenly upon stage during a performance, is now illegal. Star traps injure and maim if not operated perfectly. Stoker well knew a star trap's potential and exploits it well in this story.
Understanding the workings of a star trap is vital to understanding Stoker's story, but most people these days have no idea what a star trap is. I used this terrific opportunity to let illustrations support the story. One of my illustrations for the book basically demonstrates how a star trap works. I drew the stagehands working the pulleys and the platform ejecting the actor into the air above the stage. Another illustration shows exactly what a star trap looks like in the stage floor. These illustrations provide readers everything they need to know about star traps in order to enjoy the story.
"The Judge's House" is one of Stoker's best short stories and has been widely reprinted because it's so deliciously creepy. Despite its familiarity, my opportunity to illustrate it justifies, I think, the story's inclusion in this new volume. I drew some pretty crazy rats to accompany Stoker's prose.
I began "The Judge's House" illustrations back in the late 1990s, but their intended publication was cancelled before I finished them. The new publication of Dracula's Guest and Other Deadly Tales gave me the perfect opportunity to pull my old illustrations out and finish them. They're among my favorite for this book.
Stoker's story "Gibbet Hill" has a fascinating history. In 2023, researcher Brian Cleary ran across a reference to "Gibbet Hill" in the archives of the National Library of Ireland. He found the story published in the December 17, 1890, issue of the Dublin Daily Express. This became international news--why? Because no one had remembered the story existed. It had been lost for over a hundred years. I read the newly re-discovered "Gibbet Hill" and found it sufficiently weird and unsettling for inclusion in Dracula's Guest and Other Deadly Tales.
Illustrating "Gibbet Hill" plunged me back into research. The story takes place in an actual geographic location, the Devil's Punchbowl in Surrey, England, that hasn't changed much since Stoker's day. Two monuments, one concerning an infamous 1786 murder, the other a Celtic cross commemorating the spot where the murderers were hanged, figure in the story. So, I included both monuments in my illustrations.
The final story in the volume, "The Squaw," might be my favorite of Stoker's short horror stories. Suspenseful in structure, the story features a character both sympathetic and highly dislikeable, an admirable and difficult feat in a story so short. Halfway through the story, the ending becomes obvious to any alert reader, but the unexpected mechanics of the inevitable end feature a delightfully cruel and satisfying complication. Though Stoker's casual use of the derogatory term "squaw" is unfortunate, it's appropriate in the context of the main character. The story's a gem.
"The Squaw" was another of the Stoker stories I illustrated for publication back in the 1990s. However, I significantly changed some illustrative material for this new volume, including cutting an entire illustration and adding a brand new one. See, back then, before the internet became a hugely useful research tool, I couldn't find a reference image of the Iron Maiden of Nuremburg, a notorious instrument of torture that figures prominently in the story. Several years after my illustrations were published back in 1997, I attended a museum torture exhibit that included a model of the Iron Maiden. Too late for my illustrations then, but I made a sketch of the Iron Maiden anyway, just in case I'd ever need an image I'd been unable to find anywhere else. Skip forward a couple decades, and in this new volume of collected horror stories by Stoker, Hungry Tiger Press offered me the opportunity to revise my illustrations for "The Squaw." So I did!
Dracula's Guest and Other Deadly Tales contains more than 40 of my pen-and-ink illustrations for the best of Stoker's short horror, along with full-color covers also sporting my work. You can get your copy here at the publisher's webstore and wherever new books are sold. Happy frights!
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