Are vampires real? When I was six I saw the Easter Bunny. Two of them actually, across the street, then one transformed into a rabbit, came into my room and left a chocolate under my pillow. Years later, I started [...]
I started this site when I applied for a scholarship to study vampire literature in Romania (Dracula’s castle is small and cramped on the inside, actually). Now I’m writing vampire fiction of my own, so I want to get your [...]
I recently made a list of best YA mermaid paranormal romance books on my fiction site, UrbanEpics. There have been a bunch of them in the past few years. Sometimes the mermaids are evil and seductive, like Sirens. Sometimes it’s a [...]
I’m really excited for the Dracula Untold movie – for lots of reasons, but let’s start with the obvious. For over a decade, traditional heroes and monsters have been reinterpreted as misunderstood tragic heroes. Villains becoming heroes – not only [...]
I’m not a Dracula expert, but I am in the loop of a small group of scholarly vampire enthusiasts and as a PhD candidate in literature, I also know quite a bit about textual readings and the limits of interpretation. [...]
September 3, 2014
Book reviews, Romania
România are o problemă de imagine. În Vest, oamenii asociază România cu regiunea cunoscută drept Transilvania – care trezeşte în minte imagini cu păduri înecate în ceaţă, creaturi supranaturale, castele antice, caleşti purtate de cai şi, desigur,vampiri. Dar în ciuda [...]
July 24, 2014
Uncategorized
In October I’m going to launch the a Kickstarter campaign for 70million USD to buy Bran Castle (Dracula’s Castle) to host the world’s biggest and best Halloween party in history. I’m waiting till October to launch it officially, because I [...]
I underestimated vampires. I thought the trend was mostly dying down. I thought we, as an international culture, had decided to focus more on zombies, post-apocalyptic survivors, and dystopian, authoritarian governments. I thought Johnny Depp in Dark Shadows or Adam [...]
On location in Romania and Transylvania outside Bucharest, Universal Studios shot “Werewolf: The Beast Among Us”. As paranormal fantasy playing off the trendy vampire/werewolf motifs that have their roots in Eastern Europe, this might have seemed like a natural move. [...]
A decade ago I thought the vampire craze was dying down. But then we had Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Vampire Academy, Johnny Depp’s Dark Shadows, the artsy vampire flick Only Lovers Left Alive, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Byzantium [...]