Gamebook Friday: Dracula - Curse of the Vampire

November 8th is Bram Stoker's birthday, which means he would have been 172 years old today, if he were still alive. Or undead.

I am currently turning the Irishman's classic Gothic horror novel Dracula into an adventure gamebook, which the reader can play as either solicitor Jonathan Harker, his fiancée Mina Murray, or Doctor John Seward. I have taken this approach with other titles in the ACE Gamebooks series, but what makes Dracula - Curse of the Vampire different, is that you will be able to change which character you are playing as, during the course of the adventure. However, you will also be able to tackle the adventure as Count Dracula himself, who has an entirely unique mission to complete.

The book is going to be illustrated by my sometime collaborator Martin McKenna*, and the intention is that I will crowdfund it via Kickstarter during the Spring of 2020. This is the first time I have written such a book before running the crowdfunding campaign, so fingers crossed it does actually fund!

If you would like to be kept up to date with information about the forthcoming Kickstarter, please join the ACE Gamebooks Facebook group, or sign up to my monthly Newsletter, so that you don't miss the launch of the crowdfunding campaign. And you really won't want to miss the launch, as I have some unique rewards planned for those people who back within the first day, or even the first hour.

To help me crack on with the first draft of  Dracula - Curse of the Vampire, I have signed up to NaNoWriMo** again. I had a few issues to begin with*** but I'm back on track now.

* Martin illustrated three of my Fighting Fantasy gamebooks - Curse of the Mummy, Howl of the Werewolf, and Night of the Necromancer - and actually ended up producing covers for five of my books in total. Of course, he also painted the cover for YOU ARE THE HERO - A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.

** Which my wife thinks sounds like somewhere in Canada.

*** If you're using an existing project you can input the word count at the beginning of November, which I thought the website would then deduct from your NaNoWriMo word count, but it doesn't, so it looks like I'm doing better than I am. I tried to compensate for this by then deducting the original word count myself, but it just got confusing, so what you see on the Dracula - Curse of the Vampire page is the progress on the project to date.