Dracula ─ Rise of the Beast

Anthology of stories exploring the secret history of the world’s most iconic monster 

That the cruel, ambitious monster of Bram Stoker’s most famous novel was once Vlad III Dracula, Voivode of Wallachia – the Impaler, to his enemies – is known. A warleader in a warlike time: brilliant, charismatic, pious, ferociously devoted to his country. But what came of him? What drove him to become a creature of darkness – an Un-Dead – and what use did he make of this power, through the centuries before his downfall?

Decades after the monster’s death, Jonathan and Mina Harker’s son Quincey pieces together the story: dusty old manuscripts, court reports from the Holy Roman Empire at its height, oral traditions among the Szgany Roma people who once served the monster.

Milena Benini started writing when she was 12, and simply never stopped. She has written five novels in Croatian and one in English, as well as numerous short stories, some of which have been translated into several languages, including Spanish and Polish. She is also the winner of five SFera awards, as well as a number of other local awards. She lives in Zagreb with her family.

Emil Minchev was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, on the 26th of October 1984. He has a master’s degree in International Relations from Sofia University and has translated more than 40 books, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Dracula’s Guest, Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis and many others. He has also written for various Bulgarian magazines and published three novels of his own—Towers of Stone and Bone (a fantasy novel), Unlimited Access (an epistolary anti-utopian novel) and Nose for Crime (a sci-fi detective novel).

Caren Gussoff Sumption is a SF writer living in Seattle, WA. The author of Homecoming (2000) and The Wave and Other Stories (2003), first published by Serpent’s Tail/High Risk Books and The Birthday Problem (2014) by Pink Narcissus Press, Gussoff Sumption’s been published in anthologies by Seal Press and Prime Books. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 2008, was the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia E. Butler Scholar at Clarion West.

Bogi Takács is a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person currently living in the US as a resident alien. E writes both speculative fiction and poetry, and eir work has been published in a variety of venues like Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Apex and Strange Horizons, among others. You can find visit eir website at www.prezzey.net and find em on Twitter as @bogiperson. E also reviews books focusing on marginalized authors at http://www.bogireadstheworld.com.

Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor, has trained in stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly excepting his son. He’s the author of the critically acclaimed series Shadows of the Apt and Echoes of the Fall, of the standalone works Guns of the Dawn and Children of Time, and numerous short stories and novellas.