Interview with Anno Dracula author Kim Newman

The fan favorite vampire series Anno Dracula returns!  Author Kim Newman recently released his latest Anno Dracula novel – Johnny Alucard that takes place from 1976-1991.  Retrenders interviews author Kim Newman about his new book – Johnny Alucard and what the future holds for this popular Dracula series.

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KIM:  I plot books – and, in this case, series  – by a method known as ‘feeling your way in the dark’. I usually know where I’m going with a story but not the exact route I’ll get there.  I hope readers enjoy where I take the characters (and them) but tend to think of what the story needs rather than what people want – indeed, sometimes you have to go against expectations or wishes.  In this case, the book was written piecemeal over decades – the first chunk of it was done before the third novel in the series – and I always knew the spine was where a particular character went, though the details were developed during the composition and I think I surprised myself. 

KIM:  Reality, mostly – filtered through my own imagination and, with this series, a kind of Anno Dracula red tint that shifts what really happened in our world into the way things might have panned out in the world I have established and been building up. In writing this section, I had sometimes to remember to try to make the story weirder and the characters more extreme than the accounts of the making of Apocalypse Now I consulted.

KIM:  This is the first novel in the series to feature a great many folk who are still alive – and some whom I have either met (Quentin Tarantino) or know quite well (Adam Simon).  I’ve never met Coppola  – the novella version of this section has been around so long I’d be surprised if it hadn’t come to his attention somehow.  I’ve not woken up next to a horse’s head, so I assume he can’t be that displeased.

KIM: In Dracula Cha Cha Cha, the previous novel, the three women lost Charles Beauregard, with whom they were all involved, and Dracula, obviously a big figure in their life.  So, in the 1970s and ‘80s, they’re on their own again, and trying to find roles to play in a more confusing world … Kate is still a journalist and political activist who makes questionable decisions about men … Penny finds several unusual positions, including running Andy Warhol’s Factory in the ‘70s and working in covert ops in the ‘80s … and Geneviève goes to La-La land and becomes a private eye, though she retrains as a medical examiner at one point.

RTNDR:  The 1980s was the MTV/Cold War/Reganomics/Thatcherism-Era, did you have a fun time writing and placing these characters in this timeline?

KIM: I enjoy writing these books, doing the small detail work as much as the big set-pieces.  I think this entry is appropriate to its eras … if Anno Dracula was a Hammer Film, The Bloody Red Baron a Biggles air ace story and Dracula Cha Cha Cha a Fellini movie, this has different modes … from languid, sunstruck 1970s private eye (think The Long Goodbye or Night Moves) to hard-edged 1980s high-life thriller (think Michael Mann, Oliver Stone and Basic Instinct).  I think I most enjoyed the section set in Baltimore which is a homage to The Wire and Homicide Life on the Street, with a little Blacula and John Waters stirred in.  Of course, having fun doesn’t mean I’m not serious.

KIM:  Anno Dracula has its Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/132578110095/) and I’m on Twitter as @AnnoDracula … I can guarantee that there are FB, Twitter and Instagram accounts in Dracula’s name, though I hesitate to look them up.  Looking back at Stoker’s novel – he uses journal entries, telegrams, newspaper clippings and letters to tell the story, so if he were working now I assume he’d use social media to the same end.  However, one of his canny strokes is to give everyone in the book a voice and an outlet except Dracula – whose presence is confined to a few impersonal notes.  So I suspect the Count would be monitoring Dr Seward’s blog, Mina’s Twitter feed, Lucy’s Facebook photo albums and Van Helsing’s blood diseases Tumblr but seldom posting himself.

KIM: Next up is An English Ghost Story, another long-in-the-works novel.  After that, I have a school story (Kentish Glory) and a Phantom of the Opera tie-in to do, plus another as-yet-unformed Anno Dracula and several simmering projects in many media.  Regular updates can be found at my website, Johnnyalucard.com.

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Retrenders would like to thank Kim Newman for taking time from his busy schedule to answer our fanboy questions.