Vlad the Impaler and How Dracula’s Epic Shadow Was Made

Long before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula there was Vlad the Impaler: voivode of Wallachia, enemy of the Ottomans, ruler feared as much for his punishments as for his political cunning.

This is the Vlad who moves through the pages of When Secrets Bloom and Kate’s Letter, included in the Courage Anthology out 17 JUNE. Vlad the man, consumed by passions and hidden fears—not as a figure of legend already swallowed by bats and myth. A man still anchored in the hard geography of his own century.

30/04/202627/04/2026

I step where I am needed, even when the ground burns beneath me – When Secrets Bloom

“I step where I am needed… even when the ground burns beneath me.” I like this quote because it represents Kate Webber, the main character from When Secrets Bloom. Kate does not act because she believes she will win. She acts because not acting is unthinkable.

And her choice sets the course of everything that follows.

25/04/202612/05/2026

Real Places in Historical Fiction: Brașov in When Secrets Bloom

Biserica Neagra Brasov si Piata Honterus in fictiune istorica

There are cities in Transylvania that do not simply sit on the map, they remember. They carry the sediment of centuries like bark around an old trunk. Brașov, know as Corona or Kronstadt in medieval times, is one of those places. In When Secrets Bloom Brașov does appear only as a backdrop. It breathes. It resists. It watches.

Because to write about a place is to write against forgetting.

Readers will discover Brașov as a setting in my story Kate’s Letter featured in our historical fiction anthology Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope.

23/04/202621/04/2026

Yet for all my knowledge I was still only a woman. And that was my crime. #bookquote

book quote for all my knowledge I was still only a woman that was my crime, When Secrets Bloom by Patricia Furstenberg

There are truths history rarely writes plainly about. Skill, in the wrong hands — or rather in the wrong body — becomes suspicion. And knowledge, instead of opening doors, invites them to close.

16/04/202617/04/2026

Even truth becomes blind when it refuses to look – When Secrets Bloom

Some stories are not built all at once. They gather in fragments. A line that refuses to loosen its grip. An image formed at the edge of thought. A truth that waits until it’s the right time to be released.

In When Secrets Bloom these fragments came first. This series of book quotes gathers those glimpses.