In my new historical fiction When Secrets Bloom out 27 June, Vlad Dracula is no more than a memory, but oh, what a memory he is. He haunts the story not as a specter of horror, but as a mentor whose shadow shaped the life of the novel’s protagonist, Kate, a Saxon healer caught between duty and accusation in 15th-century Transylvania.
The letter discovered in The Shape of Fear, the Shape of Love belongs to that same world. A fragment of a relationship forged in exile, fire, and blood. Though Kate has tried to move on settling in Kronstadt (today Brasov, in Transylvania), risking everything to save more lives, Vlad’s presence lingers. Not as the myth we’ve come to know, but as a man. A commander. A wounded soul who trusted a young girl’s steady hands and sharp mind more than he ever trusted the crowns and courts that betrayed him.
When Secrets Bloom asks a simple question: what is remembered when history forgets you?
The letter in this short story is a glimpse into that answer. It is not a ghost story, though it speaks from the past. It is not a love story, though there is love in it. It is, at its heart, about truth. The truth of a man misremembered and a woman who knew him better than legend ever will.
So, what would you do if Vlad Dracula wrote to you? Would you read it? Burn it? Answer?
Kate made her choice.
Now the story is yours.
If Vlad Dracula wrote to me, I would ask him what he wanted to achieve in life. He went about it in a cruel way.
If Vlad Dracula wrote to me, I would ask him what kept him awake at night.
History remembers his cruelty. How could it not, when so much ink has been spilled on stakes and blood? But cruelty was not his aim; it was his weapon. I would ask what he hoped to build in a land torn between empires, where trust was a liability and peace a fantasy. I suspect his answer would not be about conquest, but about survival. About honor. About a throne inherited too young, lost too soon, and chased for the rest of his life like a ghost through fog.
I’d want to know if he believed the price he paid — his reputation, his humanity — was worth it. I don’t excuse his methods. But I think we do him, and ourselves, a disservice by asking only how he ruled, instead of why he fought at all.
“So, what would you do if Vlad Dracula wrote to you? Would you read it? Burn it? Answer?”
When I was a teenager I would have burned the letter without reading it. Later on I would have read it, and now when I am older and have a deeper perspective on life and history I might answer.
Anyway, this sounds like a really interesting and intriguing book. The topic is certainly unique.
Ah, what a journey, from burning the letter in youthful defiance to reading it with cautious curiosity, and finally answering with the wisdom of years. That evolution mirrors so much of how we come to understand history itself: first as myth and fear, then as story, and ultimately as something deeply human and complex.
Vlad Dracula’s letter, if ever it came, would challenge us to look beyond the legend and the horror. To hear the man behind the shadows. That’s exactly what I hoped to explore in “When Secrets Bloom”: the spaces between myth and truth, cruelty and survival, silence and voice.
Thank you for your kind words. It is a unique story, but it’s also a story about us, all of us grappling with the past to make sense of who we are today.
I have Amazon open and ready to order your book tomorrow, Patricia. I need a good read, so your timing is perfect. The book sounds wonderful and I do love your beautiful writing. I’m looking forward to it!
Ah, Diana, you are an angel. I know you will love the story. And, still, I also hope you will.
Thank you!
I know I will. And I’ll have plenty of time to get a review done for July’s post.
Thank you so much, Diana.
I’ll so look forward to that 🙂
It is now in my library! 😀
You sound pretty excited, Diana.
I know I am! 🙂