Bats of Prey

We're living in a world that is vastly different from that which existed when the original Dracula novel was written. Women are now rightly playing much more active roles, including serving as heads of countries and heads of large corporations. We hear of the ecological importance of rainforests regularly in news broadcasts; we've also heard that some newspaper people can't be trusted.

Author Richard William Stoker gave up on the mental health industry when, many years ago, he started a course in psychology and was taught that women aren't as smart as men because their brains are generally smaller. At that time he had a girlfriend whose head was considerably smaller than his own but whose IQ was much higher.

He was christened and confirmed in the Church of England and when young, regularly attended Sunday school. When older, he couldn't completely accept the Anglican Church's teachings, nor could he completely accept the Darwinian theory.

He wanted to bring all of the above elements together in a novel that was relevant to today and found the Dracula concept to be the perfect vehicle.

In order to get the details of the locations reasonably accurate, he visited Los Angeles and Las Vegas and travelled by bus from Venezuela down through Brazil.