Author’s Authenticity Post #1: My Worldview
This scene manifests my worldview like no other. Needless to say, I do not like the world very much.
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“Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance” Short Video: Whitby’s White Lady and Lucy Westenra
In my reimagining of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I have conflated various Whitby legends (i.e., those of St. Hilda, Constance de Beverley, and the West Pier Lighthouse Keeper) into that of its Abbey’s White Lady and metaphorically incorporated her into the character of Lucy Westenra to portray a virtuous woman who would save others yet is powerless to save herself: a savior who cannot be saved. (Spoiler!—but not really in that she died in the original novel.)
“Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance” Short Video: Content Warnings
This least viewed of all my promotional YouTube Shorts lists the content warnings both behind and resulting from the conflicts in Dracula/Harker’s rather dramatic story. Given a Gothic romance inspired by a Gothic horror novel cannot help but have its fair share of “unpleasantness,” I have to wonder about interested individuals’ unwillingness to watch it. This isn’t Heated Rivalry after all.
“Burn for You,” a Queer Gothic Ballad by Nico Lysander
“Burn for You,” a new single by Nico Lysander on an EP to be released by Pyrosonic Records on February 13, 2026, in time for Valentine’s Day, is a “sensual, haunting, and cinematic” “queer gothic ballad” that “burns with passion, longing, and the ache of eternal love.” And if that is not enough, the song is “inspired by the Dracula/Harker book series”! Featuring wonderfully gayrotic lyrics with layers of meaning, “Burn for You” blends the Gothic, the vampiric, and the homoerotic just like Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance. To see what I mean, have a listen or two or a hundred or more:
To hear more from Nico, follow him on Spotify.
Why I Will Never Use a Book Cover Designer
That said, I will never use a book cover designer—a middleman and mercenary—for these additional reasons:
- Book cover designers, having little to no knowledge of the books they are assigned, rely on clichés and stereotypes to create cover images that misrepresent their stories and mislead their readers. By contrast, authors’ book covers are acts of honesty, promising only what their carefully considered and crafted words can deliver.
- Book cover designers’ depictions, right or wrong, rob readers of the opportunity to imagine characters, settings, and scenes for themselves based on books’ texts—or, in the absence of textual descriptions, their own preferences.
- Words are physically beautiful in and of themselves. Their typography—the combination of their typeface, font weight and size, posture (i.e., roman or italic), and color—can be just as impactful as—and more meaningful than—book cover designers’ images.
- Ultimately, a book cover designer’s job is to make a book look familiar (i.e., like other books). However, an author’s raison d’etre is to make their book feel singular. If a book’s title, blurb, and text, as very deliberately composed by the author, cannot accurately impart its story’s originality, nothing else can. And if a book’s title, blurb, and text, as very deliberately composed by the author, cannot make a favorable impression on prospective readers, nothing else should.
So, rather than initially judge a book by a designer’s cover, reject their biased, hackneyed, and trendy patronizingly salable cover image and remember to find pleasure in a book’s prose rather than its packaging.
“Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance” Short Video: A Gay AND a Sapphic Gothic Romance
Dracula/Harker is not just a gay Gothic romance. It also features a sapphic Gothic romance. While the former gradually develops between the Count and Jonathan over the course of the already published Part I, the latter blossoms between Ilse, Countess Dolingen, and Lucy Westenra in the upcoming Part II. However, only time—and more writing on my part—will tell which romance survives and which dies.
“Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance” Short Video: What Is “Romance”?
The “romance” in the term “Gothic romance” combines its old meaning of “an adventure tale,” its new meaning of a “love story,” and the characteristics of the Romantic Movement. Consequently, works in this literary genre, as we now know it, use the structure of an adventure tale to tell a love story filtered through the philosophy, steeped in the aesthetic, and heightened by the mood of Romanticism. Incorporating touches of the movement’s focus on the irrational and emotional, the following brief video imparts a sense of Dracula/Harker’s gay Gothic romance.
“Dracula/Harker’s” Van Helsing: Self-Righteous Bigotry Incarnate
Dracula/Harker’s Professor Abraham Van Helsing, unlike in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is no eccentric, erudite grandfatherly character who tempers his cruel resolve with empathy. Quite the opposite, my Dutch polymath embodies the worst in people the LGBTQ+ community has had to suffer and endure since forever. To understand what that entails if you do not know already, read below my reimagined Van Helsing’s introduction in Dracula/Harker—Part II and shudder at his “humanity.”
Professor Van Helsing’s Journal
August 8th; Dr. Seward’s Asylum, Purfleet
Though now, like me, a physician by credential, my former student, unlike me, not having experience equal to the challenge, proved himself the worthiest of lesser men in admitting his shortcoming by consulting me on the most disturbing case of unrepentant serial sodomite Mr. R. M. Renfield. As John’s former teacher—nay, mentor!—I must ironically thank him for having failed because having studied his patient’s file and examined and interviewed the wretch himself, I fear the pernicious effect his undisguised—no, naked!—degeneracy might have even on a doctor’s trained mind! Fortunately, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent Jehovah—may He be eternally praised by His true name!—has seen fit to use me as the instrument of His divine will to safeguard my dearest pupil—and unsuspecting society—from such virulent contagion and vile corruption!
(Copyright © 2025 by Mark Zidzik. All rights reserved.)
“Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance” Short Video: The Tagline
In case you missed the tagline for Dracula/Harker in the title of my “What is it all about?” video, here is a video dedicated to it.
Though very short, this video leaves a lasting impression with the image of Jonathan Harker’s tear darkening into blood.
“Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance” Short Video: Desire, Danger, and the Undead
“What is it all about?” is the question any storyteller should be able to answer about their narrative. If they cannot readily reply, how can they expect their audience to readily relate to their story? By way of providing my own answer, the following video distills the story of Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance down to its pure essence.
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"Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance Inspired by Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'" by Mark Zidzik 
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