Dracula Daily

Submission 3,603

About

Dracula Daily is an email newsletter by Matt Kirkland that sends you a chapter of the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, written as a series of dated diary entries, news clippings, letters, etc., in realtime on the actual date of each entry between May 3rd and November 10th, the dates between which the novel takes place. The newsletter launched in May 2021 and became increasingly popularized during its 2022 run, particularly on Tumblr, where it caused memes and posts about Dracula to trend.

History

On January 3rd, 2021, the Dracula Daily Substack,^[1] run by Matt Kirkland, published a blog post announcing the Dracula Daily newsletter. In the blog Kirkland describes the newsletter, writing:

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel – it’s made up of letters, diaries, telegrams, newspaper clippings – and every part of it has a date. The whole story happens between May 3 and November 10. So: Dracula Daily will post a newsletter each day that something happens to the characters, in the same timeline that it happens to them.

Kirkland publishes each chapter to the Substack^[2] page's archive as they happen. The blog also offers a subscription^[3] page where anyone can input their email and have the chapters sent to them as they happen in real-time, giving readers a digestible way to read the story and experience it as the characters of the novel are experiencing it. On May 3rd, 2021, the first chapter of the novel was sent to readers.^[4]

Dracula Daily 2022

On April 27th, 2022, Boing Boing^[6] published an article titled, "Someone is serializing Dracula in real time over email," encouraging readers to sign up for Dracula Daily. On April 28th, Nerdist^[13] published a similar piece. On April 29th, Kirkland posted on Twitter,^[7] "I started an upside-down book club (only one book but 25000 people), AMA," referring to the newsletter where he answered several questions and teased potential merchandise. On May 3rd, 2022, Kirkland restarted Dracula Daily, sending the first chapter of the book to subscribers.^[5]

Online Presence

Tumblr

Dracula Daily became notably popularized on Tumblr^[8] during its 2022 run, beginning on May 3rd. Around May 5th, "Dracula Daily" and the hashtag "#Dracula" were went number-one trending on the site. The newsletter inspired a large increase in Dracula-related memes, artwork and posts on the site, often referencing each chapter as published. On May 5th, Twitter^[10] user @voidroonil shared posts from Tumblr about the newsletter, gaining over 23,000 likes in five days. On May 6th, Twitter^[9] user @woniiwasp tweeted praise for the newsletter and Tumblr's embracement of it and shared several text posts related to it, gaining over 9,600 likes and 3,000 retweets in four days (shown below).

On May 9th, 2022, a new chapter of Dracula was sent to subscribers and posted to Substack.^[11] This inspired numerous posts on Tumblr. For example, on that day, Tumblr^[12] user onesentencemusings made a text post referencing the chapter, gaining over 9,400 notes in a day (shown below, left). On the same day, Tumblr^[14] user kayleerowena posted artwork of Mina, introduced in that day's chapter, gaining over 1,500 notes in a day (shown below, right).

On the same day, Tumblr^[15] user internetwerewolf posted a comic strip based on the chapter, gaining over 15,000 notes in a day (shown below).