IUniverse celebrates the Birthday of Bram Stoker in November

iUniverse celebrates the Birthday of Bram Stoker in November
iUniverse Publishing recognizes the Irish novelist and short story writer who is most famous for his Gothic novel Dracula. We are speaking of none other than Bram Stoker who was born on 8 November 1847.
I am a copywriter for iUniverse, and I feel I have a connection to Mr. Stoker as he was born at No. 15 Marino Crescent, West Clontarf, Dublin Ireland which is just a few blocks away from where I lived as a young boy. Just next to his old neighborhood is Fairview Park, home of the Westwood Club & Bram Stoker Dracula Experience which is a uniquely different, interesting and brilliantly entertaining, interactive, educational and very scary adventure, based on the life of Bram Stoker his great vampire creation, Dracula.

Bram Stoker Dracula Experience
When I lived in Marino, I attended Mountjoy and Marine School which is now called Mount Temple Comprehensive School. It is renowned as the school which the band U2 attended and is also famous for it's clock tower which the Irish author and poet, Christopher Nolan, wrote about in his novel Under the Eye of the Clock. Nolan, who also attended Mount Temple, was a very interesting character. He was born with cerebral palsy and could only move his head and eyes. In order to write, he used a pointer attached to his head and a special computer and keyboard to type. He wrote his first book at age 15.

Mount Temple and the Clock Tower
I don't know the reason why the school changed its name to Mount Temple. Perhaps the name Mountjoy was a bit too British. It could also be that there was a lot of Knights Templar activity in the area in the past. Clontarf Castle was built in 1172 by either Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath and a Norman Knight, or his tenant Adam de Phepoe, a follower of Richard "Strongbow" de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke who played a leading role in the Norman invasion of Ireland. Adam de Phepoe passed Clontarf Castle and its lands on to the Knights Templar and, after their demise in 1308, it passed to the Knights Hospitaller.

Clontarf Castle

When I was a boy, my father once took me camping. At the campground, there were bats flying about, and he told me the story of Dracula. It was scary, but I liked horror. The first adult literature I ever read was Premature Burial by Edgar Allen Poe, and I loved it. Anyway, as it's November and Bram's birthday, iUniverse Publishing salutes Bram Stoker and Dublin's fair city.

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