The question I am asked more often than any other, by some distance, is simply: what happens next? I have spent a long time being deliberately careful with the answer, because I don’t want to give away more than I should before the book is actually ready to meet readers. But I think the time has come to share a little of where the story is heading, and a good deal of the history that has been shaping it while I write.

The third novel in the series, currently titled Related to Dracula: Legacy Unbound, is set in 1525/26, and it is, without question, the most ambitious book I have written so far. For the first time in five years since he first fled Wallachia as a frightened boy, Sebastian leaves England behind and turns east, back towards the land where all of this actually began.

A Journey Back to His Roots

I have known, since the very earliest drafts of this series, that Sebastian’s story would eventually have to lead him home. Across the first two books, he has spent his time uncovering fragments of his family’s past, questioning nearly everything he once believed about his own identity, and slowly discovering that history has kept far more hidden from him than it has ever chosen to reveal. Now, at last, he has to face the place that actually shaped his ancestors, rather than simply hearing about it secondhand.

His journey begins in Tudor England before carrying him across a sixteenth-century Europe still recovering from war, political rivalry, and constantly shifting alliance. It is easy, writing from the comfort of the present, to forget just how genuinely dangerous that kind of journey once was. There was no swift, predictable route from London to Wallachia in 1525, only weeks, sometimes months, of uncertain travel along roads that shifted with every change of border, every outbreak of disease, every fresh rumour of bandits waiting somewhere ahead. Researching exactly what that journey would have actually demanded of someone like Sebastian, the real routes, the real dangers, the genuine physical toll of it, has become one of the most quietly enjoyable parts of writing this new book.

Returning to Wallachia

One of the greatest pleasures of this novel has been bringing the story back to Wallachia itself, the region that now forms part of modern Romania. I have spent most of my adult life in England, but Romania, the land of my birth, has never stopped being an essential part of who I am, and sending Sebastian back there feels, in a very real sense, like finally bringing the whole series full circle. Readers will travel with him through places that have fascinated me since I was a child myself, places that still carry the genuine echo of Vlad III and the small, embattled principality he spent his life fighting to protect. Two of those places, in particular, have shaped this book more than any others.

Târgoviște

Few places anywhere carry a closer, more direct connection to Vlad the Impaler than Târgoviște, the former princely capital of Wallachia. It was there that Vlad actually ruled, where ambassadors negotiated, and armies gathered; where the political decisions that shaped an entire region were made and unmade; and where, in 1462, Vlad’s own resistance against Sultan Mehmed II reached its most infamous and most consequential moment. The city’s royal court witnessed triumph and betrayal in roughly equal measure across the century Vlad belonged to, and its walls hold some of the most genuinely dramatic episodes in the whole of Romanian history.

Visitors today can still walk through the ruins of the old princely court and stand beside the Chindia Tower, and I remember, the first time I actually stood there myself, finding it almost impossible not to imagine the people who had once walked those same stones more than five hundred years before me. That particular feeling, history pressing up close enough to touch, is exactly what I hope readers will feel alongside Sebastian when he finally arrives there himself.

Poenari Castle

If Târgoviște represents Vlad’s political world, Poenari Castle represents something considerably more personal. Perched high above the Argeș Valley, its dramatic ruins remain one of the most unforgettable medieval landmarks anywhere in Romania, and reaching the fortress still requires climbing hundreds of steps up through the forest, a genuinely demanding ascent that leaves you with no doubt at all about how formidable the place once actually was.

Poenari has always been wrapped in legend, and the most famous of them tells of Vlad’s own wife choosing to throw herself from the castle walls rather than allow herself to be taken by the advancing Ottoman army. Whether every detail of that particular story is strictly true remains genuinely uncertain, and I suspect it always will; like so much medieval legend, history and folklore have grown so closely together at Poenari that pulling them apart entirely is no longer really possible. That uncertainty is exactly what makes the castle such a compelling place to write about. Without giving anything away, I can say that Poenari becomes an important location in Sebastian’s story once again, and that returning to it for this book has been one of the genuine highlights of writing it.

History as a Character in Its Own Right

One thing that has never changed across this entire series is my approach to the research underneath it. These are novels, and I never lose sight of that, but I try, as consistently as I possibly can, to remain faithful to the historical record beneath the story. The real locations stay real. The political events follow the documented history as closely as the evidence allows. The historical figures behave in ways that stay genuinely consistent with what we actually know about them. The fiction grows up around that foundation rather than replacing it. History, to me, has never simply been a backdrop for these books to unfold in front of. It behaves more like a character in its own right, with its own logic, its own temperament, and its own say in where the story is allowed to go.

A Legacy That Refuses to Stay Buried

As the title suggests, Related to Dracula: Legacy Unbound is a book about what happens when the past refuses to stay where it was left. Sebastian has spent the better part of two novels trying to understand exactly who he is, and in this one, he is finally forced to confront not only his own ancestry but the genuine, lasting consequences of choices made by the generations who came long before him. The further he travels into Wallachia, the more he discovers that history is rarely as tidy or as straightforward as the stories passed down through generations would have him believe. Every answer he finds seems to uncover another mystery. Every legend he hears seems to be hiding some further truth underneath it.

Bringing Two Worlds Together

Part of the reason I began writing this series in the first place was to bring together the two histories that have shaped my own life. Romania gave me my earliest fascination with Vlad III, with medieval Wallachia, and with the legends that have grown up around the name Dracula. England gave me the Tudors, gave me Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, gave me one of the most compelling royal courts in the whole of European history. For the first time across the series, those two worlds finally meet on genuinely equal footing. Sebastian still carries England with him as he travels east, but it is Wallachia, and his own family’s long, complicated past, that finally calls him home.

Still Researching, Still Discovering

Even with much of the novel already taking shape, the research never really stops, and I don’t think I would want it to. Every new source I find, every archaeological discovery, every half-forgotten chronicle I stumble across late at night carries the potential to reshape a scene, inspire a character, or send an entire section of the story in a direction I hadn’t originally planned for. That, to me, remains one of the genuine joys of writing historical fiction. There is always something new waiting to be found.

Looking Ahead

There is still a great deal of work ahead before Related to Dracula: Legacy Unbound is ready to meet readers, but I can already say, with real confidence, that it is shaping up to be the most personal and the most historically immersive book in the series so far. It is a story about family, identity, loyalty, and legacy, but it is also a journey across one of Europe’s most genuinely fascinating historical landscapes, one I have spent my whole life falling further into rather than out of. I will share more behind-the-scenes research, historical discoveries, and updates as the novel continues taking shape. Until then, thank you for coming this far with me, through history, legend, and bloodline alike. The road back to Wallachia has only just begun.