PARIS (AFP) – Bram Stoker's own blood runs through the veins of a sequel to his 1897 novel "Dracula," which goes on worldwide release this month, in a work penned by his great-grandnephew who is hoping to revive the original vampire myth.

"Dracula: The Un-Dead", which runs to almost 500 pages, is the fruit of an unlikely six-year collaboration between Canadian Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt, a New York screenwriter enamoured of vampires.

"When people think of Dracula they think of handsome Bela Lugosi," said Holt, 39, wearing a T-shirt featuring the 1920s Hungarian actor who played him in the first Broadway production of Stoker's book, as well as in the 1931 movie.

"Dracula was nothing like that. He was old and hunched over, had hair on his palms, and bad breath," Holt told AFP.

"He was out of the grave, he smelt like death," adds 51-year-old Stoker, a former teacher. "We're going back to the original characters."

It was Holt -- whose passion for all things vampire stems from Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 "Dracula" movie -- who initially came up with the idea of a sequel to the Irish writer's 19th century work.

In search of ideas, he stalked descendants of Transylvanian-born Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, better known as "Vlad The Impaler," toured Europe on the vampire's tracks, met with scholars, and joined the Transylvanian Society of Dracula.

In 2003, he came up with the idea of getting backing for a sequel from the Stoker family, who had lost the rights to it early in the 20th century.

And Dacre, one of a score of close family scattered across Britain, Ireland, Canada and the United States, signed on. "He had Bram's genes and the name," said Holt.

From then on, the two worked together, studying notes left for the original work by Bram Stoker, writing the plot and building characters.

"We go back to the original but we don't leave it at that," Stoker said.

The sequel is set in 1912, 25 years after the finale of the first epistolary novel, as a series of chilling murders in London and Paris triggers a vampire hunt across Europe and unleashes terror of "the prince of darkness."

After careful analysis of 19th century notes left by Stoker, a theatre director who minutely researched background for the original novel, the two revived one of the old characters and added in a few, including a Scotland Yard detective and a lesbian vampire countess.

More significantly, perhaps, Dacre Stoker also opted to throw his ancestor into the novel.

Why create a Bram Stoker character? "He was misunderstood, mysterious, no one knows why he wrote Dracula," his great grand-nephew said. "He died without knowing the success of his iconic character. His life was a struggle."

Talks are under way to produce a movie version of the book, though the authors refused to say who with.

But if they have their say, Johnny Depp could play Dracula and alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones as the blood-sucking lesbian countess.