It’s been vampires 24/7 for quite a while — in books (“The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova, the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer), in theaters (“Queen of the Damned,” “The Vampire’s Assistant”) and on TV (“True Blood,” “The Vampire Diaries”).

Those are all fiction, of course. But consider “In the Footsteps of Dracula: A Personal Journey and Travel Guide” by Steven P. Unger (World Audience, $20, 258 pgs.; with 185 black-and-white photos).

After visiting a parish church cemetery in Whitby, England — a key setting in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” — Unger says he became obsessed with “traveling to every site in England and Romania related to either the fictional Count Dracula or his real historical counterpart, Prince Vlad the Impaler.”

The journey took the retired state worker a month.

To buy the book or read reviews and interviews with Unger, go to http://worldaudience .powweb.com/pubs_bks/Dracula .html.

I caught up with Unger last week.

Q. Why are people worldwide still fascinated by the Dracula mythology?

A. (He’s) a seduction, still. Dracula is immortal and seduced his female victims and drank their blood, and that has a sexual element connected to it. He was horrible-looking in the original novel, but (in recent decades) he has been romanticized in movies and is very attractive.

Q. There’s general agreement that Stoker partly modeled Count Dracula after the infamous Prince Vlad of Wallachia.

A. There are a lot of legends about Vlad the Impaler, who is still seen as a hero in Romania because he fought off the Turks. The (citizenry) overlooked the fact that most of his victims were fellow Romanians.

Q. “Footsteps” is a real travel book with an itinerary, maps, lodging recommendations and the like.

A. Getting around was very difficult because Romania is so decentralized and there are no tourist offices. I had to go into a town and ask how to get to the next town and the one after that. They would say, “Take a train and then ask when you get there.” All the (logistical) information I got from asking (and doing) is in the book.

Q. What was the biggest surprise?

A. When I went to the ruins of the Poenari Fortress in Romania, which Bram Stoker never knew about. It was almost stone for stone the way Stoker described Dracula’s Castle on top of the Borgo Pass in Transylvania. Yet the Poenari Fortress belonged to Vlad the Impaler and was in a completely different place than (the fictitious) Dracula’s Castle. Now there’s the (real) Hotel Castle Dracula in the spot where Dracula’s Castle was (situated) in the novel.