You may know Abraham Lincoln as the 16th president of the United States of America, a beloved hero in American history, who helped emancipate the slaves and lead the nation to new frontiers.
But did you know he was a vampire hunter?
According to Seth Grahame-Smith's novel of alternative fiction, Lincoln was one of the world's more prolific slayers of the undead.
The idea of Lincoln as a vampire hunter sounds over-the-moon absurd. Yet Grahame-Smith has a knack for transplanting bizarre fiction into the historical. At the centre of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is the most highly regarded president and his superhero aura.
'Lincoln's life story is an archetypal superhero origin story,' says Grahame-Smith, who also wrote the script for the film. 'He's as close to an actual superhero as [America's] ever seen.
'Forget vampires. Lincoln had neither family name nor money. His mother died when he was a youngster: everybody he loved had died. With no education, and armed with only his mind, he became president and saved the nation.'
Grahame-Smith thought of the Vampire Hunter idea while promoting his best-selling novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in 2009. He says: 'That year marked the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. Many bookstores on my promotional tour had two displays. One featured books about Lincoln's life; the other was a vampire-themed display, including Twilight and the Sookie Stackhouse books,' he says, referring to The Southern Vampire Mysteries upon which the TV series True Blood is based. 'It led me to think about combining the two subjects.'