We chat with author A.G. Slatter about The Crimson Road, which is a tale of vampires, assassins, ancient witches and broken promises, perfect for readers of Alix E. Harrow, Hannah Whitten and Alexis Henderson.
Hi, Angela! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi there! Well, I’ve been writing for quite a while, I’ve written horror and dark fantasy, urban fantasy/supernatural crime, non-fiction stuff about the craft of writing and a graphic novel set in the Hellboy Universe – no poetry, though, terrible at poetry. I love folklore and fairy tales, myth and legends and that all tends to come through whether I’m writing contemporary horror or fantasy. I live in Brisbane, Australia and I have a PhD in Creative Writing.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I was always a really big reader from a young age and I would retell myself stories then (especially if I didn’t like the ending), and I scribbled for a while, but it took a long time for me to think that maybe I could be a writer “for real”. I find I have less time for reading because I’m writing nowadays, but I guess it’s a fair trade.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Oh, wow. Probably a Nancy Drew mystery or a children’s version of Beowulf with some very disturbing illustrations.
- The one that made you want to become an author: I think maybe the original Dracula by Bram Stoker – it scared me so much that I put it in a cupboard for weeks, wrapped in a sweater, before I could make myself finish it.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: It’s an old one – Jane Gaskell’s Atlan series, probably the first volume, The Serpent. It’s a series I re-read for comfort (even though it’s not very cosy!).
Your latest novel, The Crimson Road, is out February 11th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
- Hella-Gothic! (it’s a word)
- Rebellion!
- Folklore!
- Scary-vampires! (also a word)
- Fearsome!
What can readers expect?
Well, they get to meet Violet Zennor, who’s been brought up to be a kind of a Victorian Era Gothic Buffyesque character by her father (who’s not very nice). He dies (not really a spoiler) and she thinks she can have a nice life, no fighting, no training, no having to fulful the mission her father had set her – go to the Darklands, rescue her dead brother, bring down the Leech Lords. Except she’s not allowed to have a break – assassins from the Darklands come for her. So she has no choice but to go north to save herself and the people she cares about. Her companion is a sassy urchin, and they meet some characters from my previous novels set in this world (easter eggs!), pick up a love interest, battle all sorts of other horrors, until they get to the Darklands – where only Violet can go. So, it’s about doing things you don’t want to do, found family, kindness, awfulness, independence, blood and magic – and witches. So, a lot!
Where did the inspiration for The Crimson Road come from?
I’d written about the Leech Lords – my version of vampires in this world – in an earlier collection (Titan will be reprinting those in June 2026) and I really wanted wanted to explore the idea of what happened if you have your vampires confined to a single small nation. What kind of a society exists, what would induce humans to stay in such a place, how bad could it get? And also I’d been thinking about the main character that could march through all that – there’s a meme/saying “If you have to go through hell, walk as if you own it” and as soon as I saw that I heard Violet’s voice. Terrible things have happened to her, but she keeps going. I have to be interested in my characters to keep writing them, and she definitely pulled me along with her.
I am also a HUGE fan of vampire literature and I have read a lot – one of the reasons I’d kind of been avoiding writing a vampire-inflected novel was the idea of how to do something different. I felt with this book that I could come at things from a different angle and make vampires scary again.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved writing Violet and her sidekick Freddie the street urchin. There a parallels between their lives and I think Violet feels she’s got an opportunity to be kinder to Freddie than her own family was to her; Freddie likes Violet but there are Reasons why she’s not entirely inclined to share personal details with her. I also loved writing my “revisit” characters from All the Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns and The Briar Book of the Dead you don’t have to read the first three books to enjoy The Crimson Road, but long-time readers will get a bit of a thrill I think. And there were other characters that I wrote who first appeared in a short story called “The Night Stair” and it was an absolutely joy to bring them into the more recent history of this world.
Can you tell us a bit about your process when it comes to worldbuilding?
While I admire writers who can build a world from the ground up, I just don’t have the patience to do that from scratch. So, my world has recognisable elements from fairy and folktales – magic is real, it’s not hidden, there’s also an oppressive religious body that tries to control people (especially women), there are elements of Renaissance and Victorian Era culture mixed in so it feels a bit like a fairy tale you might have have remembered from childhood.
Because this book is so steeped in vampire lore it might feel a bit more folktale than fairy. As I said, I’ve read a lot of vampire-related books, fiction and non-fiction, so I was kind of taking threads from the folklore and reweaving them because vampires aren’t really fairy-tale creatures. I’ve used tidbits in other works, pulled from really old stuff like Emily Gerard’s The Land Beyond the Forest which is from 1888 (it’s available on Project Gutenberg for the real enthusiast!) – there’s a bit of folk magic in there that if you can’t sleep you should put a small bag of graveyard dirt under your pillow. A literal “dirt nap”, I guess. So, it’s little weird but true elements like that that I like to adapt and put into my stories.
The main thing is to be consistent in the details of the world you’re creating, and try not to contradict yourself!
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
I think every book has its challenges, but the ones that seem to be consistent for me are: the inner critic sniping at me; keeping track of what I’ve established about the world in previous books; and generally trying to keep the plotting interesting and the pace moving smoothly. My books can feel a little slow at the beginning, but that’s because I’m a writer who wants to show you what the world was like before the inciting incident – that’s the only way for me to show the reader what the main character has lost, and to make the reader feel the loss too! I mean, I cry writing these novels, so I don’t want to be the only one!
What’s next for you?
Well, I’ve already delivered the next book in this world, A Forest Darkly (out in Feb 2026) and a contemporary horror novella The Cold House (out in Oct 2025). The former is a grumpy witch in the woods, Mehrab has a dubious past she fled from a long time ago; one day another witch, who runs an organisation that helps runaway witches get to safety, arrives and brings a young woman called Rhea for Mehrab to foster. But there’s something in the woods that’s luring children into the shadows and something that’s hunting Mehrab too.
And the latter is about a writer called Everly Bainbridge, whose husband and young daughter died in a car crash. A lawyer turns up and tells her that her husband wasn’t who she thought he was and that she is now very rich. She goes to a remote island to get away from everything and try to figure stuff out, but something’s looking for her too – and she is not as vulnerable as she seems.
The next thing I’m working on is another contemporary horror novella, Fichter’s Birds, and then I’ll be back at the next two gothic fantasies, Our Lady of Battles and The Scarred Queen.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up in 2025?
So many! But I’ll keep it to five:
- Kell Woods’ The Starlit Tide
- Kelsey Yu’s Demon Song
- Ava Reid’s Fable for the End of the World
- Sadie Hartmann’s non-fiction Feral & Hysterical: Mother Horror’s Ultimate Guide to Reading Dark and Disturbing Fiction by Women (which is also going to be a great source of reading recommendations!)
- Kathleen Jennings’ Honeyeater
