We chat with author Cameron Sullivan about The Red Winter, which is a darkly entertaining retelling of the hunt for the Beast of Gévaudan. Lifting the veil on the hidden world behind our own, it reimagines the story of Europe, from Imperial Rome to Saint Jehanne d’Arc, the madness of Gilles de Rais and the first flickers of the French Revolution.
Hi, Cameron! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I grew up in Perth, Western Australia and now live in Melbourne, which I can’t recommend highly enough. I’m a massive nerd when it comes to anything SFF and I’m a huge fan of hidden indie gems – send me your recommendations for underrated TV series, movies, games and books! The Red Winter is a fairly good compass when it comes to my interests: fantasy, horror, history and folklore.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I was about seven years old – when I was learning to write, I was learning to write stories. My mum recently gave me a bunch of my old scrapbooks and they’re full of (fairly horrific) stories written in wobbly lead pencil. I think my passion for dark fantasy has very deep roots.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Meg and Mog by Helen Nicoll
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Magician’s Nephew by CS Lewis
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: not a single book, but The Dark Tower series by Stephen King.
Your debut novel, The Red Winter, is out February 24th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Bloody. Rich. Humorous. Adventurous. Romantic.
What can readers expect?
A dark, bloody reimagining of a genuine monster hunt on the cusp of the French Revolution, steeped in folklore and wrapped up in a heartbreaking queer love story.
Where did the inspiration for The Red Winter come from?
The research! The history of the Beast of Gevaudan is so fascinating, and it already reads like the plot of a horror movie. The short version: in the 1760s, a mysterious animal terrorised the region of Gevaudan in France, attacking hundreds of people (and killing over half of them) in the space of a few years. The king posted a bounty and sent his best hunters to put the creature down – a real-life monster hunt that captured the imagination of the whole country. The story has become legendary and is the source of a lot of our pop-culture werewolf tropes.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
The worst characters were the most fun to write. I think my favourite is Sarmodel, the demon who shares a body with the protagonist, Sebastian. If I was ever stuck for a way to progress a scene, I just imagined the worst possible thing to say and then put it in his mouth.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
There were two main challenges, I think.
Psychologically, confidence was my main obstacle. As an unpublished author, I was really in the wilderness a lot of the time. The idea that nobody would probably ever read the story sometimes made it hard to find the motivation to keep writing and hold myself to any kind of standard. Finding the confidence to back myself was really hard, particularly when I was bringing it out into the world.
Technically, the main challenge was the structure of the book. For some reason, I decided to tell the story in three interwoven timelines, which is not something I would recommend for any other aspiring authors out there! My agent and my editor were crucial in helping me bring it all together coherently – I don’t think it would be anywhere near as good without them.
This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
Quite surreal – absolutely nothing happened for a long time and then suddenly everything happened at once.
The Red Winter was a labour of love for about seven years. I was freelancing as a copywriter and working weekends in cafes – both of which I loved – for most of that time. I took the finished story to a professional manuscript editor to help me get it into shape and then starting submitting to agents. It took me over a year to find my outstanding agent, Christabel McKinley. Once we’d done some editing, she took the book to market and then Ali Fisher at Tor US picked it up. It all went down very quickly – I think I blacked out for a few seconds when Christabel told me Tor were interested! I wouldn’t change anything about the way it happened. I think The Red Winter found its way into the absolute best possible hands.
What’s next for you?
There’s another book already in process! It’s not a sequel, but another ‘case file’ from Sebastian and Sarmodel’s history. Think witch hunts and apocalyptic prophecies.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
I’ve been catching up on a VERY big backlog of reading, so this is hard. I am hanging out for King Sorrow by Joe Hill, The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell and The Land and Its People by David Sedaris.
