Angela Slatter's Blog

On Monday 9 November 2026, we’re launching the very special limited edition of The Path of Thorns. Myself and Kathleen Jennings will be in conversation with the excellent Joanne Anderton about fairytales, writing, collaboration and the process of bringing together this beautiful, illustrated edition from Hipkiss Publishing and we would LOVE to see your bright shining faces!

Basically, it’ll be our weekly Write Club with an audience, so come along, spy on the inner workings, and bring your questions about writing, art and why danishes are critical to the creative process and which is the Very Best Danish.

Endpapers! Silky ribbon! Full colour illustrations!

Bookings and details via Pulp Fiction Books. 

 

This coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday (that’s 6, 8, 9 Nov 2026) Kathleen Jennings and I will be at Brisbane Supanova with the Hipkiss Publishing team and stacks of the Limited Edition of The Path of Thorns as well as all the other beautiful books they’ve produced.

Drop by, say “Hi”, ask Kathleen about trick or treating in the US and how her jet lag is going! Ask me anything at all; I’m probably not a bite risk!

Tix and details here – we’ll be at booth 6082. 

I’m delighted to hear that The Cold House has won the Paul Haines Award for Long Fiction ( so basically Best Horror Novella).

Congrats to all the finalists and winners, and a huge thanks to the organisers and judges for all their hard work. The full list of winners and finalists is here. 

Thanks to my editor Cath Trechman and Titan Books for taking a chance on my weird little folk horror novella. 

Sometimes, I get to do very cool things – this is one of them!

I wrote this one-shot for Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal . Thanks to the folks at Blizzard Entertainment, especially Megan Walker for reaching out and asking if I wanted to do this and for being a good sport about the terrifying speed with which I said “YES”. And thanks to Peter Bergting for the excellent art and cover, to Fares Maese for the colours, and the lettering is by Andworld Design.   

 

Art by Kathleen Jennings

I have been writing for 22 years. This is my career. It’s how I put bread on the table and pay my bills with something that might, in a dim room, be mistaken for regularity. I have sacrificed a lot to get where I am today. I’m one of a large group of writers who’ve proudly been overusing em dashes since well before this shit kicked off and some pissy little tech bro vandals decided they needed more money for their dragon hoard. Let’s be clear – no one’s accused me of anything yet but I do just fucking love the em dash and I will not be changing. And yes, my work has been stolen by these bastards. I do NOT use AI because it’s shit. It’s lazy. It’s theft. It tells people that the only thing you’ve got to say is “I’ve nothing of my own to say”. I LOVE writing. I LOVE the look, sound, feel of words as I take up the challenge of putting them in the necessary order for every story. Writing is HARD and yes, there may well be a degree of masochism in my chosen art form.Writing rewards me every time I create something beautiful or terrifying because I’ve expended effort and blood and tears and sweat. I’ve reached into my hard-won experience and melded it with the creative urge of something new. Writing creates connection. Every book, every story, someone reaches out and says “It’s like you looked inside my life” or “I thought I was alone before”. It creates connection because you know another person has felt what you’re going through – which a machine never will. My writing deserves effort. Readers deserve my effort.

My beautiful new novella arrived in the mail today! Fitcher’s Bird has a glorious cover by Andy Bodrenkova and a lovely hardcover with silver lettering on the spine. Australia will get paperbacks first in October this year – the hardcovers will arrive a few months after the UK and US get theirs. Sorry!

At last!! The Sourdough collections are all back out in the world and collected together as The Sourdough Compendium, a weighty tome. They’re in the chronological order, rather than the order I wrote them, so I’ll be interested to see how people experience the reading this time around. 

Last night the fabulous @mother.horror did the cover reveal for next year’s Sourdough world novel, Our Lady of Battles. Lady Knights! Witches! Underworlds! Wish-hounds!

Her Grace, the True Princess Emlyn Mentoras, has come home after twenty years. The sole survivor of the slaughtered royal family of Five Ports, her life’s been dedicated to winning back her kingdom from the vicious Woodcutter Kings. Overseen by the Beldame she’s learned the ways of sword and shield, to rule and also – perhaps surprisingly – to show mercy. Emlyn wants the city to live again, for her people to prosper and, most of all, to follow in the footsteps of her idol, St Callwen, Five Ports’ founder.

But Emlyn’s got a secret that will blow her hard-won existence apart… When the horrors of her past catch up with her, she finds herself on a journey into the underworld with a loyal knight by her side seeking an elusive crown. A deadly quest that will test all her skill and courage and reveal a betrayal at the heart of the kingdom.

A deeply engrossing, richly told dark fantasy of a blighted monarchy, a stolen destiny and a young woman’s difficult search for her own path.

The pre-order links are likely up at your preferred ordering site, like this one.

The Shirley Jackson Awards shortlists are out and I’m delighted to see that The Cold House is shortlisted for Best Novella! 

The full listings are here. Congrats to all the finalists.

Belatedly! I’m in Perth.

This evening Kathleen Jennings and I did a great in-conversation – well, we enjoyed it – at the Melville Library. Many thanks to everyone for coming along, to the library for hosting s, and to Toby from Books in Breweries for organising it all. 

We’ll also be:

At SwanCon from 29 May to 1 June – Kathleen in the Guest of Honour. I’ll be part of the Big Beautiful Book Launch on Sunday 31 May, when y’all can acquire some of the first copies of The Sourdough Compendium in Australia. Just saying.Chatting at the Woodvale Library next Wed, 03 Jun 2026, from 6.00pm – 7.30pm.Chatting some more at Stefen’s Bookclub, Tues, 02 June 2026 at the Brew Bar, Durty Nelly’s Irish Pub, Shafto Lane in Perth’s CBD, from 7pm to 8.30pm.