Hello and welcome to this Behind the Scene post where today we’re looking at The Briar Book of the Dead by A.G. Slatter, which is out now from Titan Books. One of the reasons I enjoy these Behind the Scene posts so much is that every author approaches them differently. For this one, Angela has very kindly contributed an annotated excerpt in the shape of the full fourth chapter, with her commentary interspersed throughout, picking out various moments or ideas throughout the chapter and exploring what went into her decision-making for each one. It’s an intriguing insight into Angela’s writing process, and – I think – really sets up what looks like a fascinating story!
Before we get onto the excerpt and Angela’s commentary, let’s take a look at the publisher’s synopsis for The Briar Book of the Dead:
Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations. The Briar family of witches run the town of Silverton, caring for its inhabitants with their skills and magic. In the usual scheme of things, they would be burnt for their sorcery, but the church has given them dispensation in return for their protection of the borders of the Darklands, where the much-feared Leech Lords hold sway.
Ellie is being trained as a steward, administering for the town, and warding off the insistent interest of the church. When her grandmother dies suddenly, Ellie’s cousin Audra rises to the position of Briar Witch, propelling Ellie into her new role. As she navigates fresh challenges, an unexpected new ability to see and speak to the dead leads her to uncover sinister family secrets, stories of burnings, lost grimoires and evil spells. Reeling from one revelation to the next, she seeks answers from the long dead and is forced to decide who to trust, as a devastating plot threatens to destroy everything the Briar witches have sacrificed so much to build.
With that done, here’s the excerpt and Angela’s commentary.
The Briar Book of the Dead by A.G. Slatter
Chapter Four
I can’t stop my palms from sweating.
AGS: The opening chapters of the novel show Ellie Briar’s everyday life, the sort of boring admin stuff she has to do. We learn she’s inherited the position of Steward after her Great-Aunt Maud’s death, that she’s the only non-witch in her family for 300 years, that there’s a bit of rivalry and bullying that happens between the cousins because of Ellie’s lack of magic. So, I wanted Chapter 4 to be where Ellie feels like she’s getting her feet under her. That she’s got a handle on this position and she’s going to make her life different no matter what. I wanted the chapter to be filled with strangeness and wonder and hope. So, you’ve got all the Briars dressed to the nines, all the nerves for everyone; this is a critical moment not just for Ellie and her family, but for the survival of the town over winter.
In the mirror I’m all green eyes and black lashes, and every bead of perspiration on my face stands out. The nervousness and nausea are threatening to break free. Last night’s sleep was fleeting, the noises of a settling house, of nocturnal things on the roof, even of my family’s breathing in other rooms, all louder than they should have been. The rollcall of items to check running through my mind like a waterwheel, splashing thud after thud.
And today spent rushing from one end of the town to the other, making sure people and places were ready, foodstuffs and beverages, decorations and tables, plans on plans on plans. Over and over and over until Gisela sent me off to get dressed, shouting there was no way I could control everything – even though she’s spent years telling me that’s what the steward must do – and even Maud herself couldn’t have found something I’d missed.
AGS: Because Ellie’s job has so much boring stuff in it, I wanted to show “Here’s the moment where it pays off”. That all the admin and organisation actually has a point so it needs to be done well for a variety of reasons.
The red dress our great-aunt always wore on Balefire Eve has been taken in and restyled (by Beres before… everything) so I don’t look like a child playing dress-up; Maud was taller and broader in the shoulder. Audra, already pristine and prepared, did my hair and make-up because my own hands shook too much. She’s laced up the gown, tight enough so it’s almost difficult to breathe; I look like a ruby hourglass. Audra’s in gold that’s still not as bright as her hair, glowing beside me so beautifully that I know it doesn’t matter how lovely I’ll ever look – I’ll never be as glorious as my cousin. Yet tonight, I don’t quite care. I am the best of myself.
‘Ellie, you look like a priestess – a goddess even.’ And her tone is so gentle, so filled with love that I forgive her everything – her beauty, her grace, her cleverness and kindness, her magical abilities and those times when she loses her temper – all the things she can’t help. Audra takes my hand and leads me from my room, keeps hold of me as we go along the corridor, down the staircase, into the foyer where the others wait, impatiently. Gisela’s dress is a shimmering amethyst, shot with silver; Eira in deepest blue; and Nia in vivid emerald. My family smile up at me and I don’t care if it’s just reflected glory from Audra – tonight, some of the magic is mine.
We set off along the silent streets – I lead, the others following two by two – there’s no one but the Briars about, wrapped in silks and velvets, elaborate gems at throats and ears, fingers and wrists (except Audra, who wears only the simple necklace that was her mother’s, a large black tourmaline pendant). Torches line the path we must tread, a circuit around the town, and finally along the river to where it widens into a lake beside the common where Silverton’s folk wait, dressed in their finest, quiet, solemn. Each holding a colourful paper lantern.
AGS: I liked the idea of this sort of progress around the town as a sign of a ritual that not only shows them claiming their territory but also protecting it, warding it. It’s also a good way of walking the reader around the town and getting them to see the place through Ellie’s eyes and realising what the town means to the family.
Though the trestle tables groan beneath the weight of the feast (including Eira’s irresistible, unburned sugar biscuits), though there are gallons of alcohol awaiting them, no one is indulging. Even though the population’s been gathering since the dusk turned a gentle mauve, loitering for hours until just before midnight strikes from the townhall clocktower, just before we arrive, no one is bored or impatient – or not showing it at least. Even children are somber and silent.
I keep my gaze straight ahead, concentrating, coiled in upon myself, trying to draw up the power I do not have.
We light the candles in our lanterns; once we Briars have set ours to float on the water’s surface, the gentle current pulling them to where lake becomes river once more, the rest of those gathered follow suit. An armada of brightly glowing beacons. Fire, paper and water; whatever their end, a breeze of whispered wishes propels them to a place where the blackness of the lake and night are indistinguishable.
AGS: I also really love this idea of the ceremony being something both the Briars and the townsfolk take part in – so there’s a shared sense of ownership for rulers and inhabitants. I think it helps give a good sense of the unique symbiotic relationship between the Briars and the townsfolk; that the Briars rule but largely because they are trusted.
Only when we finally step into the centre of the green, when my family hang back, when the crowd arrays itself around us, do I allow myself to look at what Nia has wrought – the symbol upon which so much of my success or failure rests.
The piles of brush and twigs, trunks and lightwood from yesterday have been turned into one enormous mound around the tall pole in the ground. Hanging from that is the tree-wife.
The wood-witch. Shaped to suggest a woman with her arms outstretched, head thrown back, ecstatic. Constructed only from branches and logs already fallen, limbs already dead and discarded, of oak and pine, cypress and cedar, with fragrant herbs twined around her head to look like flowing locks.
AGS: The image of the wood-witch, the tree-wife is actually one that I dreamed. This whole ceremony was something that I woke up in the morning with the whole thing in my head. The imagery of the flaming wood-witch is still burned in my memory, as fresh as I first dreamed it.
Nia created her, but she’s mine. My first tree-wife. My first Balefire Eve.
I’d give anything to have this moment stretch forever because it too is mine.
All too soon, Nia stands beside me.
Opening my mouth, the words flow forth, a call and response that’s been our song for hundreds of years; this ceremony that we took and made ours. Adding the wood-witch to the Brothers Bear’s wintertide ritual just for us. To keep the Briars safe.
‘Who has made her?’ I ask.
‘I have, Nia out of Susannah out of Gisela,’ replies my cousin proudly. She’s done this before, many times.
‘How have you made her?’
‘As best I can, with love and care, devotion and loyalty.’
‘Do you give her freely?’
Only a small hesitation, as there is every year because relinquishing such a glorious thing is hard; relinquishing it to me is harder still. ‘I do.’
‘Will she burn?’
‘She will burn for all of us.’
And under our breaths so no one else can hear, we intone, ‘She will burn so we do not.’
AGS: I wanted the idea that the ceremony was multi-layered in its function. That it would help protect the town through wintertide, but that there’s also the very personal nature of it as a hidden protection for the Briars. Only they know there’s this double layer – it’s like a Russian doll of witching, a spell within a spell.
For this night is about more than keeping Silverton safe through the frozen months; it is about keeping the Briars from the flames when so many of our sisters have become cinders. We have the dispensation, yes; we have distance; but we’ll leave nothing to chance. We’ll not become complacent. This is a version of “throwing magic”, as one might with pain or ill fortune, sending it to someone else. We throw a fiery fate onto the wood-witch, give her to the pyre once a year in the hope it will keep the rest of us whole.
At my nod Nia moves closer to the balefire construct. Maud used to do this part. Maud, tall and thin, same high cheekbones as Gisela but thinner lips, more furrows across the forehead, hair proper white, grey-green eyes, standing like a pitiless goddess. It’s the steward’s task, but one I can’t do so Nia does it for me. The cut she’s made on her palm to pay the red price gleams darkly.
My cousin raises her arms to mirror the tree-wife, spreads her fingers as wide as they’ll go and a flicker begins, comes from within her very skin, turns her hands pearlescent. The glow intensifies. I cannot see her face, but her lips will be moving, whispering an apology to the child of sticks and tinder who’ll be so bright, so brilliant, so briefly. Nia leans forward and touches the kindling.
Everything ignites, the silver-white turning swiftly to an orange-gold-red tinged with blue breaths.
The voracious hues tear upwards and soon the tree-wife’s torso, arms, head, twig-fingers are ablaze; the movement of the flames makes it seem as though she’s swaying, dancing against the sky. Nia steps backwards until she bumps into me and I steady her; she stiffens at the touch. There are tears on her cheeks. Someone wraps my shoulders: Audra is smiling, dazzling as the moon. Grandmamma and Eira join in and we are one for a moment, united by blood, by history, by love. I breathe a sigh of relief, feel my tension drain.
Gisela says, ‘You’ve done so well, Ellie!’ and the others echo her. Pride burns inside me, blazing like the wood-witch.
Behind us, shouts go up – laughter, chatter and singing. Children race to the food tables, parents hot on their heels. The pop of kegs and bottles opening, the glug of pouring, of toasts being made. Once they’ve eaten their fill, little ones will be sent to bed and adults will drift off in pairs. In nine months, there will be new babes; perhaps some hasty marriages before, some less hasty ones after, perhaps none at all.
Across the fire I spy a familiar shape, well over six feet, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, black hair curling at his collar, a square jaw, dark stubble no amount of shaving can remove, brows emphatic as crow’s wings and unfairly long lashes around deep blue eyes. For such a large man he doesn’t ever seem clumsy or lumbering, he’s graceful as a wolf. The cut of Dai’s grin is sharp. I lift my chin defiantly. He’s watching me and I don’t care if it’s the glamour of my position or appearance, or just the intoxication that fills everyone on Balefire Eve. I don’t care because Dai Carabhille is looking back at me after all the years I’ve stared at him. Finally.
AGS: Again, I wanted to build up this night for Ellie – that she was finally going to get her heart’s desire after years of yearning for this guy. Building the anticipation around this night, and hopefully the reader likes Ellie enough by now that you want good things for her…
I feel everything that we – the Briars – are run through me: the strength of earth and fire, air and water. Or I imagine I’m filled by the things I cannot know for they have no more affinity for me than I have for them… except on this strange night it seems I’m allowed a hint of them, a whisper. Or perhaps it’s simply that my yearning for them is stronger than ever. What I do know is that the light from the torches catches my eyes, the gems in my carefully coiffed braids and curls, and the gloss on my lips. This night, I am a priestess, powerful despite my lack of magic.
This night I will have at least one of the things I’ve wanted for so long.
Soon we’ll begin to move, do the slow dance of lovers-to-be, around the circle, not being obvious, nor appearing too anxious. We’ll stop to talk to people on the way, allowing the anticipation to grow, to build (after all these years, what’s another hour or so?), as we dance and sway and dip, shifting closer and closer through groups of families and friends, acquaintances. Couples less patient than we wolf down food and disappear, not caring who sees. Idly I wonder if, when I unbutton his shirt, the medallion I gave him will be underneath; if he’s been wearing it this whole time, close to his heart.
From above comes the great creak and snap of the wood-witch – always expected but never less than shocking. All eyes fasten on her in awe and sadness as the fire at last has its way: she folds, she crumbles, tumbles, all her limbs broken. Nia’s excellent work has ensured that she plummets safely straight down, and whumps into the bed of cinders and soot, sending sprays of sparks upwards, which glare for a moment, then die against the velvet of the sky.
A collective sigh is released from those gathered, a mourning that’s brief but no less real. The chatter starts again soon. I look for Dai, searching the sea of faces and forms, yet the one I seek is no longer there. I frown, turn and turn and turn, only to hear a keening. The thudding of boots beating on the path from town to green.
Beres Baines, no longer her neat self, comes tearing into the circle, makes a beeline for me. She grabs at my arms, shrieks, ‘I can’t find her, I can’t find Deirdre.’
AGS: And for the end of this chapter, I really wanted a big “ooof!” after building everything up for Ellie. This is kind of the moment that sets everything in motion and that ultimately makes her into the woman she becomes… but not without a lot of trouble!
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Angela Slatter (also writing as A.G. Slatter) is the author of the gothic fantasies All The Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns, The Briar Book of the Dead and the forthcoming The Crimson Road (Titan Books). She is also the author of the Verity Fassbinder supernatural crime/urban fantasy series (Vigil, Corpselight and Restoration), as well as 12 short story collections, three novellas and two books about writing. Her Hellboy Universe collaboration with Mike Mignola, Castle Full of Blackbirds, was published in 2023. She has won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, a Ditmar, a Shirley Jackson Award, three Australian Shadows Awards and eight Aurealis Awards. She is also one of the World Fantasy Award judges for 2024 (for works published in 2023).
Her work has been translated into Bulgarian, Chinese, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Polish, French, Turkish, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian and Romanian. The film rights to her novelette “Finnegan’s Field” have been optioned by Victoria Madden of Sweet Potato Films (The Kettering Incident, The Gloaming).
Find out more about Angela at http://www.angelaslatter.com/, or find her on Twitter and Instagram @AngelaSlatter.
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Thanks so much to Angela for sharing this annotated excerpt! If you’re anything like me, this will have nicely whetted your appetite for The Briar Book of the Dead, which is out now! I’ve included a link below so you can order a copy for yourself*.
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