Interview: AGA Wilmot, author of Withered

All Lit Up: Congratulations on your new book! Can you tell our readers a little about Withered? What can they expect while reading it?

AGA Wilmot: Thank you so much! Withered is a YA/NA-ish horror-romance/haunted house tale that uses a decades’-old spectral war, which has engulfed a small town, as a springboard for discussions on grief, mental health (eating disorders specifically), and queer identity.

ALU: We know you’re inspired by the great Mike Flanagan. Are there other horror writers or filmmakers you find influential to your creative process?

AGA: Embarrassingly, not as many horror authors as filmmakers. For whatever reason, I love writing horror, but I don’t read as much of it as I should. That said, this past year I really adored Erica McKeen’s Tear and Ainslee Hogarth’s Motherthing. If I want to be all stereotypical, I can cite Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, which I do love, but when it comes to writing my primary inspirations are not necessarily horror. I adore Amelie Nothomb, NK Jemisin, Lauren Beukes (who has dabbled in horror here and there), Charles Yu, Emily St. John Mandel… As a kid I was enamoured with Christopher Pike novels, and a little bit RL Stine, but for whatever reason I never graduated fully from teen horror into adult—I’ve read a handful of King books and have enjoyed them, but I wouldn’t call them all that inspirational to my process. Same with Barker—I actually enjoy his fantasy novel Imajica more than any of his horror writing. Filmmakers, it’s a different story. I walked in on my siblings watching A Nightmare on Elm Street when I was six or so and it forever changed my brain. As a kid I feasted on Wes Craven and John Carpenter (specifically The Thing and the first Halloween). Event Horizon is the first movie I ever snuck in to while underage. George Franju’s Eyes Without a Face hit me hard in my early twenties. Both Cronenbergs—but more Brandon, surprisingly—have made films that touched on personal obsessions and curiosities…There’s much more I could dig into, but I think it’s safe to say that while in general book and short story authors have had more of a lasting impact on my craft, when it comes to horror specifically, it’s certain filmmakers who have left the greatest mark. And to the one listed in the question itself, Flanagan’s work speaks to me because of its marriage of mental health and horror in a way that doesn’t paint mental illness as a thing to beat or fear but rather something to understand. While he’s not the only game in town when it comes to such a focus, his work hit me at precisely the right time, when I needed it most.

ALU: What’s your personal approach to horror writing?

AGA: Putting it bluntly: How can I hurt myself today? I write from a very personal place, because if I go too far in any one direction, I want it to be me that I hurt and offend, and not anyone else. Writing is also self-therapy for me. I don’t really feel like I’m comfortable writing work that isn’t at least somewhat autobiographical. In short, I want to always work toward understanding myself better, and writing is how I get there. I use the toolset of horror because it makes the most sense and always has. A lot of what I deal with involves the body or mental health, one’s personal psychology, and for whatever reason such things usually feel rooted in horror. In pulling back the skin, in flaying ourselves a little bit for the world to see.

ALU: Let’s talk character. Ellis is so fully formed—they feel like they could be a real person. Can you share some insights into how you developed the character? What’s your process like when you’re writing characters in general?

AGA: Plainly, Ellis is me, and Quinn is my fiancée, Jaime. We developed them together. Much of Ellis’s personality, traits, interests, and past—all me, possibly too transparently. Similarly, Jaime helped me develop Quinn, from her personality to her interests to her fashion choices and family life. It’s not something I’ve done before, but for this book and what it was touching on, it felt necessary to build them out of our real lives, at least to some extent. In general, though, I have a loose process when it comes to developing characters. Sometimes they waltz out of my head already formed and just need a few tweaks here and there. I generally figure out my characters as I go. I’m not much of a planner, if I’m being honest. I embark on a new book when the collection of ideas in my notes app gets to be too large and unwieldy to maintain and I’m forced to finally get a move on. And in most cases, they pop in to the story out of need. I do pull from my real life (especially with names), but never full people—snippets here and there, to fit whatever gaps or traits are needed to complete the picture in my head. Often I find each character’s voice as I’m writing them, and more specifically, as I’m engaging them in conversation. I’m working on a follow-up of sorts now, Fractured, set in the same town but at a different point in time, and the characters in that are very much developing as I go, and as I get them interacting with one another. To get a little glib about it, it’s kind of like smashing dolls or action figures together and finding out what happens. They start rough, develop as I discover more of them through accidental conversations, and then get fleshed and ironed out in subsequent drafts, as I get to know them better.

ALU: We know you’re a film buff, so we think you’ll appreciate this question. If Withered were adapted into a movie, who would be your dream director and why?

AGAW: I mean you already said it—Flanagan would be near the top of the list. Brian Duffield is also on there (Spontaneous, No One Will Save You), Leigh Janiak (Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy)…There are many other horror directors I love, but few I can think of who so effortlessly match the tone of the book—at least to me. Because in the end, yes, horror, but more than that I want any adaptation of this to lead with empathy.

ALU: Now that your second novel has been out for a month, what’s the reception been like? Was it different from your debut novel, The Death Scene Artist?

AGA: It feels different in the sense that everything’s a bit bigger this time around. The novel has had more press surrounding it and leading up to its release due in large part to its origins as a contest winner. It’s also, I think, in a good position to draw on my first book’s audience while also, hopefully, discovering a new one—in part because it’s closer to YA or New Adult, and also because I’m in a place where I can speak more freely about the personal nature of things. With Death Scene, which I adore and am so proud of to this day, I think I hurt the book’s chances at success by not yet being out and open with respect to issues surrounding my body and gender. Additionally, that book was more firmly rooted in body horror, which is a harder sell even among horror lovers. Toss in the fact that it was an epistolary narrative set mostly in the second person. It is an odd book and, from what I’ve heard from others, a bit of a difficult read, yet it still managed to find both an incredible publisher and a pretty wonderful audience. But I do wish I personally had been in a better space to promote it as the weird and very queer book that it is. With Withered, I think it will continue to grow and attract a new audience unfamiliar with my work simply due to its increased accessibility and gentler approach. So far, it’s hitting in terms of its emotional core and representation, and for that I’m thrilled.

ALU: What’s on your reading list these days? Any books you’d recommend?

AGA: Well, I mentioned Tear and Motherthing already—both highly recommended. I’ve just finished an ARC of KJ Aiello’s The Monster and the Mirror, out later this year, and it’s fantastic; and Paige Maylott’s My Body Is Distant, which hit a little close to home in very affirming and encouraging ways. A little while back I finished Christina Wong’s Denison Avenue, which is a stunningly beautiful and tender book produced with immense care. Ai Jiang’s Linghun is another incredible haunted house tale. Sticking with horror, Mariana Enríquez’s Our Share of Night is thrilling and quite distressing. And Alicia Elliott’s And Then She Fell is maybe one of the better examples of writing an actual break from reality I’ve ever encountered—harrowing in the best way.

ALU: Lastly, are you working on anything new that you wouldn’t mind sharing about?

AGA: I already mentioned that I’m plodding away at a first draft on a spiritual follow-up to Withered—titled Fractured, it takes place in the same town maybe twenty-five years earlier and is focused more on sci-fi horror (in this case time loops and causality) as a method of addressing emotional abuse and how it ripples out and carves new timelines out of old possibilities. Apart from that, I’m now ten drafts deep into a more quote-unquote lit book titled Every Little Death, which is a love story set during an ongoing climate apocalypse, told via the visual art world. I started writing it during the pandemic, amid a not-so-tiny existential crisis—it’s something I’ve been dancing around in different forms for over a decade now and had to finally address. My goal for this year is to get Fractured drafted and Every Little Death to a place where it can go out on submission.

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A.G.A. WILMOT (BFA, MPub) is an award-winning writer and editor based out of Toronto. Their credits include myriad online and in-print publications and anthologies. Their first book, The Death Scene Artist, was published by Buckrider Books in 2018. Their second, Withered, has just been published by ECW Press. They are represented by Kelvin Kong of K2 Literary.

Withered is available here on All Lit Up. Thanks to AGA Wilmot for taking time to answer our questions!