Lucius Valiant (he/him) is a Danish-British author inspired by Gothic classics like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as horror and speculative fiction from authors like Anne Rice and Stephen King.
His work is known for its vivid, cinematic style and darkly humorous tone.
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We’re spotlighting your Vampire Chronicles series: introduce us to your books and tell us where the core idea came from!
The Thornhill Vampire Chronicles is a Gothic urban fantasy series set in the UK. It follows the Thornhill vampires, and those bound to them by blood or fate, as they navigate the complexities and dangers of their afterlives. It’s hard to say exactly where the core idea came from.
Some of the characters have been with me for more than half my life, as has Thornhill Mansion, the all-vampire family’s ancestral home. I’ve been visiting Thornhill Mansion hundreds of times in my mind since I was about ten, long before I started writing about it.
What I can pinpoint, though, is the moment that sparked the writing of Dark Roots, the first volume in the series: discovering Highgate Cemetery. I had just moved to the area and was out walking when I turned a corner and suddenly found myself at the foot of Highgate – the two magnificent, eerie sides of it rising on either side of Swain’s Lane. Something about the place’s sombre beauty and unmistakably haunted atmosphere whispered to me. It told me that this was where the mansion I’d always imagined belonged. I began researching the cemetery and immediately stumbled upon the urban legend of the Highgate Vampire, a real vampire said to haunt the graveyard in the early 1970s. The legend sparked a media frenzy and culminated in a vampire hunt. Do yourself a favor and Google the newspaper images from that time, because they’re pure Gothic theater. My point is, the fuel was already there in my imagination – discovering Highgate Cemetery was simply the match that set it alight. I’ve been writing since I was a kid, but it wasn’t until I stumbled upon Highgate that everything finally came together into a coherent story.
Tell us about your vampire influences, and then how you made vampires your own in your series!
I’ve been obsessed with vampires and everything they represent ever since I first read Dracula as a precocious preteen. Shortly after, I discovered Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, so the vampire archetype branded itself into my soul early on, at a crucial time when my brain’s neurons were busy clicking into place and forming their pathways.
I’ve never consciously tried to make my vampires my own. They arrived in my mind fully formed, already themselves.
In many ways, they’re classic Gothic vampires, marble-pale skin, unnaturally vivid eyes and hair, superhuman strength and speed, heightened senses, and sometimes supernatural abilities like hypnosis or mind-reading. Not all of them have powers – it’s a bit of a lucky draw. The abilities they develop often reflect who they were in life.
Gabriel, for instance, is a master of hypnosis, but he was always a skilled manipulator, even before vampirism gave him that extra oomph.
My vampires stay reasonably faithful to the core of traditional vampire mythology. They freeze in time at the moment of transformation, never age, are impervious to disease, and heal at an unnatural speed. Their hearts only beat on special occasions. They struggle with (or embrace) bloodlust, and a stake through the heart or exposure to sunlight can kill them.
At the same time, I’ve discarded aspects of classic vampire lore that I find unrealistic or just unnecessary. My vampires do have reflections, and religious iconography has no effect on them. They’re probably closest in spirit to Anne Rice’s vampires. The biggest difference is that my vampires don’t default to bisexuality. Whatever their orientation was in life, so it remains in the afterlife.
When you become a vampire in The Thornhill Vampire Chronicles, you are exactly who you were when you crossed over, only more so. Vampirism frees you from the limitations that bind mortals to behave in certain ways. It doesn’t make you evil, although you do acquire a bloodlust – it simply amplifies everything you already are.
Tell us about your MC, Harlan Thorne. How did you develop him as a character, and what influences went into creating him? You’ve mentioned Dracula by Bram Stoker – does Harlan bear any resemblance to Jonathan Harker in that novel?
Like the rest of my key characters, Harlan feels more conjured than invented. He wasn’t consciously inspired by anything. He just arrived. He’s a professional vampire hunter.
That said, comparing him to Jonathan Harker isn’t a bad place to start. In Dracula, Jonathan Harker is very much an ordinary man, unwittingly drawn into a dangerous supernatural world when he agrees to travel to Transylvania. He’s a classic Stephen King-style protagonist – Joe Everyman who suddenly finds himself facing the forces of darkness.
Harlan is… not that. By the time we meet him in Dark Roots, he’s already spent twenty years immersed in the supernatural. His parents were killed by a vampire when he was very young; he was raised by the hunter who saved him, and his own career is largely driven by a thirst for revenge. Killing vampires is, in many ways, his not-entirely-healthy way of coping with trauma.
Harlan is a study in contrasts. In some ways, he’s everything you’d expect a vampire hunter to be: bold, stubborn, proud, impulsive – with a pronounced streak of arrogance and a complete inability to back down from a challenge. He doesn’t view vampires with awe or fear, but with jaded contempt and a cutting, sardonic wit. But beneath all that – though he does his best to bury it – he’s wounded, sensitive, and emotionally complex, as any proper Gothic hero should be.
Whether I shaped him that way or the muse delivered him whole, Harlan is ethereally beautiful, more fallen angel than typical rugged action hero.
Aesthetics are a vital part of the immersive atmosphere I strive to create, and I tend to emphasize my characters’ appearances. In Harlan’s case, his striking resemblance to a certain Victorian-era ancestor becomes part of his fate. It makes him a grudging magnet for attention from Gabriel, my most controversial character, and sets the stage for some danger-laced tension as the series unfolds.
What went into creating and maintaining the Gothic-ness of the series, what Gothic tropes do you love to write, and what can readers expect to find as the books go on?
I couldn’t keep a sense of Gothic-ness out of my books even if I wanted to! I don’t make any deliberate effort to maintain it; it’s simply there, part of the DNA of my inner world and my writing. I never really felt like I belonged in the “normal” world. I’ve always sensed that there are other worlds – richer, deeper, more vivid and beautiful layers of reality – hidden just beneath the surface of what’s immediately visible. That, to me, is the essence of the gothic: a deep yearning for someplace else, for something more intense, more beautiful, more dangerous than the mundane. So I fill my books with the things I yearn for – eternal life, beauty that doesn’t fade, love that burns with an eternal flame, a mansion full of ghosts and secrets.
How many books will be in the series in total, and what can you tell us about Book 5, Grave Matters? Should people begin with Book 1, or can they jump into the series at other points?
I have no idea. I’m a certified pantser – I pants every book, and I pants the series. There’s no roadmap, no planned-out arc, no set destination. I trust the story and the characters (some more than others, of course). Right now, I can’t say when the series will end, but I don’t suspect it’ll be any time soon. Harlan is the series’ main MC, but ever since volume two, I’ve given myself the freedom to shift perspective from book to book. So I’m not locked into only documenting Harlan’s fate. In that sense, the series has much more scope, room for a multitude of interconnected stories told from different vampires’ points of view.
Can you share some of your favourite reader comments and reviews with us?
“If you grew up loving Anne Rice with her multi-layered characters and rich storytelling, this is the new series for you. It bridges the gap between the generation of Anne Rice and the Vampire Diaries, giving us a modern vampire tale with believable, unique characters.”
“Dark Roots is a contemporary Gothic vampire novel with an urban fantasy twist that makes it perfect for crossover fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Tim Burton’s Wednesday or Dark Shadows. Although it’s clear Valiant has a firm knowledge of nineteenth-century Gothic classics, there’s a contemporary spin to his approach that goes beyond Dark Roots’ modern setting and draws on a rich camp horror tradition of intertwining modern and historical setpieces.”
“I couldn’t put this book down! It is the best most emotionally inclusive vampire book I’ve read. The plot is full of angst and family love. It is so original. The characters are real as far as emotions and personalities go. They are warm for cold blooded undead.”
“By far, the best vampire series of the year. Each book takes us deeper into the Thornhill world… a magical place with people you would love to know.” “Anne Rice and Dracula himself would be fans of L.V. too.”
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