Chat #35 - Leon Craig
"I have been haunting the characters"
Leon Craig's debut novel The Decadence (2025) and queer gothic short story collection Parallel Hells (2022) are both available from Sceptre Books UK. Leon's work has also featured in the Sunday Times, Hazlitt and Berlin Babel anthology among others. She will be hosting an event on homes, hauntedness and belonging at the Owl Bookshop in London Oct 22nd.
Find more of Leon’s work here: https://www.leoncraigwriter.com
19/07/2026, 12:32 - Finbarre:
There are houses which are haunted, and then there are houses that haunt you.
Leon Craig’s debut novel, The Decadence, stars such a place, and it sends a group of 20-somethings into an isolated, medieval manor for a week of sex and drugs and escape from the pandemic.
Unfortunately, the place has its own history, its own appetites, and no intention of letting the party remain uncomplicated.
Leon is the author of Parallel Hells, a deliciously strange collection of folklore too.
We’re entering Leon’s world through a different set of doors. There are 78 of them.
Leon Craig, welcome to Tarot DMs.
19/07/2026, 12:33 - Leon Craig:
Hello, Finbarre. That was a wonderful introduction to The Decadence. Thank you so much for having me on Tarot DMs. I am very excited. And my partner’s dog has just demanded to be let in. So Stephanie is in the room with us as well. And yes, I hope you’re having a lovely afternoon and hopefully an unhaunted one. Subject matter notwithstanding.
19/07/2026, 12:34 - Finbarre:
Could you possibly introduce Stephanie and even better take a sneaky picture?
I mean, you may need to speak to Stephanie’s agent, but see if they say yes.
19/07/2026, 12:35 - Leon Craig:
I would be more than happy to share a picture of Steph. I have been informed by her agent that the price of participation is belly rubs and possibly a steak. We’re going to keep negotiating about the steak, but here is Stephanie in all of her glory. She is eight years old and she enjoys standing on my head at 5am and watching silly television with me. But she’s otherwise a very good girl.
19/07/2026, 12:35 - Finbarre: Sadly I have none of my cats with me at the moment, they are all basking outside underneath the hammock. Sensible creatures that they are.
19/07/2026, 12:35 - Leon Craig:
19/07/2026, 12:36 - Leon Craig: Oh to be a cat basking in/ on/ under hammock on a summer afternoon
19/07/2026, 12:37 - Leon Craig: I also love cat pictures if you happen to have any to hand
19/07/2026, 12:37 - Finbarre:
19/07/2026, 12:38 - Leon Craig: Gorgeous cat and gorgeous sunshine! What’s the coin?
19/07/2026, 12:38 - Finbarre:
Here is one of my familiars. This is Díos, and her name, I believe in Hungarian, means walnut flavoured. Her sort of brother is Beigli, which means sweet roll. He is the little ginger guy that I often have appearing on Tarot DMs. And we also have the mysterious, the not oft-sighted Bexley, who is a, he’s getting to be a wizened tuxedo cat.
He is very wise and also very frit, so I don’t normally get to take pictures of him.
19/07/2026, 12:39 - Finbarre:
The coin there is from a renfair called Wyldwood, where you go dressed up in your geekery and nerdery.
I went as a Mephistopheles character, asking people if they would sign their soul away in return for cat key rings.
And I signed three scrolls. So it turns out the price of souls is quite cheap these days.
I also dressed as a pirate. And these are all part of the trinket trades.
So you would take a pouch full of oddments and nonsense and just swap it with strangers for whatever they had in their pouches.
And yeah, the results are good.
19/07/2026, 12:39 - Leon Craig:
“Frit” is such a good word and it’s always so satisfying when you get to deploy words like that that have such a specific use case. Also, it feels very appropriate for tarot DMs that your kind of feline presence is triune. I like that. It’s very witchy.
19/07/2026, 12:40 - Leon Craig:
Sounds jolly handy, actually, to have three spare souls for when you need to do a bit of bartering.
19/07/2026, 12:41 - Leon Craig:
I actually rather miss having opportunities for full-on fancy dress because I live in Berlin these days and you can wear more or less whatever you want without anyone batting an eyelid. I probably could just wander around the city dressed as Mephistopheles and nothing untoward would happen. But also, it is a very casual place as well. So perhaps I would be overdressed, whereas the UK and also Ireland, where the tradition stems from, have a delightful Halloween and something long-standing. And it’s not so common here because Germany is not Celtic in that way. Though they do have Walpurgisnacht. And I know someone who did actually go and dance in the woods as a witch on Walpurgisnacht has said that she’s pretty sure she traumatised some passers-by who stumbled across them. So maybe there are more opportunities that I haven’t yet seized.
19/07/2026, 12:45 - Finbarre:
If you’re ever in the UK, you’re welcome to borrow one of my four smoking jackets, a pair of horns and we can have a Soul Off. Most number of filled contacts wins.
19/07/2026, 12:45 - Finbarre: (Not an offer I was expecting to make when I woke up this morning but here we are)
19/07/2026, 12:47 - Leon Craig: This is so fabulous, and I’m rather envious of your extensive smoking jacket collection. Commence the Soul Off! Winner takes all
19/07/2026, 12:47 - Leon Craig: One never knows what the day will bring
19/07/2026, 12:47 - Leon Craig: For goodness’ sakes
19/07/2026, 12:48 - Finbarre:
Leon, I tell you what, I’ll do you a deal with slightly less permanent and infernal stakes.
I will trade you three cards for three stories, starting with the first. Are you up for that?
19/07/2026, 12:49 - Leon Craig:
Yes, I think that sounds like a good introductory offer. Three cards for three stories. I don’t know who is telling the stories, but I’m intrigued. So let’s roll with it.
19/07/2026, 12:50 - Finbarre:
19/07/2026, 12:50 - Finbarre: We’ll start with DEATH! Something bright and breezy
19/07/2026, 12:51 - Leon Craig: Cheerful and uncomplicated! I love this design, and that skeleton looks familiar - does it appear on a Buddhist scroll somewhere
19/07/2026, 12:51 - Leon Craig: This one is mine
19/07/2026, 12:54 - Finbarre:
I’ll curse you, Leon. I don’t know about the Buddhist scroll connection, but now you’ll have sent me down some wild Wikipedia rabbit holes to try and find out. The death that I have is from the Scapini Tarot from 1985, I believe. He’s quite a poppity-boppity skeleton. He looks like the kind of figure you’d almost see on the back of a pirate in the 17th or 18th century.
He’s having a wonderful time. Looks like he would do with plastic ducks. He’s fishing for heads there, whereas your Death is a chap who’s having a bad day at work.
19/07/2026, 12:55 - Finbarre:
As Death is widely considered to be part of change, transition, or metamorphosis, I’d love to know which part of your identity as a writer went through that process between Parallel Hells and your first novel.
19/07/2026, 12:58 - Leon Craig:
I’m going to end up going on the same wormhole later, actually, with, I think, I’m pretty sure it’s Tibetan Buddhist art. But anyway, I’m going to stop stalling and answer your question, because fair is fair.
To me, Parallel Hells and The Decadence almost feel of a piece, because I wrote Parallel Hells while I was wrestling with The Decadence and wasn’t ready or able to write it.
I actually don’t think I could have written The Decadence without writing the stories in Parallel Hells. I found that I had to really push myself as a writer to complete and edit the collection.
That meant that, by the time I came to The Decadence, I already had that kind of headwind of: I have finished a thing. I have completed a project. I think one of the things that gives you a lot more confidence is simply knowing that you have completed something.
Potential is both kind of ever-renewing, because the first time you start and complete any project is the first time you start and complete that particular project, but also, the further you get from being entirely a debut, the more that kind of untapped potential is foreclosed, because you have done something with it.
I suppose I had to let go of that newness, and I guess a kind of writerly virginity, in a way, to go ahead and say: yeah, this is my first novel.
I was wrestling with versions of The Decadence for so, so long that I actually felt this very odd sense of loss when I completed it, because it had been my constant companion.
I used to walk around that house in my mind when I couldn’t sleep, because, until very recently, I had really terrible insomnia. In some ways, I have been haunting the characters as much as anything else, because I sort of psychically occupied that space for so long.
I think it was actually good for me to leave it. I remember, after handing in my final edits, thinking: I have to stop doing this. I have to stop walking around in there, because it is now done and finished.
So, yeah, I suppose there was more death, change and finality than I might initially have thought, but also a kind of release that those two books, which were very much tied together in my mind, are finished and are out in…
19/07/2026, 13:03 - Leon Craig:
Wait, I just remembered that I have an addendum to that. Sorry.
Between writing Parallel Hells and writing this final version of The Decadence, I moved from London to Berlin. That was at the end of 2020, so it was during the pandemic.
I also think I probably could not have written The Decadence without moving country, or at least it would have been a very different book.
Having that distance from what had been my life in London allowed me to look more critically at some things about the UK, because I had a different perspective on them.
I was living in a different place and culture, with different linguistic concerns. I was also meeting many more people who were looking at the UK from the outside. I think that was quite helpful and necessary.
But again, every time you move country, there is a loss. You give things up as much as you take new things on. It is a pretty big change for anyone, and I think that probably also shows in the writing.
19/07/2026, 13:06 - Finbarre:
Thank you for carrying us across the threshold of that seismic shift in your life.
Looking at those cards that you’ve showed me, I don’t recognise the style.
Can you tell me the name of the deck and also what appeals to you about those cards?
19/07/2026, 13:09 - Leon Craig:
I’m really enjoying all the doorway and threshold imagery in this conversation.
It actually feels pleasingly architectural, which is exactly right for a haunted house novel.
I suppose the cards also have their own kind of corridors and passageways to one another and elements of symmetry.
Anyway, I’m going to stop waxing lyrical.
I was given these cards when I was about nine or ten by a family friend.
And I am afraid that the packet is long lost, but they’ve come with me everywhere I go.
And I enjoy them because they are actually quite small.
So they fit perfectly in the palm of my hand.
I mean, I do also have quite large hands.
They have a sort of late 90s, early 2000s old aesthetic.
I suspect that they may actually come from Treadwell’s bookshop in London because I used to spend a fair bit of time in that bookshop with said family friend.
She also introduced me to a very strange pen pal who kept writing about having problems with ghosts.
This family friend was very into esoteric things.
And the pen pal claimed that he’d done something at a megalithic site in Poland and then was being bothered by a Neolithic spirit.
Eventually, I actually stopped replying to him because his letters really freaked me out.
And I was also like, I’m a child.
Why are you writing to me about this?
So yeah, the cards for me are very associated with this like quite strange, but also rather magical time in my late childhood.
19/07/2026, 13:10 - Leon Craig:
19/07/2026, 13:14 - Finbarre: Does the High Priestess have a purple and green robe out of interest?
19/07/2026, 13:14 - Leon Craig: Looking for her now
19/07/2026, 13:15 - Leon Craig:
19/07/2026, 13:15 - Leon Craig: Just blue-green
19/07/2026, 13:16 - Leon Craig: I love those columns
19/07/2026, 13:17 - Finbarre: WOW. Also, I thought I knew the artist but this has pulled the rug from under my feet. I can see why you picked this marvellously moody deck, I love the use of shadow here. Perfect for the card.
19/07/2026, 13:17 - Finbarre: Your next card awaits, as it happens.
19/07/2026, 13:17 - Finbarre:
19/07/2026, 13:17 - Leon Craig: It’s always enjoyable to have a little mystery in one’s life
19/07/2026, 13:18 - Leon Craig: I’m also curious about her hat
19/07/2026, 13:18 - Leon Craig: Yes please - are you about to draw for me, or shall I?
19/07/2026, 13:19 - Finbarre:
That is a really good question. Normally I would shuffle these for you. I would ask you to shout out across from Berlin, “Aufhören” or “Stoppen” or however you pronounce German words for “stop”. But I think this time I should get you to shuffle the cards and I’ll say stop.
19/07/2026, 13:20 - Finbarre: Tell me when you have them in hand
19/07/2026, 13:20 - Leon Craig: That’s a fun twist
19/07/2026, 13:20 - Leon Craig: I have them, about to start now
19/07/2026, 13:21 - Finbarre:
So round and round they go. Not that one. Definitely not that one. That one could be interesting. Nope. Keep going. Keep going. That one. That one for sure. Stop right there.
19/07/2026, 13:21 - Finbarre: What did we get?
19/07/2026, 13:21 - Leon Craig:
19/07/2026, 13:22 - Leon Craig: A dashing figure
19/07/2026, 13:22 - Leon Craig: Quite androgynous
19/07/2026, 13:22 - Leon Craig: Alone and determined
19/07/2026, 13:23 - Leon Craig: Almost looks like a Fool gone rogue from the clothes
19/07/2026, 13:24 - Finbarre:
Hello, Knave of Swords, you cheeky little scamp.
As coincidence or fate would have it, this weekend I’ve been researching the very similar Page of Swords, which I’m sure the Knave of Swords is taken from, and the person who would have originally modelled the part and who the card is based on.
And I’m researching this. I don’t quite have the evidence yet. I’ve reason to believe it’s somebody called Christabel Marshall, who Pamela Coleman-Smith knew through the theatre.
Christabel Marshall went on to dress as a man, live as a man, and changed their name to Christopher St. John, or Christopher St. John. I’m looking into their life at the moment, so it’s good to see this figure turn up.
19/07/2026, 13:25 - Finbarre:
I’m thinking of the suit that this comes from, air, the idea of this figure being extraordinarily alert.
So, Leon, when it comes to your writing, what details, whether it be a particular type of marginalia, particular historical details, what things is it that fires your imagination when you’re writing?
19/07/2026, 13:30 - Leon Craig:
That is a pleasing, if slightly freaky, bit of synchronicity. Also, very, very cool about Christabel or Christopher, depending on what period in their life we’re thinking about. Gosh, the history of the Rider-Waite Tarot is really fascinating.
Funnily enough, when I first saw this card come up after he said stop, I immediately associated the figure with Jan, my main character in The Decadence, particularly in the latter half of the book.
She starts out as a bit reticent and is very worried about the holiday to the haunted house, but she’s also very purpose-driven. She’s a cook. She’s very organised. She’s looking after the group as they go there.
Then she starts to pick up on more and more details of things that are wrong in the house. In the latter half of the book, she starts to really take action and sound the alarm: we’re not alone here. Something’s really wrong. I’m really concerned.
Some of the friends listen to her and some of them do not. She almost verges on being quite aggressive because she’s started to realise that the haunting is a real concern.
In terms of what inspires me in writing, often it is the consequences of what happens if somebody names the unnameable. What is that actually like to live with? What happens when we think this through?
For instance, one of the major features of my book is that, in Hothouse, there are all these hidden passageways carved into the walls by generations of the Mortimer family.
I remember seeing these on various tours of stately homes and thinking: okay, I can imagine being a child here, playing hide-and-seek and hiding in here, but also think of all the other uses to which these are put.
I would inhabit that space with my imagination and try to play through all the different scenarios.
I think my inspiration usually comes from seeing the status quo and asking: what happens if I push it one step further? What is an outrageous thing that I can do with this?
Another example from the book is that Theo’s family library contains quite a major clue to what is wrong with the house.
I’ve always loved the idea that, within these accumulated book collections, there are often answers to questions such as: who are these people? What are they like? What do they really care about?
I suppose I’m also fixated on this because, as a former medievalist, we were always being exposed to news stories about academics finding very rare manuscripts just lying around in Scottish castles.
When a family has lived somewhere for hundreds, or even a thousand, years, they don’t necessarily know everything they have. You might come across a rare manuscript while pootling about in one of the less-visited upstairs rooms.
So, yeah, I also find book collections very exciting and inspiring.
19/07/2026, 13:35 - Leon Craig: Sadly I do not have a castle to find and lose manuscripts in but I do love tchotchkes and hoarding books
19/07/2026, 13:35 - Leon Craig:
19/07/2026, 13:37 - Finbarre: The thread of that interest, like a medieval tapestry winds all the way back to my previous guest, the cartoonist Clarice Tudor who wrote the perils and pitfalls of dating in medieval and modern times in “’Tis Thee, Not Me” and she gave you the final card of...
19/07/2026, 13:38 - Finbarre: (Pausing for a moment to admire that fabulous book collection and writing down a wishlist of the ones I’m going to look up and shove onto my protesting shelves)
19/07/2026, 13:38 - Finbarre:
19/07/2026, 13:38 - Leon Craig: Oh wow
19/07/2026, 13:39 - Leon Craig: Thank you, Clarice Tudor
19/07/2026, 13:40 - Leon Craig:
Funnily enough, I really vibe with this card because I first saw an amazing medieval mural of the Wheel of Fortune on a school trip to Canterbury. I remember being really taken with it as an image.
I think it also comes up quite a lot in Webster’s The White Devil, where the main character swears at Fortuna before he does his evil deeds.
There’s also an amazing bit at the end of my friend Victoria Gosling’s novel Bliss and Blunder, where she talks about that feeling at Midsommar when the Wheel of Fortune is about to turn again.
We’re not long past Midsommar. You definitely sometimes almost hear the machinery creaking.
But I would also love to hear your interpretation. It has been a real pleasure reading through all your different thoughts and your research on the tarot.
19/07/2026, 13:43 - Leon Craig: Apparently it’s Rochester Cathedral
19/07/2026, 13:46 - Finbarre:
I’m always looking for an excuse for a good church trip. Normally, I’d like to go somewhere like the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona.
Rochester Cathedral is one I’ve not been to and, from that picture alone, it looks well worth the visit.
I’m looking over this version of the Wheel of Fortune now. It’s not one that I’m particularly au fait with. This deck of cards arrived from eBay some weeks ago.
Looking at the Wheel of Fortune here, we obviously have the four different suits, represented in an unconventional way by some very spooky-looking children.
We have the swords, the pentacles and the wands, which are about to be doused in the water represented below.
We have this peculiar amalgamation of the Two of Swords with Justice, with the Hermit almost drowning at the bottom.
Because of the movement and the flurry, he isn’t able to stop, reflect and enjoy the isolation. He is almost drowning in the pandemonium of the wheel.
This is a wheel that turns rapidly. It’s like a spinning disc that you would find on an almost whirling blade.
I would say this is a card of chaos because there is so much going on here. But because of the ordered movement, and because of the order of the suits that we see, it is implacable.
19/07/2026, 13:47 - Finbarre:
The vibe that I get from this illustration isn’t of a spinning wheel that you would watch for entertainment.
It’s of a blade that would almost slice through the tree of life.
19/07/2026, 13:49 - Finbarre:
For your last question, Leon, thinking of charmed life versus calamity, what detour or disappointment has proved the most fortunate in your creative life?
19/07/2026, 13:54 - Leon Craig:
That is a fantastic question. Funnily enough, it relates very much to the Wheel.
At the moment, I’m doing a huge number of things to get ready for the forthcoming paperback of The Decadence. I’m trying to move in the direction of the Wheel without being completely crushed by it.
The Hermit at the bottom: I see him. I don’t think he’s drowning. He might not be having the best time, but he is definitely still swimming. His little foot is up. He’s continually keeping his head above the water.
The setback that relates to this emergence question is that, in early October last year, I received a review of The Decadence that I felt did not accurately portray the contents of the work in some cases.
While I was very disappointed about that for some time, I decided that I would not allow that review to be the thing that defined the story I spent years of my life writing.
I decided that I was going to be more energised and proactive in seeking out venues where I could talk about all the themes that went into the book, from love and terrible holidays to queer experience, Jewish experience, hauntedness and how you write a haunted house.
There are lots of craft topics that I’ve been addressing. Getting to contextualise the book in my own way has been enormously energising.
I’m really happy that I was pushed to do that because I now feel like I’ve really given it my all. I’m just more satisfied.
Reaching out to other people to collaborate with them has also been a real joy of the post-publication experience. Again, I don’t think I would have been as proactive in doing that otherwise.
So, you know, I’m swimming. Sometimes the Wheel is looming overhead, but I am swimming.
I was also particularly thrilled to be asked to do Tarot DMs because it is another way of looking at the book.
There is a scene around the middle of the book where two of the characters, one of whom has quite a lot to do with more offbeat areas of spirituality, are doing a tarot reading. Again, the cards they get are a warning sign.
This felt like a really wonderful full-circle movement because I had so much fun writing that scene. Getting to talk tarot with someone as knowledgeable as you feels exactly right for it.
19/07/2026, 13:55 - Leon Craig:
19/07/2026, 13:59 - Finbarre:
The image of that magnificent dog in the card has reminded me that Stephanie could be our guide here.
Normally I would ask you, Leon, to pick out a card to give to the next guest but I feel that Stephanie can help us out.
Could you, if you’re willing, show Stephanie the deck?
The first card that Stephanie sniffs will be the one that we pass on.
19/07/2026, 14:00 - Leon Craig: Surprised but pleased to be asked
19/07/2026, 14:01 - Leon Craig:
19/07/2026, 14:02 - Leon Craig:
I’m just giving her a little treat for her participation in Tarot DMs.
19/07/2026, 14:03 - Finbarre: I WANT THAT CAPE. My goodness. What a fabulously dynamic gift to pass onto the next participant. Stephanie has a nose for good choices, evidently.
19/07/2026, 14:03 - Leon Craig: I hope the next participant has a lot of fun with it!
19/07/2026, 14:04 - Leon Craig: swooshes cape dramatically
19/07/2026, 14:04 - Finbarre:
Dear listener, dear reader, we entered through 78 small doors, and somehow we’ve emerged from a whole house with our minds and our dignity mostly intact.
Leon, thank you for leading us through the haunted spaces you write about.
The Decadence is out now, of course, and Parallel Hells awaits anyone who prefers their folklore strange and sharp-toothed.
This has been Leon Craig with Stephanie on Tarot DMs with Finbarre.
Let’s close the door behind us before the house notices we’re leaving.
19/07/2026, 14:06 - Leon Craig:
Thank you so much, Finbarre. Yes, let’s close that door and bolt it, but then look nervously over our shoulders at Holt House because it has a way of following you out into the wider world.
And I would certainly know this has been a real pleasure. And I know that cards have a funny way of reoccurring in our lives after we pull them. So I am very curious to see where today’s pop up again. Thank you again so much.