Lit Witches: A Fantasy Book Podcast
'It's Beauty and the Beast, with vampires' - Author Lily Crozier on her romantasy novel Vow of Eternal Night
23 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the background of Lily Crozier and her debut novel?
This podcast is recorded and produced on Cammeraygal country. We acknowledge the traditional custodians and the first storytellers of this land and pay our respects to elders past and present.
Yes, absolutely. It's the I can fix him mentality, but I suppose in a lot more tangible, I can make him stop killing people for me.
They're the ultimate goal. Hello and a very warm welcome to Lit Witches, the podcast for fantasy readers, writers and all things in between. I'm your host Adelaide Jensen and this episode I'm joined by Lily Crozier. Lily is the debut author of Vow of Eternal Night, a gothic vampire romanticy. Welcome Lily. Great to be here.
Lily, what's a book you love that you could never recommend to your parents?
You really caught me off guard there. It's got to be Court of the Vampire Queen. It's one that I'm a little bit embarrassed to say that I love because I would say it's about a 400-page book and maybe 350 is just smart. So I would never tell my parents about it, but it was a good read. You know what? I read that book and I hard agree with you.
Would you please give us a summary of Vow of Eternal Night?
Yeah, so Vow of Eternal Night is a Beauty and the Beast retelling set in the late 1700s about Clara, who is the daughter of a provincial mayor, who is forcibly engaged to the vampire prince of her realm.
And so sensing that she's not quite on board with the whole forced engagement thing, the vampire prince, Raleigh, gives her an ultimatum, and that is to cure him of his vampirism before the year is out or become his bride for eternity. It's a must-have. Where did this book come from? So it was a conversation I had with my sister years ago now.
We were both really on the lookout for a vampire book that had a particular vibe, and that's the same vibe as, like, the 2004 Van Helsing movie, but also traditional like Dracula and Camilla. And we've always kept an eye out for these sorts of books, but we've never been able to find a vampire romance with these vibes. So vampire romances are always typically set in the modern day.
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Chapter 2: How is Vow of Eternal Night inspired by Beauty and the Beast?
Like are they holy creatures? Are they creatures of the devil? Because if they're resurrecting like they must be creatures like Jesus. And so there's lots of academic debate and I do like reference it in the book that some of what Clara goes like. So Clara does a lot of research in the book. And some of the people I've named are actually scholars of that era.
Oh, that's awesome.
And so then it ended with the empress at the time, Maria Theresa, she ended up sending someone to research the vampire happenings. And he spent 10 years going around the region and declared, no, vampires don't exist. And so she had the official declaration saying, yeah, vampires don't exist. Can you guys please stop desecrating graves? Stop hunting them. They don't exist.
Guys, stop talking about the vampires. They're not real. And so that's like vaguely alluded to in the book. There's a moment where like Raleigh explicitly talks about it, but it's all kind of just hinted at. And yeah, that was like a really interesting moment. set dressing, I suppose.
I love that everyone talks about the witch trials, but no one's talking about like the great hunt for vampires.
No. And I think because it was just mostly, I guess it was a peasant like folklore vibe. So it was like someone died on a farm and then a bunch of other people died and they went, oh, he's drinking their blood. But, yeah, it's a fascinating thing to stumble across.
And one of the ones that you use in the books is like Dampier's kind of that half vampire thing, which, you know, has been present a little bit in vampire literature from things like Vampire Academy. And I use the bad word vampire literature there on purpose. What made you bring that into the story?
I think it's a really good question. I actually don't remember the exact moment I decided on it. I think it was partly me exploring like the – there's a huge thread of a consent dynamic between Clara and Riley through the book.
And I knew I wanted to have a conversation between them where he made it really clear that he was never going to do anything to like hurt her and her body that she was unhappy with. And so there always needed to be a conversation about children. And I think the character like on Rake the Damp is like he was always going to be in it.
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Chapter 3: How does the setting of the novel enhance its themes?
And that was one of the ways, but she's never, she'll never be like the like all powerful assassin. Like she, she holds her own, but she's not, she's not, She's not Moira.
She's not Moira but she's still a badass as well. Yes. But I think she does that like you do that really well from the beginning that she asserts herself as like even though she is like girl in small town, you know, but she still has this sense of like self. Yes. And is powerful and she goes, hang on a minute, like why am I having to go off with this, you know, what's going on here?
Like she never lets that go which I think is great.
And that's part of why she's an outsider as well I think because in that world, And in that time period, women were expected to act a certain way. And so when she's just she just she does not care about those roles. She doesn't care what she's supposed to be. And she's aware that people don't like her. But it's because she clashes with them and their expectations for her.
That's why she is a bit of an outsider and ends up getting along so well. so well with Riley and like connecting with him on that level as well.
Maybe that's another thing that people find so relatable in fantasy is these. I think so. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's great. And I think part of that is that redeemable love interest, which we did touch on before, like the boundaries that you put in place because it's a kidnapping. Yes.
But how do you establish that of like making it super clear from the beginning that he's not going to step over those lines?
Yeah, and I think that there's a point early on where he almost does and catches himself doing it and like completely steps back.
And that's kind of – that was important for me to include because it's him – I don't want to go too far into spoiler territory, but there are kind of – there is this underlying theme, I suppose, of like the patterns of abuse and him falling into what he would expect – how he would expect someone to behave towards him.
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Chapter 4: What historical vampire myths influenced Vow of Eternal Night?
Like Dracula has like vibes of like getting lost in the labyrinth of the castle. The castle is like actively working against you. It's actively working against you. So he's put this hypnotic trigger on the castle so that it protects anyone who harbours ill will against him. And so it also responds to his emotions and also the person navigating the castle's emotions.
And it just ends up as this almost sentient being. And so that's pulled a little bit from Howl's Moving Castle, but also the relationship dynamic is Howl's Moving Castle inspired.
That's great. And we had this interesting thing come up when we were talking about all the great topics to talk about for your book. And one of them was the castle that was, you know, sentient and messing with people. And how maybe that relates a little bit, whether this was consciously or unconsciously, I'd love to know, to how much gaming you do in your life.
Because very much there's a bit of a maze kind of feel to it and like not to put spoilers into it, but you know, like that kind of comes into play at various times and it almost does feel a bit like a video game.
Interesting. Certainly not consciously, but I can see how that would, I can see how that would come across. No, it was actually in the very first instance, it was trying to capture the vibe of, in Stephen Moffat's Dracula, there's a scene where Jonathan Harker is just getting lost in perpetual labyrinths. And so I was trying to capture that feeling. And then I kind of realised that
castles aren't actually that big and they can't actually be that labyrinth-y. So there has to be some sort of magic at work and it kind of unfolded from there. But I can absolutely see the video game vibes. It's coming in. Yeah.
And then I guess the key one to talk about is Beauty and the Beast. And can you tell me a bit about the original Beauty and the Beast myth?
Yes. So, I mean, original is very contested. As you'll see, if you say anything online about the original Beauty and the Beast, everyone will try and The one I think of as the original Beauty and the Beast, because it was the first time it was published as Beauty and the Beast, was a French fairy tale published in the early 1700s. It's a novella length story.
And it actually, the parts we know of as Beauty and the Beast goes up to about halfway through the story. And then after that it's all Prince backstory and it goes into some very unhinged territory, to be frank. And so you mostly only see the first half. There's kind of little bits of sort of half alluded to in Valve Eternal Night from the rest of it, but it's mostly,
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Chapter 5: What role does consent play in the relationship dynamics of the story?
That's amazing. I'm so happy for you.
I'm happy. And I guess like your whole career, as far as I'm aware of it, has been books, right?
Yeah, pretty much. It wasn't always going to be books. I did my undergrad in Asia Pacific Studies. And so I had this kind of grand plan of working in embassies in Japan. And then in my last year of uni, I spent a year in Japan, moved back to Australia and got a job at QBD. And it was while working at QBD that I went, oh, I don't want to leave books. This is where I'm supposed to be.
Once you've worked in books, you can't go back.
Yeah, I think that's it. I think they get you.
They get you. They draw you right in. And the next part, a very exciting part of your publishing journey, is that your book has been picked up by Entangled in the US, which is fantastic. Congratulations. Yes, thank you. That's so exciting. It's really exciting. And how was that process for you? Like whirlwind, obviously.
Yeah, very much a whirlwind. So they've come into it quite late in the journey, I suppose, in terms of publishing. So we'd pretty well finished everything in the Australian side of things. And then we sold to Entangled. And so we've kind of gone in, we've done some extra edits to like shape it up for the American market.
And so anyone who's read an arc of Our Eternal Night will find that there are actually quite a few differences in the end. But it's been, I mean, it's so exciting in so many ways. And the way they work is, I suppose it's very similar to us, but it's because I'm so familiar with the way that Penguin works with authors. It's like, the very small differences are like very obvious to me.
And so it's kind of like fun and exciting, like seeing how they do things differently.
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Chapter 6: Why are monstrous male characters appealing to readers?
I'm not going to say where my mind went.
We've got a unicorn with trust issues. Okay. A giant talking serpent that's afraid of trees.
Okay.
And a sarcastic magical cat that may or may not help you depending on their mood.
And so what were my options? It was ride into battle.
Tame and basically like adopt into your life and run away from.
Okay. I mean, I wouldn't ride the cat into battle because that's I would crush it. So I'm going to adopt the cat. I'm going to ride the unicorn into battle and I'm going to run from the snake.
Yeah, but if you just like run into the trees, then it'll be scared.
Yes.
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