Heather Salter-Purves
Heather Salter-Purves is a British-born author who has transplanted her love of dark, lush storytelling to the sweltering heat of Western Australia. A devotee of gothic macabre writing and twisted fairy tales, she crafts stories that help readers navigate darkness and find connection in the shadows.
Heather's fascination with dark magical worlds began in childhood, listening to Discworld audiobooks with her father—a foundation that shaped her belief in stories as survival tools through difficult times. She draws inspiration from mythology reimagining and the kind of beautifully twisted narratives that bloom in unexpected places.
With The Daffodil Queen, the first book in her Twisted Garden Saga, Heather found her true voice as a sapphic fantasy and folklore author. This sapphic retelling of Hades and Persephone, woven through with Welsh mythology, marked the direction she intends to take her career—exploring queer reimagining of myth and legend where women love women amid gothic landscapes and magical darkness. Shadows Beyond the Gates continues this journey, cementing her commitment to sapphic fantasy rooted in folklore and the beautifully macabre.
When not wrangling words or her headstrong, defiant daughter, Heather can be found supported by her wife Lee-Anne, covered by her rescued staffy-cross Jersey, and supervised by Mahogany, the world's grumpiest cat. She writes to help people bloom in the darkness, creating spaces where readers can lose themselves in the kind of stories that make survival not just possible, but magical.
Shadows Beyond the Gates
Genre: Sapphic Cosmic Horror
Number of Pages: 220
Year Published: 2026
Edition Number: 1
ISBN (sc): 978-1-76194-991-3
ISBN (e): 978-1-76194-992-0
Their love transcended death. Now it must transcend humanity itself.
Some doorways should never be opened. Some love should never merge.
When grief becomes a weapon, love becomes a sacrifice.
Three months after her fiancée Lily dies in a car accident, Ruby Morrison is seeing things she can't explain. Shadows that move wrongly. A stray cat with too-intelligent eyes. And Savannah—beautiful, understanding Savannah—who seems to know what Ruby needs before she asks.
Savannah offers Ruby the one thing she can't refuse: a séance to contact Lily one last time. But the ritual doesn't bring Lily back. It opens Ruby, transforming her into a living breach between worlds, her body becoming a doorway for demons to pour through into Earth.
To seal it, Ruby must cross into the demon realm and find Lily's trapped spirit. Together they can become the barrier. But the cost is total dissolution—their identities erased, their consciousness split across dimensions, existing in eternal agony to hold back cosmic horror.
Their love transcended death. Now it must transcend humanity itself.
Some doorways should never be opened. Some love should never merge.
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A sapphic cosmic horror novella.
MEXICAN GOTHIC meets THE LUMINOUS DEAD meets THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF Addie LaRue—but Lovecraftian.
Perfect for readers who love: Body horror · Grief as a gateway · Shapeshifter villains · Impossible sacrifices · Australian Gothic · Love that destroys to save
Social Links
Instagram: @heather.salterpurves_author
Instagram.com/heather.salterpurves_author
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TikTok:
@hsalterpurves_author
tiktok.com/@hsalterpurves_author
Trigger Warning
Shadows Beyond the Gates contains content that may be distressing to some readers. Please take care of yourself as you read. These themes are handled with intention and love, but you know yourself best.
Full list available in the book and listed on the download page.