Tamsyn Muir Oxford Speaker Event
hello locked tomblr! i was at the tamsyn muir event in oxford - here are my notes
i've tried to group them thematically rather than chronologically, and to point out spoilers when i can. there are some parts that i missed/didn't hear correctly - i would appreciate it if others at the event correct me :D
Alecto is still being written! Muir was reluctant to say a year, so it will probably be more than that
Alecto wonβt be written in a Biblical style, and there will be multiple POVs. It will mostly be told from Harrowβs POV (I hope I heard that right)
Muir loves the idea of a TLT videogame
Muirβs not yet done with Floralinda
(putting this first because I know you want to know!)
Alecto is not yet finished
Muir was already slated to write another book before Alecto (Floralinda, I think)
Floralinda took longer than expected
Muir also suffered from health issues
Muir was about to say Alecto would come out in a year, but was reluctant. It will be soon. It will be before she dies.
Once Alecto gets to the editor, it will be fast-tracked. There will be few advance reader copies
And Alecto will not be 2 books, do not fret!
Publishing journey for the Locked Tomb Series
TL;DR β Muir got published because she had good contacts
George R. R. Martin was Tamsyn Muirβs mentor at Clarion
Muir took what she described as the βtraditional routeβ into publishing
She spent around 3 years publishing short stories
Then she got contacted by an agent for a novel
Muir acknowledges that routes into publishing are not like that now
Sometimes, fanfiction writers are approached β Muir doesnβt approve as that ruins the hobby, it adds a financial incentive and makes people do it for a career rather than for fun.
Muir wouldnβt do anything differently
We joked a bit about an agent who remarked on the βsisterly relationshipβ between characters in Muirβs manuscript
Advice for aspiring authors
Send stuff to an agent regardless of where you are
There was a bit of discussion on self-publishing β it doesnβt suit Muir personally, but itβs a good route for someone with the energy to be their own editor, advertiser, etc.
Q&A: something about being a successful writer (sorry I forgot)
Basically, getting successful requires having good connections
Videogame Influence on Locked Tomb Series
Muir is a big fan of the emergent narrative that videogames afford
Muir worked for Disney and wrote videogame scripts before GtN. Thereβs an insane House of Mouse script archived somewhere, which Muir wrote.
Novel writing is very different from videogame writing.
In a videogame, you have to fully flesh out the in-game universe and provide enough choices and points of interest for players
This taught Muir to be in-depth when writing her novel universesβ¦
β¦which particularly influenced her to write tonnes of AUs for the Locked Tomb series
There are two versions of Nona, for example: one which is whatβs really happening, and one which is Nonaβs POV
Q&A: did the videogame influence help Muir to write so confusingly in the Locked Tomb series?
Muir strongly cites Umineko as a key influence
This is a perfect example of a slow reveal, like in the Locked Tomb books
Muir doesnβt strictly plan her reveals (e.g., on the second reread, the reader finds this out), but she does love a slow reveal and works hard to make close reading rewarding for the reader
Tamsyn Muir would love for the Locked Tomb series to be adapted into a videogame!!
A funny story was told where Muir got approached by a gacha game companyβ¦ which didnβt come to anything
POV voice shifts in the Locked Tomb series
A key reason for the books being so different is that Muir didnβt want to write the same thing again β she gets βeasily boredβ
She focussed on the sentence links of each character β Gideonβs sentence links are very different from Harrowβs
Vocabulary also played a key role (again, compare Gideon and Harrow)
The second person narrative in HtN was planned for a while, the tricky thing was convincing publishers to accept it
Muir has an HtN draft somewhere, 50% written, thatβs in third person
POV in Alecto the Ninth: It will not be written in a biblical style
There will be different POVs
Q&A: Book inspiration for writing in the second person?
Muir notes that she didnβt write in perfect second person β it was actually first person
She will always turn to On a Winterβs Night a Traveller
And this is another videogame inspiration
She mentioned Homestuck then said donβt mention Homestuck soβ¦
The theme of memory in the Locked Tomb series
Memory as a result of love, and memories which are a source of pain
This is a key theme in HtN β note how memory affected Harrow throughout the book
Itβs also going to be a key theme in Alecto
Muir is using memory as horror
The horror of not being able to trust yourself and to know what is real
Sheβs drawing on her own experiences of being schizophrenic
Magic systems in the Locked Tomb series
Muir wasnβt actually a big fan of necromancy before writing TLT
She found it too passive in Dungeons & Dragons
She wanted an active magic system, something unintuitive that required hard work and study to learn
She also wanted a magic system to be gross!
TLT magic system was described as βtelekinesis with meatβ
Worldbuilding in the Locked Tomb series
Q&A: what was Muirβs worldbuilding starting point/seed?
Muir struggled to find this out. Thereβs no magic formula
Creative writing canβt be taught, only practiced
For GtN, she wanted a story about duty, and duty vs freedom
She wanted the story to be about two young women
Gideon was originally a cop/fireman
For Muir, worldbuilding is there to serve the plot. She does not worldbuild for worldbuildingβs sake
Everything in Muirβs books is there to serve the plot
Would the TLT protagonists make a good DnD party?
Although Camilla and Palamedes would be fine
There was some joking around about how Muir and her friends tried to play as Gideon and Harrow in DnD and it didnβt work out
Genre merging in the Locked Tomb series
Muir identified her blend of comedy and horror as unique to Kiwi fiction
She used Peter Jacksonβs early films before the Lord of the Rings as an example
For Muir, science fiction and fantasy are merged β it only really feels like science if you do hard sci-fi
Muir grew up with Star Wars, so it felt natural to set her fantasy world in space
The genre merging created publishing problems
Publishers want an easy comparison to other books to make it sell, but there was nothing like Gideon the Ninth
We joked a bit about TLT being compared with Dune
Q&A: now that TLT books are out, has Muir noticed any very similar books that GtN etc. are being compared to?
Muir sees the most similarities with people who know her and have had similar influences
An example is A. K. Markwood
Another book that seemed very similar is βDawn Hound by Necksy Strownackβ another New Zealand author (I did a quick google and I think this is the Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach?)
Comedy and Humour in the Locked Tomb series
Muirβs advice for aspiring writers is not to write humour to appeal to everyone, as youβll please no one. Stay true to yourself.
Muir writes plenty of humour into her manuscripts, which are often cut away during editing
Q&A: memes that didnβt make it: (note: I struggled to catch what was being said under all the laughter and I am also woefully uncultured β many of these are me transcribing as best as I can. Do correct me if Iβm wrong!)
Horse Plinko (this got referred to a lot!)
Harrow calling Ianthe the βGod of Thotβ in HtN
Muir mused about whether she will dial back the humour in later work, or whether she will go full throttle as she doesnβt care anymore
Writing process for short stories vs books
Muir sees her short story days as mostly behind her, although she is getting one published soon (as we are aware!)
With short stories, you only have time for one thing, whilst with a novella, you have time for plot and subplot
Short stories are great to practise your technical writing skills
Muir personally would not turn her short stories into novels β she wants to do something new
Q&A: The planning process for the Locked Tomb series
Muir had already planned the whole story before writing GtN
GtN and HtN are the question arcs
NtN and AtN are the answering arcs
Muir really enjoyed writing a New Zealand story
Lesbians as epic heroes in the Locked Tomb series
Muir doesnβt see this as jarring β why canβt epics have lesbians in them?
All epics want you do to is die gloriously
You can do anything after that
Q&A: Epic influences on the Locked Tomb series
The Iliad. It all comes back to Homer, and the Iliad.
There was some insightful discussion on how the Locked Tomb world codifies its past. In a sense, itβs stuck in time. Thereβs no golden period to hark back to.
The discussion then turned to the idea of the hero, and what a hero should be.
This is heavily explored in Gideon the Ninth, which centres around Harrow failing to prevent Gideon from being the hero
Muir would love to see a lesbian Hunger Games
Floralinda vs Gideon and Harrow
βFloralinda blowsβ β Tamsyn Muir
Floralinda is a supervillain story about a βbad girl who gets worseβ
Muir has written/is planning to write more on Floralinda
Q&A: Advice for writing characters who suck?
Just let them be shit, go hard first and donβt hold back
Take a sin, take a virtue
All of Muirβs characters, in some way, are a βfuck upβ
Catholic imagery in the Locked Tomb series and Catholicism in general
Q&A: was it difficult to link lesbians with Catholicism in the Locked Tomb series?
It felt good for Muir, a lesbian Catholic
Q&A: whoβs the hottest saint?
In the TLT universe: Valancy!
In the real world: Saint Barbara
This sparked some light-hearted banter
Q&A: Meaningful names in the Locked Tomb series
Muir loves writing meaningful names that hide things in plain sight
Muir does not browse βBehind the Nameβ lol
She has a βlaundry listβ of names she likes which sheβs accumulated throughout her life
Homer and ancient Greek influences played a key role
Changing names are highly important in the books, e.g., Gideon to Kiriona
Muir doesnβt mind if people sus out a characterβs plot after immediately reading their names
Lolita and the Locked Tomb series
Q&A: the audience member read Lolita at the same time as NtN. They were wondering if the similarities between the two were deliberate.
Muir loves Lolita and thinks that Nabokov is an expert in writing misery
Muir was open about being a child sexual abuse survivor. The influence of this is pervasive in her work.
There is a strong focus on relationships with authority people
Particularly in NtN, which contains sexual threats. This was hard for Muir to write.
Another example is the relationship between John and Alecto.
They are not a one on one comparison between Humbert and Lolita, but the theme of a man fashioning a girl into the perfect partner is there
Whether there is a sexual element in this will be answered in Alecto the Ninth
Muir explicitly does not want to include overt sexual violence in her work
Misogyny in the Locked Tomb series
Q&A: In the worldbuilding of the Locked Tomb series, how do you balance the misogyny that still exists (which is particularly obvious when John talks to/about Mercymorn) and the outward appearance/initial impression people get of the houses having gender equality (e.g., Abigail as head of the fifth, Jeannemary as a knight)?
This question had Muir wriggling in delight
The answer to this is addressed in Alecto
Why is John fucking up in the creation of his utopia?
Muir encourages readers to question what you, the reader, perceive as misogyny, versus what the characters perceive as misogyny.
Q&A: Cannibalism in the Locked Tomb series
Cannibalism is a metaphor for toxic love
Cannibalism of the soul is much more severe than cannibalism of the flesh
Itβs eating someoneβs life and personhood. A central theme in TLT is exploring love as something taken violently
Can you love someone without taking something from them? This is one of Muirβs favourite ideas
And, itβs not necessarily negative
Example of Camilla and Palamedes (spoiler for NtN!!)
They had to eat each other
Grappling with the question: Is love weightless?
Q&A: How much of their old selves are preserved in the Lyctors?
John didnβt simply wipe and rewrite them β if not, why are they trying to kill him?
John wanted his friends, so he tried to bring his friends back
Interesting implications for the two people he didnβt know well and only saw as cowrokers
BUT then the Lyctors are changed by their immortality and John
Q&A: What was it like to write immortality?
Muir acknowledges that she doesnβt do a perfect job, and that itβs actually impossible to actually write immortality β it will be too alien for the reader
But this links back to the theme of memory β how much can the Lyctors retain?
The Lyctors are heavily weighed down by time, Mercymorn in particular
Q&A: How long would Muir last in the TLT universe?
Muir doesnβt see herself as a necromancer or cavalier
Nor is she particularly aligned with any House
Q&A: Books that Muir is reading right now that she would recommend
(again, my poor listening skills and lack of culture limit me here!)
Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran
βPayback for Malory Towersβ
A.K. Markwoodβs new book, the Seventh Banisher
Muir has advance access. AK is her friend.
Q&A: Books and media that influenced Muir as a child
She was a highly prolific reader as a child!
Weird Kiwi fantasy stories
She read a lot of David Eddings as a teenager and got annoyed at the role of women in the books
Gormandust was a key inspiration for TLT (I googled this and βGormandustβ doesnβt exist, hopefully someone more in the know can help to translate my poor transcription!)
Grimmbolts was another influence (again, I probably didnβt hear this correctly)
Q&A: Warhammer inspiration
Muir didnβt get into Warhammer until after HtN. She loves it.
She has been approached to write for the Black Library but she had to decline as she had too much work
Q&A: Whatβs Muir going to do next?
Muir does not want to keep going back to TLT, she is happy to release it to the fanfiction writers once itβs done!
There are a couple more things in the TLT universe she may add
For example, thereβs a big Harrow AUβ¦
Muir wants to go back to videogames
But in her history, the projects she works on tend to fold
Muir is trying to write her own videogames and is slowly learning Python
A very good question about deconstruction was asked, but I missed it because I was too excited
Everyone was really lovely at the event! Cambridge folk, you have a lot to look forward to :))
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