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
Key takeaways
Alecto is still being written! Muir was reluctant to say a year, so it will probably be more than that
Alecto wonât be written in a Biblical style, and there will be multiple POVs. It will mostly be told from Harrowâs POV (I hope I heard that right)
Muir loves the idea of a TLT videogame
Muirâs not yet done with Floralinda
Q&A: Alecto when?
(putting this first because I know you want to know!)
Alecto is not yet finished
Reason why:
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 â Muir got published because she had good contacts
George R. R. Martin was Tamsyn Muirâs mentor at Clarion
Muir took what she described as the âtraditional routeâ 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 â Muir doesnât approve as that ruins the hobby, it adds a financial incentive and makes people do it for a career rather than for fun.
Muir wouldnât do anything differently
We joked a bit about an agent who remarked on the âsisterly relationshipâ between characters in Muirâs manuscript
Advice for aspiring authors
Send stuff to an agent regardless of where you are
Work in the industry
There was a bit of discussion on self-publishing â it doesnât suit Muir personally, but itâs 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. Thereâs 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 universesâŚ
âŚwhich particularly influenced her to write tonnes of AUs for the Locked Tomb series
There are two versions of Nona, for example: one which is whatâs really happening, and one which is Nonaâs 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 doesnât 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 company⌠which didnât come to anything
POV voice shifts in the Locked Tomb series
A key reason for the books being so different is that Muir didnât want to write the same thing again â she gets âeasily boredâ
She focussed on the sentence links of each character â Gideonâs sentence links are very different from Harrowâs
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, thatâs 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 didnât write in perfect second person â it was actually first person
She will always turn to On a Winterâs Night a Traveller
And this is another videogame inspiration
She mentioned Homestuck then said donât mention Homestuck soâŚ
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 â note how memory affected Harrow throughout the book
Itâs 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
Sheâs drawing on her own experiences of being schizophrenic
Magic systems in the Locked Tomb series
Muir wasnât 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 âtelekinesis with meatâ
Worldbuilding in the Locked Tomb series
Q&A: what was Muirâs worldbuilding starting point/seed?
Muir struggled to find this out. Thereâs no magic formula
Creative writing canât 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 worldbuildingâs sake
Everything in Muirâs books is there to serve the plot
Would the TLT protagonists make a good DnD party?
Absolutely not!
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 didnât 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 Jacksonâs early films before the Lord of the Rings as an example
For Muir, science fiction and fantasy are merged â 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?
Not really.
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 âDawn Hound by Necksy Strownackâ 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
Muirâs advice for aspiring writers is not to write humour to appeal to everyone, as youâll 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 didnât make it: (note: I struggled to catch what was being said under all the laughter and I am also woefully uncultured â many of these are me transcribing as best as I can. Do correct me if Iâm wrong!)
Mr Bonesâ Wild Ride
Emperish meme
Horse Plinko (this got referred to a lot!)
Harrow calling Ianthe the âGod of Thotâ in HtN
And many more
Muir mused about whether she will dial back the humour in later work, or whether she will go full throttle as she doesnât 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 â 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 doesnât see this as jarring â why canât 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, itâs stuck in time. Thereâs 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
Add lesbian to anything
Muir would love to see a lesbian Hunger Games
Floralinda vs Gideon and Harrow
âFloralinda blowsâ â Tamsyn Muir
Floralinda is a supervillain story about a âbad girl who gets worseâ
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 donât hold back
Take a sin, take a virtue
All of Muirâs characters, in some way, are a âfuck upâ
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
And also very fun!
Q&A: whoâs 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 âBehind the Nameâ lol
She has a âlaundry listâ of names she likes which sheâs accumulated throughout her life
Homer and ancient Greek influences played a key role
Also Biblical names
Changing names are highly important in the books, e.g., Gideon to Kiriona
Muir doesnât mind if people sus out a characterâs plot after immediately reading their names
Umineko inspiration
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
Link to Lolita
Itâs eating someoneâs 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 Muirâs favourite ideas
And, itâs 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?
HtN spoilers!!
John didnât simply wipe and rewrite them â 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 didnât 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 doesnât do a perfect job, and that itâs actually impossible to actually write immortality â it will be too alien for the reader
But this links back to the theme of memory â 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?
0.5 seconds
Muir doesnât 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
âPayback for Malory Towersâ
A.K. Markwoodâs 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!
Obviously Animorphs
Weird Kiwi fantasy stories
Margaret Margey
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 âGormandustâ doesnât exist, hopefully someone more in the know can help to translate my poor transcription!)
Grimmbolts was another influence (again, I probably didnât hear this correctly)
Q&A: Warhammer inspiration
Muir didnât 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: Whatâs 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 itâs done!
There are a couple more things in the TLT universe she may add
For example, thereâs a big Harrow AUâŚ
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 :))
all the âharrowâs three weed smoking girlfriendsâ jokes are ten times funnier when you remember that the three weed smoking girlfriends are godâs daughter godâs girlfriend and godâs only saint
every time I find a pill on the ground I take it home with me and draw a picture of it with crayons. here's the collection so far.
^ the very first pill I found & drew. couldn't identify it (markings rubbed off) but it looked very beautiful to me.
^pill no. 2: fluoxetine. my greatest find and finest crayon drawing. sorry to whoever lost their fluoxetine. I'll save it for a special occasion. I used a sharpie pen to clean up some lines on this one I think.
^ pill no. 3: ibuprofen. accidentally closed my laptop on this one, destroying it. and getting goop on my laptop. I found another one though. People drop a lot of painkillers. The first 2 used only colors from the classic 24 pack of crayons, but I had to break out extras from my childhood crayon collection for this one.
^pill no. 4: benadryl. this pill was crumbling inside its plastic when I found it, but it was intact enough to take home and draw! Hooray.
^pill no. 5: midol. this one was real scuffed up. I actually found an entire bottle of midol on another occasion, and someone's last 2 weeks of birth control yet another time, but those are the kind of things I leave behind because someone's likely to miss their entire bottle of midol or sealed birth control and come back for it.
^pill no. 6: unfinished advil/ibuprofen. I find a lot of painkillers, as mentioned, so I guess I got bored. I also have a drawing of acetaminophen that I am not posting because I don't like it.
^pill no. 7: severe tylenol. I didn't know such a thing existed until I found it on the ground. "severe tylenol" makes it sound like the tylenol is mean. this was among the more challenging ones and it's kinda rushed, but drawing the plastic was fun. just did this one an hour ago.
in case you're wondering, I do keep the pills when possible. I like to hold onto my reference material. they live in a separate box from my vintage ibuprofen collection.
May I present my contribution to @gwlemonyshenanigans 2024.
When I wrote my first GW fic in 20 years "Our Love Keeps The Things It Finds" for the 2021 Lemony Shenanigans, I knew I wanted to write 3 companion fics for it, exploring each of the 1x2x3 relationships on their own. I didn't expect to write one fic a year, but here we are in 2024, and I finally finished the series.
I started brainstorming this fic last year and I had written the note "This should be about Heero coming to terms with the fact that heâs turning 30 and literally never thought he would live past 15." And then a few days later, I saw the amazing author Hanif Abdurraqib posted this about the book he was working on at the same time (and has now published): âI tricked myself into thinking I was writing about basketball when I was writing through a realization that Iâd lived well beyond the age I thought I would, and that didnât scare me anymore (at least not most days)â
And that's it. That's the story.
Thank you to everyone who has read the rest of this series. I'm both happy and sad that it's now over (except maybe a Wufei fic that I half joked about...)
This series would be nothing without @bettertasting. This is for you; it's always been for you.
But the thing is Duoâs right: he doesnât mind a party. He maybe wouldnât even mind celebrating his own birthday. But it isnât about the birthday party, he suddenly realizes. If tomorrow really is his birthday, then Heero Yuyââchild soldier, key player in Operation Meteorââis about to turn thirty.
Heero opens his mouth to respond, and sees the confused look on Duoâs face, and the concerned look on Trowaâs, and instead turns on his heel and leaves the kitchen.
--
OR: Heero has an existential crisis during a mission and is confronted with the realization that he's lived longer than he thought he would.
Note: This is part of a series but can be read as 100% standalone.
âYou remember how the fuck-off great aunts always used to say, Suffer and learn?
If they were right Nonagesimus, how much more can we take until you and me achieve omniscience?â
â Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth
The Locked Tomb books are works of perfection. Rarely did any piece of media that I consumed given me so much entertainment and such deep feelings as this series. Tamsyn Muir is a writing genius.
mutual 1: the most amazing fanart you've ever seen [Alecto breaking free of her chains while a tidal wave crests over the ruins of a laboratory behind her in the "cheap moustache rides" shirt]
mutual 2: the corruptign power of loeve.... yuo cant love somethi ng eithout wanting to both preserve and consime it, neither of which respects the autonomy of self adn other, and also loving someone will inevitabley change yoj both.... and you cant take loved away. ..
mutual 3: the most amazing fanart you've ever seen [Camilla Hect with her swords out and a flaming halo as she screams and bullets fall from her skin. In the bullet holes you can see no gore, only what you realize is the image of Palamedes underlaid beneath her, perfectly calm.]
mutual 4: okay so I've been re-reading all the even-numbered chapters of HtN and cross-referencing them to the corresponding acts of the bible/iliad/homestuck, and I might be crazy but *insane new connection of foreshadowed hints that makes perfect sense in hindsight and a corresponding thesis of events that might happen following this pattern*
mutual 5: the most amazing fanart you've ever seen [kiriona looking incredibly depressed with the chussy out. John has one fatherly hand on her shoulder and the other is giving her a bloodied crown of infant bones]
mutual 6: why aren't we talking about naberius more. he literally fucked that old man. Goofy.
mutual 7: the most amazing fanart you've ever seen [Harrow giving herself a lobotomy with a broken piece of a fence and her shadow has aviator glasses and the hand with the lobotomy spikes is tied up with puppet strings being controlled by two hands one made of golden bone]
mutual 3: haha finally convinced my friend to read GtN guess which part they're at đđ *blurry video of a person wailing with horror and heartbreak*
mutual 3: Alecto news when I am dead inside.
mutual 8: the most amazing fanart you've ever seen [A reimagining of the creation of Adam, but with Christabel as Adam and Mercymorn as God. Mercymorn reaches for her but she is holding out her own bloodied heart. A glitch effect takes over the screen and now John is God and Christabel is holding a gun to her own head while nuclear war breaks out behind them.]
mutual 4: Poll - Finals for #1 girlbossest liar whorecannibal. Coronabeth Tridentarius vs Anime Sameface. Coronbeth is winning by a 30% margin
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
gummygunk
origamiaround
kaledo-art
vaporwave
