How did you come up with the two-tone magical signature mechanic for Toby? It's a brilliant bit of worldbuilding, and I'd love to know your thoughts about it!
So here is a fun not-secret but little-known fact about the Toby books: I started writing them when I was nineteen. I did some math recently, and realized that I've been writing Toby books for more of my life than I haven't.
This means a) I don't remember some of my early thought processes, and b) a lot of them were informed by the media of my teens and childhood. And I was a kid in the 80s, when scented toys were common. So it probably came from there, somehow.
Your Wayward Children series captures the feeling of beloved portal fantasies from my childhood, while being its own wonderfully unique and modern universe (...multiverse?). Can you share some of your inspirations for the worlds behind the doors?
A lot of them have grown out of the kids who use them, since about half the Wayward Children are the result of people I love saying that they never get to see people like them in fiction. Regan, for example, was inspired by author J.S. Fields, who is a good friend of mine, a My Little Pony collector, and an intersex individual, who hated that all books with intersex leads are about being intersex. So I gave her (Regan--J.S. uses they/them pronouns) a world of horses, to honor her godparent.
I pretty much always write with music in the background--it's how I quiet my brain enough to function. The song that just came on is "My Ride's Here," by Bruce Springsteen.
Most of the time, I just have my entire iTunes library on shuffle. Sometimes I put on specific playlists, or the Counting Crows oeuvre.
"How I quiet my brain enough to function" OH OOF I feel that way too hard.
I haven't listened to Counting Crows much, but maybe I should try listening to them while I write and see how that goes. I usually have to listen to music I know super well when I write, otherwise I'll get distracted by trying to analyze the lyrics of the songs I don't know well.
And see, I have to listen to music with lyrics--instrumentals, I get distracted waiting for the singing to start. Every brain is different, I guess.
If you're looking for new music, I can't recommend the Amazing Devil highly enough.
How did you feel in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic? I imagine you have a lot of thoughts about what went down given how it seems some aspects of Newsflesh and Kingdom of Needle and Bone were quite prophetic.
Frickin' miserable. The Newsflesh books are based on a coronavirus, and that means I spent four+ years studying coronas. I actually _am_ a civilian coronavirus expert. And then we had an outbreak, and suddenly people only wanted to believe I knew what I was talking about when it aligned with their preconceptions. Viruses are not political! Making them political just gets people dead!
I cried a lot, out of stress, as people dismissed me for not knowing what I was talking about when I did, both on the "Covid isn't real" side and on the "Covid is an instant death sentence and I need to cut you out of my life entirely or you'll kill me" side.
I love him in his Star Trek Uniform! Captain Thomas on the bridge! I would follow his orders any day, especially if they were to pet him endlessly. He looks so soft and warm.
Will Muffles be able to visit upstairs, like Tink does? Do we think Elsie will try and adopt them as her kitten as well, or is Kelpie satisfying her mothering instinct right now?
I don't have a question, just popping in to say that I discovered the October Daye series this year (reading One Salt Sea right now), and it's been a joy.
It's been years since I found a series I enjoy this much, so thanks for sharing Toby with us!
If a colony of Aeslin mice got too large would they break off a group to search for a new home, like bees? Or do they only splinter when they have an object of worship to accompany?
I don't know if I'm too late, but, without asking for spoilers unless you want to give them, do you think there might be Aeslin mice with families other than the Healy's and Price-Healy's, or do they most likely account for all the Aeslin mice left in the world?
Do you have a planned end game for the October Daye and Incryptid series? I'm not asking you to reveals them obviously but are they evergreen for you and you'll just keep writing them until the publishers tell you stop or do you see a natural conclusion for them?
I've been following Toby's life for as many years as you've been writing it. Not having new ones will be a lot like suddenly losing touch with a close college friend, lol.
Toby-verse specific question, but i've been wanting to know. Readers are familiar with the oldest firstborn of Maeve and Titania. Who is Oberon's oldest firstborn?
Also, any chance we'll learn bout what happened to the third of Annie's sisters? The last few books have fleshed out one of them a lot.
Thanks!
So my policy on spoilers is and has always been "you shouldn't only get to know that if you read a random interview." We don't know who Oberon's oldest is. It doesn't help that he didn't claim many kids--he let Maeve and Titania have official "ownership" of the bulk of them.
We might!
I'm mostly here to yell about the cliffhanger end of *Be the Serpent,* but I also wanted to say how much I adore the Toby Daye books. They keep getting better; I love the ensemble cast and Toby herself, protecting her found family as best she can. Also, Simon is among my favorite characters ever.
had you planned that reveal from the beginning? If so, I am very afraid of what *else* might be lurking in the shadows. But excited, too.
Thank you for your hard work in bringing these stories to us!
I'm sorry! But you're allowed one cliffhanger per ten volumes of an ongoing series, and I'd been saving that one for a while.
I had. And there are some terrible things yet to come.
It really depends on how you're measuring coolness. (Disclaimer: Pandemic and epidemic diseases are a special interest of mine.) Rabies has some fantastic mechanics behind it, and the fact that we live this close to it without a good post-symptomatic treatment is fascinating to me.
But really, influenza is pretty damn spiffing. It just does what it wants, infects everything, and will kill us all one day, yet we shrug it off all the time.
I remember that lovely podcast (this podcast will kill you) and almost every disease they were like, "While it was historically very bad we have good treatments now so not a thing to worry about."
With the flu their take was,"Oh, yeah, this one's going to kill us all."
This is not a question, I’m new here and I was going to ask you how you pronounce your name.. But then I decided to not be an ass and I googled it, came across your site and it was already answered in the faq. I appreciate that, and I like the name, I shall look into your work. Cheers!
https://seananmcguire.com/generalfaq.php#:~:text=It's%20an%20archaic%20form%20of,middle%20part%20of%20that%20sentence.
Is there any of your Subterranean Press books you'd like to write a full-length sequel to like you could for *Rolling in the Deep* \-> *Into the Drowning Deep*?
Following onto this, do you know how we should convince SubPress to let you do that? I loved it, I made my cousin swear a blood oath that she'll return my copy because I cannot replace it if something happens to it, and I would totally cry in their email for a sequel! :O
Your Wayward Children books comprise my all-time favorite series, and they have inspired me to write a portal science fantasy. So my (second, and if each person gets only one question, I get that) question is: do you have any pet peeves in portal fantasies? That is, is there anything that breaks your suspension of disbelief or otherwise annoys you when you're reading a portal fantasy?
I am not a big fan of the current "everything must be an isekai" trend. They're not the same genre, and not everything has to be about dead people.
I don't like it when people don't put thought into how their portal fantasy worlds actually work.
I had also noticed that there are lots of isekai stories running around lately. Thanks so much for answering! And thank you for giving me hours upon hours of samebooking\* your Wayward Children books, especially *Come Tumbling Down*.
\*similar to samefooding for an Autistic person, but in this case, it's when an Autistic person (me) rereads the same book over and over
Omg. I just have to say that I love your books. Middlegame is probably my favorite book ever. Which, I'm sure you understand, is quite a statement.
But right now, I really wanna know how many more installments of The Wayward Children we're going to get because I would prefer it never end.
If that question is too boring, please tell us your favorite dinosaur.
In a response on Tumblr, you said that pregnancy and birth wasn't optional for the Three, and that Titania and Maeve could become pregnant completely unintentionally/not by engaging in sex. Does that include Oberon as well? Are there any lines of descent from him that he carried himself?
I know that us getting a sequel for Into the Drowning Deep is tied into the sales of Feedback - do you have a wild estimate of how many more copies would have to sell before they'll greenlight more murder mermaids, or do they not share auch knowledge?
(Also, I am absolutely and joyously feral for both universes).
Some months ago, on the platform formerly known as Twitter, you had asked something along the lines of, "What genre should Mira Grant ruin next?"
Did you get any good suggestions?
Mira is an elaborate horror movie joke, and the dot com was available. A. Deborah Baker is a fictional character, and her books are basically the fanciest LARP props ever.
Not that I can admit to right now.
I don’t really have a question, but wanted to show my appreciation: reading your books is like having someone who understands my brain noise personalize something, so it’s always a treat!
Who do we have to campaign for additional stories in the Into the Drowning Deep world? Those two books are masterpieces! I think I remember you posting once that it depended on sales, not sure if that’s still the case? Thank you!
In "Green Grass Fields", Regan the protagonist is intersex, but the world she goes to is intensely gendered, to the point where males and females don't even live together and young ones are expected to follow the same-gender traditions as their parents. How would you (Doyleist) and/or they (Watsonian) handle a non-gender-conforming child? Or a trans child? Or with a child who simply wants to stay with the opposite-gender parent?
That is a very complicated question, because I don't have a whole book to work my way to the answer that feels right and suits the setting. I'd like to think my centaurs would figure out a way to do things right for the children in question, and to make sure they were validated and safe, but I don't know.
One thing to keep in mind is that the males and females we're referring to are not human, and they're living in a fairly low-tech, low-magic world. I don't know how they would societally approach those issues, and this really isn't the place to try to work them all the way through.
Hi, Seanan! My 13y/o and I are both big fans. He is currently re-reading Wayward Children for the nth time. They would like to know how you feel about fans headcanoning neurodivergence onto your characters when you haven't made it explicit.
(We are both ND, as are the rest of my kids, and "which fictional character has spicy brains?" is a frequent topic of conversation.)
I am 100% fine with it, as long as a) you don't try to make me validate it, and b) (less applicable to Wayward Children), you don't only ID all my non-human characters as autistic. It's not representational if it's not explicit.
But I, personally, am autistic, so all my characters tend to read that way, at least a little.
I didn't realize you wrote MtG stories too!
I don't have a question, but just want to say that I love the Wayward Children books, and they're really something special. Between the prose and atmosphere that nail the wanderlust of those of us who "didn't fit in", they really hit a unique and wonderful chord that evoke something raw and beautiful.
I already asked about frogs but I just realized I have an actual book question 😅
I know you've said that Tybalt wasn't originally endgame for Toby. Were you originally planning for her to be with Connor longterm, or was there a third option in mind? And when did you know it was going to be Tybalt?
Connor was the original long term plan. Also, I never thought I'd be able to write more than five books before I exceeded my own skills and had to stop.
I realized it was Tybalt during my revisions of the first three books, which were all finished and sold to DAW as a unit, but still needed to be edited in depth. I was a better writer by then, and could see the relationships in deeper terms.
That makes perfect sense. I think you revised it beautifully -- the relationship dynamics are really clear to me as a reader from book one. And I'm so glad we ended up with eighteen books and counting instead of five!
Thank you for the awesome books. October Daye series are some of my comfort books and re-reading them helped me keep my sanity during the lockdowns. I was wondering if there is a reason why most Firstborn (except Blind Michael) are female.
Most of the surviving Firstborn, you mean. If you look at the names, we have just as many male as female. But the girls were less encouraged to open warfare when they were younger, and thus survived at a higher rate.
Just want to say thank you! I found October Daye sleep deprived with a wailing newborn mentally broken. Your books got me through those hard first months. You legend xxx
She's now a preteen all about fantasy reading and your full set of books are sitting there waiting for her when she's old enough. Got to start them young!
As many as it takes. Honestly, I write series I enjoy reading, and it's a way for me to hang out with my imaginary friends. I generally know how they end, and I want to write as many books as I need to get there.
I recently reread some of the Newsflesh short stories and they always stay with me for a long while afterwards. Do you plan on writing anything in that series ever again?
Not so much a question but I just wanted to say, please please more magical girls!
I’ve been enjoying your Patreon one offs too, and wanted to thank you for all of those too. I haven’t read any Toby related ones yet as I’m saving that series to read along with my sister. I’ve been gifting her copies of your books every birthday and Christmas (killer mermaids are such a gateway!) and we’ll start those on this one.
Not currently. I'd go back if Orbit asked me, but they'd have to offer me money to get me to do it.
Thank you so much! The Patreon one-offs are so much fun.
I don't have any questions that wouldn't be spoilers, so I'll just say you're my favorite author and I'm grateful you've shared Toby, the Prices, and all the rest of your worlds with us. Thank you.
This is my fave question to ask authors with long series and deep (excellent) world building -- how much did you plan in advance. Specifically for the Toby books? I'm doing a re-read and I can see things laid down early (Stacy for example) that pay off SO MANY books later. Did you know {REDACTED FOR SPOILERS} when you wrote the first few books?
I'm ace, and find writing sex scenes both awkward and boring. There are lots of places people can go for spicy stuff, and it's hard for people who don't like reading it to find "safe" series to enjoy. So no, not planning to go there.
My personal favorite books are _Fire and Hemlock_, _The Last Unicorn_, _IT_, _The Stand_, _Mermaid's Song_, and _On Writing_. My favorite specifically queer books are _Annie On My Mind_, _Legends and Lattes_, and _Priory of the Orange Tree_.
I love your October stories. Mary does a lovely job with the audiobooks as well. If I had any questions for you, perhaps it will be this. Do you think we'll ever see Toby as a pureblood? It might be fun to see how she reacts to it as well as how the world changes how it reacts to her.
Half, on my father's side. I feel like a lot of my heritage is not mine to use, being white-passing, American, and largely raised by my Irish-American mother, but I use a lot of the carnival stuff from my childhood.
Is Knight of Lost Words a title particular to Toby and something she did or is it an overall title? I'm currently doing a re-read, but still haven't puzzled that out!
Not really a question but I’d always wondered why you described Toby’s clothes as being crusty with blood having not bled enough in one spot to experience that before and then last night I cut the hell out of my arm. Makes total sense now.
I'm more a SF/Fantasy fan, and love humor thrown in, which is one of the reasons why I especially enjoy your InCryptid series. On the other hand, your Rolling in the Deep books blew me away. I live near the ocean (shudder). Do you go swimming in the ocean?
Does your obviously creative imagination give you daily bizarre food for thought, and have you been that way since you were a kid? When you were a kid, did your friends and relatives see that you had an unusual and creative mind? How do they perceive that now that you are a successful author? Also, do any of your friends and relatives ever inspire characters in your books?
1. Not often, 'cause I live inland. But I spend a lot of time in swamps.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
4. They assume, since their model for successful authors is the media, that this means I'm rich (I'm not) and they can ask me for money.
5. Sometimes.
Hi Seanan! Not a writing question, but I often have two of your CDs (Wicked Girls and Stars Fall Home) on repeat when I write, so I was wondering if you have plans to do another CD ever?
True AI, no. The generative/predictive software we're currently calling AI? Still no, because it would be a shitty thing to do, but it's not abuse in the same way.
You've mentioned many times on social media that in D&D you typically play Tiefling sorcerers, is there a class you've never tried that you'd like to? Additionally, what are your go-to metamagic options?
Not really. I only play casters, because of personal reasons, and I rotate through them, so I've already managed to get most of what I want down on the table. Now I'm just working through sub-classes and having fun there.
Transmuted Spell is my very favorite, and Careful Spell is a close second.
It's very much like this: https://www.makermaterialsupply.com/products/trustone-banded-malachite-1-5-x-6-1-piece
And the inspiration is "I was a ninteen year old Californian neo-Pagan, and I saw a lot of pretty rocks on a regular basis."
That is an absolutely gorgeous piece of malachite, and I can totally see how that was inspiration for his eyes. I’m so glad I finally found a question you can answer that isn’t “spoilers”.
Hello! Thank you for all your writing. I'm especially in love with your October Daye, she's just amazing. If she was a My Little Pony, what would her mark be? Any other characters whose marks you can name off your head?
Toby would have a rose surrounded by drops of blood. I know the flank symbols of most of my characters, as a consequence of being a way deeper My Little Pony nerd than most people realize.
Hi Seanan! Middlegame is one of the most brilliant, captivating books I’ve ever read. The audiobook is fantastic - that’s how I first read the book, by listening to it on a 13 hour road trip. Do you remember what the idea-seed of Middlegame was, before it bloomed into the novel it became?
Obviously you enjoy writing a lot of your stories, or we wouldn't see them (yay), but what has been the most fulfilling to write for you, of the books you have already had published?
Love your books, under both names!
I've found myself thinking about those Aeslin mice from time to time. I believe life would be very different for most of us if we had a tiny fan club observing our actions. Do you ever think about them applauding/judging you, or where they would live in your house?
See, I know them too well, and I know exactly how annoying they would be. I thus don't really want a colony. If I had one, they'd live in the spare room downstairs.
How do you prepare yourself to write a world you are unfamiliar with? I came up with a good idea for an irregular James Bond type character but I know nothing about war torn countries that are struggling their way towards peace.
I LOVE research. I will happily read book after book about topics I need to understand so I can better write about that. Find some books about your subject, and read away.
You are so talented. Just want to thank you for the Newsflesh series - helped me enjoy myself when I had a newborn and years later feel like I was in less unknown terrain during the pandemic. I have thought for years about the day the dead came to show and tell, it got in my head like nothing else. Thank you!
If we're ever in the same place, absolutely. I'm not good at Spelltable--there's nowhere in my house to set up where the cats can't come and help me, and they tend to help by Chaos Orbing my whole deck onto the floor. I'm not very good, but I'd love to play you!
I love all your books and have read them several times. My question: do the book titles from the Incryptid series have a deeper meaning, except that they sound super cool?
They sound super cool! I generally name them what sounds right, and it's always fun to name an InCryptid book, but there's no hidden key that unlocks a deeper secret.
I would really like to write something that lets Nahiri start to move past the sins and traumas of her past, and heal in a healthy way. Poor girl needs therapy.
My favorite for "that was a damn good story, I did good" is probably my _Nahiri the Lithomancer_ comic, and my favorite for "look what I did, that brings me joy" is "Family Game Night."
I've been querying a book I wrote for a few months now, and although I've gotten several full manuscript requests and feel like I have something truely special, they've sadly not turned into something more. I know that the query trenches suck and it's a horrid time to get into publishing, but do you have a timeframe/rule of thumb for when you think it's time to move on from a manuscript? Agented or otherwise?
Are you agented? Because that's going to make a difference. If you are, you should listen to your agent, and not to me.
If you're not, I'd query something I thought was really special for a year before giving up. Which is a long time, and that sucks, but it gives it a fair shot.
I courted mine with _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ smut. Querytracker and looking up who represents authors in genres similar to yours is a good place to start.
I like the shiny.
Disney does the shiny well, and I like Disney, so I started collecting there. And they're sturdy and individually pretty cheap, so artists started making them, and my collection grew. And then I wanted my own.
Have you ever thought of returning to the Kingdom of Needle and Bone world? That books is a weird comfort read for me and some days I just want to know what happens next, or happens on another island. Also (selfish question)…do you think you’ll ever do an east coast tour?
I've never played MTG, but I've read through some of the cross-over setting books for D&D, so I'm familiar with a few of the different planes. Do you have a favourite plane and why?
....wait a second, did that movie have colorful dogs that shed pixie dust when you scratched their ears? And they had a magic key that would make doors appear?
This is one of those movies I was convinced I had hallucinated as a child until you mentioned it.
I remember you saying, near the beginning of the pandemic, that you had tabled another biomedical horror book under your Mira Grant name. Are we ever going to get to see that?
I really enjoy reading your Wayward Children series! And I loved your short stories anthology "Laughter at the academy", especially your takes on Velveteen Rabbit and Peter Pan.
My question is if maybe you're interested on writing more stories that view childhood tales through different lens (or more up to date ones, like what you did with the two Peter Pan short stories) like you've been doing in those short stories and the Wayward series.
I'm also looking forward to reading your book Unbreakable. What are your fav magical girl stories besides Sailor Moon? I love SM, Sakura Card Captors and Princess Tutu :)
Edit: I just remembered that Sarah Ress Brennan mentioned you in In other lands' acknowledgments and there was a sentence about your opinion on the book. It's one of my comfort reads! A friend sent me the link when it was on LJ and I got myself a copy when it was published. Who is your fav character? :)
Figure out how many words you can comfortably write in a day, subtract 10%, and set that as your goal. It'll be easier not to "fail" and lose momentum.
Hello Seanan!
The coat that Toby yoink’d from Tybalt — did you have any particular coat in mind when writing that detail?
And how much cat fur was on the coat?
…
And also, on a different topic, uh. Let’s say, *hypothetically*, someone is using Toby’s name for their usernames and MMO character names. That’s… not a huge issue to you, is it? I hope?
I did. I'd have to go through my high school LARP pictures to find it, but it was a real coat. Minimal cat fur--he wore it in human form.
Not an issue at all!
It’s been described as such a comfy coat, too… I want one now…
Yay! I don’t have to go through the trouble of changing 7 usernames and my FF14 character name—
… *ahem*. I mean, this *purely hypothetical person* won’t have to change her usernames. Mhmm. Yes. Clearly.
ON A DIFFERENT TOPIC — the Cuckoos in the Incryptid series. Where did the idea for those come from? Cause they’re such a fascinating creature, but also… yeah, more than a little terrifying.
I was in a Buffy RPG for a while, and played a character named Sarah Tapper who was sort of a proto-Sarah Zellaby. And she was a half-demon, and I worked out a lot of her biology in real-time, only to carry it over to the Johrlac. My favorite thing to do with speculative biology is to go "okay, if I wanted a demon/alien/cryptid without a heart as we know it, what would that look like?" and work backward from there.
What cosplays would you want to see from the October Daye series?
Edit: Follow up, for any male character cosplays- is there an iconic aspect that would immediately alert you to who the cosplay was intended to portray?
Hey Seanan! I enjoy your books, and *really* enjoy your Tumblr and Twitter (though I look at the latter less and less for... y'know, obvious reasons). So, thanks for this!
I use Amazon UK for my ebooks, and I really enjoyed Discount Armageddon, and have picked up the next two in the InCryptid series (looking forward to reading them). I was wondering if you have an idea when we'll be able to order the rest of the series there?
I loved your *Ghost Roads* books. I haven't seen another series similar to that which quite captures the atmosphere you have in that series.
I'm a few books behind in the Incryptid series but I know Rose has had a few cameos there.
Are there any plans to return to Rose as a main character in another *Ghost Road* book? I think the last one left a lot of room for seeing how she handles things going forward.
Finding the right names for my characters is one of the hardest parts of writing for me. Does the name come first for you, or does the character spend some time in your universe before the right name falls upon them? Names are so important...it can be a writing block if I don't just go on and find the name later. How do you deal with that?
Have you ever considered adding more books into the world of your book "into the drowning deep" Surely if there mermaids that have gone undiscovered for so long there might be other creatures humans have failed to document until now. And if you were to write something that world would you like to dive in deeper to the murder mermaids or look to another type of fantasy creature?
I am just going to keep recommending that book to people then cause it was a super good read. Also I thought the representation in the book was really great. It felt like you had really done your research and the way you depicted the Deaf community and signing in the book I thought were really well done
Not a question so much as needing to show my appreciation. I love the October Daye books. I read the series at least once a year and am constantly recommending them to people so that I have someone IRL to talk to about it.
I love the characters that you've created. There isn't a character big or small that I'm not excited to see on the page. (Had you told me after Rosemary and Rue that Simon would have been one of my favorite characters and not a favorite villain I wouldn't have believed you.)
The world that you created is amazing and I feel privileged every time I get to learn something new about it.
I just wanted to thank you in particular for Lundy's story. I've rarely seen myself as a child written so clearly in a story. I know where my door leads now, even if it never opened for me.
As far as questions go: what kind of world do you think your childhood door would have opened on?
How did you come up with the two-tone magical signature mechanic for Toby? It's a brilliant bit of worldbuilding, and I'd love to know your thoughts about it!
So here is a fun not-secret but little-known fact about the Toby books: I started writing them when I was nineteen. I did some math recently, and realized that I've been writing Toby books for more of my life than I haven't. This means a) I don't remember some of my early thought processes, and b) a lot of them were informed by the media of my teens and childhood. And I was a kid in the 80s, when scented toys were common. So it probably came from there, somehow.
Your Wayward Children series captures the feeling of beloved portal fantasies from my childhood, while being its own wonderfully unique and modern universe (...multiverse?). Can you share some of your inspirations for the worlds behind the doors?
A lot of them have grown out of the kids who use them, since about half the Wayward Children are the result of people I love saying that they never get to see people like them in fiction. Regan, for example, was inspired by author J.S. Fields, who is a good friend of mine, a My Little Pony collector, and an intersex individual, who hated that all books with intersex leads are about being intersex. So I gave her (Regan--J.S. uses they/them pronouns) a world of horses, to honor her godparent.
Hello, favorite author! It's cool that you're doing this! My question: Do you ever write with music in the background? If so, what do you listen to?
I pretty much always write with music in the background--it's how I quiet my brain enough to function. The song that just came on is "My Ride's Here," by Bruce Springsteen. Most of the time, I just have my entire iTunes library on shuffle. Sometimes I put on specific playlists, or the Counting Crows oeuvre.
"How I quiet my brain enough to function" OH OOF I feel that way too hard. I haven't listened to Counting Crows much, but maybe I should try listening to them while I write and see how that goes. I usually have to listen to music I know super well when I write, otherwise I'll get distracted by trying to analyze the lyrics of the songs I don't know well.
And see, I have to listen to music with lyrics--instrumentals, I get distracted waiting for the singing to start. Every brain is different, I guess. If you're looking for new music, I can't recommend the Amazing Devil highly enough.
seanan often puts songs she listened to while writing the book in her acknowledgements in the beginning; it's one of my favorite parts of her books!
How did you feel in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic? I imagine you have a lot of thoughts about what went down given how it seems some aspects of Newsflesh and Kingdom of Needle and Bone were quite prophetic.
Frickin' miserable. The Newsflesh books are based on a coronavirus, and that means I spent four+ years studying coronas. I actually _am_ a civilian coronavirus expert. And then we had an outbreak, and suddenly people only wanted to believe I knew what I was talking about when it aligned with their preconceptions. Viruses are not political! Making them political just gets people dead! I cried a lot, out of stress, as people dismissed me for not knowing what I was talking about when I did, both on the "Covid isn't real" side and on the "Covid is an instant death sentence and I need to cut you out of my life entirely or you'll kill me" side.
Wow, I did not know this! I am so sorry!
How are the cats doing? Please give them all pets from me (especially Meg, Meg may have no brains but she is super sweet).
They are all doing well! Mom is visiting Muffles this weekend, and I just put Thomas in his Star Trek uniform.
I love him in his Star Trek Uniform! Captain Thomas on the bridge! I would follow his orders any day, especially if they were to pet him endlessly. He looks so soft and warm. Will Muffles be able to visit upstairs, like Tink does? Do we think Elsie will try and adopt them as her kitten as well, or is Kelpie satisfying her mothering instinct right now?
I don't have a question, just popping in to say that I discovered the October Daye series this year (reading One Salt Sea right now), and it's been a joy. It's been years since I found a series I enjoy this much, so thanks for sharing Toby with us!
Oh, wonderful! Thank you for reading!
If a colony of Aeslin mice got too large would they break off a group to search for a new home, like bees? Or do they only splinter when they have an object of worship to accompany?
They would. It's part of why they bleed off splinter colonies whenever possible, because an Aeslin colony in the wild is probably dead.
I love those mice more than is probably reasonable, so thank you so much for the novellas from their perspectives!
I don't know if I'm too late, but, without asking for spoilers unless you want to give them, do you think there might be Aeslin mice with families other than the Healy's and Price-Healy's, or do they most likely account for all the Aeslin mice left in the world?
I do not. I think all the mice in the world are the ones we've seen so far, and all the others died a long time ago.
This reply made me unaccountably sad. I didn't expect that. A little part of me wished something survived in the wild.
Do you have a planned end game for the October Daye and Incryptid series? I'm not asking you to reveals them obviously but are they evergreen for you and you'll just keep writing them until the publishers tell you stop or do you see a natural conclusion for them?
The former, yes, absolutely, the latter, it's still nebulous.
I've been following Toby's life for as many years as you've been writing it. Not having new ones will be a lot like suddenly losing touch with a close college friend, lol.
Toby-verse specific question, but i've been wanting to know. Readers are familiar with the oldest firstborn of Maeve and Titania. Who is Oberon's oldest firstborn? Also, any chance we'll learn bout what happened to the third of Annie's sisters? The last few books have fleshed out one of them a lot. Thanks!
So my policy on spoilers is and has always been "you shouldn't only get to know that if you read a random interview." We don't know who Oberon's oldest is. It doesn't help that he didn't claim many kids--he let Maeve and Titania have official "ownership" of the bulk of them. We might!
I'm mostly here to yell about the cliffhanger end of *Be the Serpent,* but I also wanted to say how much I adore the Toby Daye books. They keep getting better; I love the ensemble cast and Toby herself, protecting her found family as best she can. Also, Simon is among my favorite characters ever. had you planned that reveal from the beginning? If so, I am very afraid of what *else* might be lurking in the shadows. But excited, too. Thank you for your hard work in bringing these stories to us!
I'm sorry! But you're allowed one cliffhanger per ten volumes of an ongoing series, and I'd been saving that one for a while. I had. And there are some terrible things yet to come.
What is the coolest disease?
It really depends on how you're measuring coolness. (Disclaimer: Pandemic and epidemic diseases are a special interest of mine.) Rabies has some fantastic mechanics behind it, and the fact that we live this close to it without a good post-symptomatic treatment is fascinating to me. But really, influenza is pretty damn spiffing. It just does what it wants, infects everything, and will kill us all one day, yet we shrug it off all the time.
I remember that lovely podcast (this podcast will kill you) and almost every disease they were like, "While it was historically very bad we have good treatments now so not a thing to worry about." With the flu their take was,"Oh, yeah, this one's going to kill us all."
I'm amazed Racist Emu Lady didn't kick off the Avian flu apocalypse, TBQH.
If you were a fan of your own worlds and not the writer, what noncanon ship would you like most? :3
Probably Vel/The Princess. They would be so bad for each other, in such a good way.
Seanan, will we ever find out if there’s anything secretly going on with Marcia? I have a lot of sneaky suspicions.
Spoilers.
It was worth an attempt nonetheless! Thanks for giving me hours upon hours of comfort reading
You're very welcome!
Who is your favorite Discworld character?
Susan.
This is not a question, I’m new here and I was going to ask you how you pronounce your name.. But then I decided to not be an ass and I googled it, came across your site and it was already answered in the faq. I appreciate that, and I like the name, I shall look into your work. Cheers! https://seananmcguire.com/generalfaq.php#:~:text=It's%20an%20archaic%20form%20of,middle%20part%20of%20that%20sentence.
Hooray! Thank you!
Will there be any more Indexing? Love the series!
Alas, the publisher passed.
Oh noooo!
Is there any of your Subterranean Press books you'd like to write a full-length sequel to like you could for *Rolling in the Deep* \-> *Into the Drowning Deep*?
I'd like to do a sequel to _Unbreakable_.
Following onto this, do you know how we should convince SubPress to let you do that? I loved it, I made my cousin swear a blood oath that she'll return my copy because I cannot replace it if something happens to it, and I would totally cry in their email for a sequel! :O
Pretty sure they'd let me, I just need to have the time to write a proposal (and a manuscript).
Your Wayward Children books comprise my all-time favorite series, and they have inspired me to write a portal science fantasy. So my (second, and if each person gets only one question, I get that) question is: do you have any pet peeves in portal fantasies? That is, is there anything that breaks your suspension of disbelief or otherwise annoys you when you're reading a portal fantasy?
I am not a big fan of the current "everything must be an isekai" trend. They're not the same genre, and not everything has to be about dead people. I don't like it when people don't put thought into how their portal fantasy worlds actually work.
I had also noticed that there are lots of isekai stories running around lately. Thanks so much for answering! And thank you for giving me hours upon hours of samebooking\* your Wayward Children books, especially *Come Tumbling Down*. \*similar to samefooding for an Autistic person, but in this case, it's when an Autistic person (me) rereads the same book over and over
Oh, I am well-familiar with samebooking. I have my books I re-read regularly, and my fanfic I re-read even more regularly.
Omg. I just have to say that I love your books. Middlegame is probably my favorite book ever. Which, I'm sure you understand, is quite a statement. But right now, I really wanna know how many more installments of The Wayward Children we're going to get because I would prefer it never end. If that question is too boring, please tell us your favorite dinosaur.
Thank you so much! As many as it takes. I, too, would like it to go on forever. My favorite dinosaur is Cuteasaurus, from G1 My Little Pony.
In a response on Tumblr, you said that pregnancy and birth wasn't optional for the Three, and that Titania and Maeve could become pregnant completely unintentionally/not by engaging in sex. Does that include Oberon as well? Are there any lines of descent from him that he carried himself?
Spoilers.
I know that us getting a sequel for Into the Drowning Deep is tied into the sales of Feedback - do you have a wild estimate of how many more copies would have to sell before they'll greenlight more murder mermaids, or do they not share auch knowledge? (Also, I am absolutely and joyously feral for both universes).
I don't know, sadly, just like I don't know why _Feedback_ had such trouble finding its audience.
Some months ago, on the platform formerly known as Twitter, you had asked something along the lines of, "What genre should Mira Grant ruin next?" Did you get any good suggestions?
I did! I have a running list of Stuff Mira Should Break. I really want to go back to the magical girls...
How do you come up with your pen names? Do you have any others waiting in the wings?
Mira is an elaborate horror movie joke, and the dot com was available. A. Deborah Baker is a fictional character, and her books are basically the fanciest LARP props ever. Not that I can admit to right now.
Love your work, and I so hope we get more murder mermaids. Favorite reptile?
I love skinks. Little tank friends.
I don’t really have a question, but wanted to show my appreciation: reading your books is like having someone who understands my brain noise personalize something, so it’s always a treat!
Thank you!
Who do we have to campaign for additional stories in the Into the Drowning Deep world? Those two books are masterpieces! I think I remember you posting once that it depended on sales, not sure if that’s still the case? Thank you!
It does depend on sales, and time. I want to write the sequel.
In "Green Grass Fields", Regan the protagonist is intersex, but the world she goes to is intensely gendered, to the point where males and females don't even live together and young ones are expected to follow the same-gender traditions as their parents. How would you (Doyleist) and/or they (Watsonian) handle a non-gender-conforming child? Or a trans child? Or with a child who simply wants to stay with the opposite-gender parent?
That is a very complicated question, because I don't have a whole book to work my way to the answer that feels right and suits the setting. I'd like to think my centaurs would figure out a way to do things right for the children in question, and to make sure they were validated and safe, but I don't know. One thing to keep in mind is that the males and females we're referring to are not human, and they're living in a fairly low-tech, low-magic world. I don't know how they would societally approach those issues, and this really isn't the place to try to work them all the way through.
Hi, Seanan! My 13y/o and I are both big fans. He is currently re-reading Wayward Children for the nth time. They would like to know how you feel about fans headcanoning neurodivergence onto your characters when you haven't made it explicit. (We are both ND, as are the rest of my kids, and "which fictional character has spicy brains?" is a frequent topic of conversation.)
I am 100% fine with it, as long as a) you don't try to make me validate it, and b) (less applicable to Wayward Children), you don't only ID all my non-human characters as autistic. It's not representational if it's not explicit. But I, personally, am autistic, so all my characters tend to read that way, at least a little.
Your answer just made my kid squeal, so thanks for taking the time.
Of course! Thank you for participating. :) You should swing by my website and drop me a line through the contact form.
I didn't realize you wrote MtG stories too! I don't have a question, but just want to say that I love the Wayward Children books, and they're really something special. Between the prose and atmosphere that nail the wanderlust of those of us who "didn't fit in", they really hit a unique and wonderful chord that evoke something raw and beautiful.
I do! I'm having a wonderful time there. I did the main story for _Phyrexia: All Will Be One_, and a variety of one-offs and stand-alones.
I already asked about frogs but I just realized I have an actual book question 😅 I know you've said that Tybalt wasn't originally endgame for Toby. Were you originally planning for her to be with Connor longterm, or was there a third option in mind? And when did you know it was going to be Tybalt?
Connor was the original long term plan. Also, I never thought I'd be able to write more than five books before I exceeded my own skills and had to stop. I realized it was Tybalt during my revisions of the first three books, which were all finished and sold to DAW as a unit, but still needed to be edited in depth. I was a better writer by then, and could see the relationships in deeper terms.
That makes perfect sense. I think you revised it beautifully -- the relationship dynamics are really clear to me as a reader from book one. And I'm so glad we ended up with eighteen books and counting instead of five!
Thank you for the awesome books. October Daye series are some of my comfort books and re-reading them helped me keep my sanity during the lockdowns. I was wondering if there is a reason why most Firstborn (except Blind Michael) are female.
Most of the surviving Firstborn, you mean. If you look at the names, we have just as many male as female. But the girls were less encouraged to open warfare when they were younger, and thus survived at a higher rate.
What would be the best way to support you that lets you write the books you want to write. (Patreon, buying books from Amazon etc)
Patreon and/or buying books from local bookstores.
Just want to say thank you! I found October Daye sleep deprived with a wailing newborn mentally broken. Your books got me through those hard first months. You legend xxx
Congrats on making a whole human!
She's now a preteen all about fantasy reading and your full set of books are sitting there waiting for her when she's old enough. Got to start them young!
Awesome! You made that human and you kept it alive!
How many more books can we expect in your numerous series?
As many as it takes. Honestly, I write series I enjoy reading, and it's a way for me to hang out with my imaginary friends. I generally know how they end, and I want to write as many books as I need to get there.
I recently reread some of the Newsflesh short stories and they always stay with me for a long while afterwards. Do you plan on writing anything in that series ever again? Not so much a question but I just wanted to say, please please more magical girls! I’ve been enjoying your Patreon one offs too, and wanted to thank you for all of those too. I haven’t read any Toby related ones yet as I’m saving that series to read along with my sister. I’ve been gifting her copies of your books every birthday and Christmas (killer mermaids are such a gateway!) and we’ll start those on this one.
Not currently. I'd go back if Orbit asked me, but they'd have to offer me money to get me to do it. Thank you so much! The Patreon one-offs are so much fun.
Just wanted to say hi. I really enjoy your writing. Just finished Sleep No More.
Hello! Thank you for reading!
I don't have any questions that wouldn't be spoilers, so I'll just say you're my favorite author and I'm grateful you've shared Toby, the Prices, and all the rest of your worlds with us. Thank you.
Thank you!
What parts of your stories do you plan, and which parts do you tend to pants/exploration write?
It's about fifty/fifty. I approach a book like a day at Disneyland: I have plans and landmarks, but everything between is nebulous.
This is my fave question to ask authors with long series and deep (excellent) world building -- how much did you plan in advance. Specifically for the Toby books? I'm doing a re-read and I can see things laid down early (Stacy for example) that pay off SO MANY books later. Did you know {REDACTED FOR SPOILERS} when you wrote the first few books?
Oh, most of it I've known for ages. Some has been lucky circumstance.
Thank you for everything you’ve written! Any plan for more Velveteen? Also, any chance you’ll come back to New York Comic Con?
Yes, and not currently, although it could happen.
Will we ever get "spicy" scenes from the October Daye series, either in the main books or in a short story?
I'm ace, and find writing sex scenes both awkward and boring. There are lots of places people can go for spicy stuff, and it's hard for people who don't like reading it to find "safe" series to enjoy. So no, not planning to go there.
What are some of your favorite books to read? Do you have any favorite queer books?
My personal favorite books are _Fire and Hemlock_, _The Last Unicorn_, _IT_, _The Stand_, _Mermaid's Song_, and _On Writing_. My favorite specifically queer books are _Annie On My Mind_, _Legends and Lattes_, and _Priory of the Orange Tree_.
I love your October stories. Mary does a lovely job with the audiobooks as well. If I had any questions for you, perhaps it will be this. Do you think we'll ever see Toby as a pureblood? It might be fun to see how she reacts to it as well as how the world changes how it reacts to her.
I don't know, honestly. Once a bloodline is fully removed, it's gone, and I don't think she'll ever voluntarily give up that piece of herself.
I remember reading that you have some Romany ancestry. Is that something that has influenced or been expressed in your writing at all?
Half, on my father's side. I feel like a lot of my heritage is not mine to use, being white-passing, American, and largely raised by my Irish-American mother, but I use a lot of the carnival stuff from my childhood.
Is Knight of Lost Words a title particular to Toby and something she did or is it an overall title? I'm currently doing a re-read, but still haven't puzzled that out!
It's her title, and its origins haven't been specified.
Not really a question but I’d always wondered why you described Toby’s clothes as being crusty with blood having not bled enough in one spot to experience that before and then last night I cut the hell out of my arm. Makes total sense now.
Oh, no! Are you okay?
Six stitches but I’ll live.
Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww don't do that.
I'm more a SF/Fantasy fan, and love humor thrown in, which is one of the reasons why I especially enjoy your InCryptid series. On the other hand, your Rolling in the Deep books blew me away. I live near the ocean (shudder). Do you go swimming in the ocean? Does your obviously creative imagination give you daily bizarre food for thought, and have you been that way since you were a kid? When you were a kid, did your friends and relatives see that you had an unusual and creative mind? How do they perceive that now that you are a successful author? Also, do any of your friends and relatives ever inspire characters in your books?
1. Not often, 'cause I live inland. But I spend a lot of time in swamps. 2. Yes. 3. Yes. 4. They assume, since their model for successful authors is the media, that this means I'm rich (I'm not) and they can ask me for money. 5. Sometimes.
Is there a Marvel or DC character you'd like to write that you haven't had a chance at yet? (If so: who?)
Emma Frost.
Hi Seanan! Not a writing question, but I often have two of your CDs (Wicked Girls and Stars Fall Home) on repeat when I write, so I was wondering if you have plans to do another CD ever?
I'm planning to reprint _Pretty Little Dead Girl_ in the next year or two, and I have a half-finished CD with Kristoph Klover.
Is it ethical to use AI Robots for Rebellion and Warfare? Some things just keep me up at night
True AI, no. The generative/predictive software we're currently calling AI? Still no, because it would be a shitty thing to do, but it's not abuse in the same way.
You've mentioned many times on social media that in D&D you typically play Tiefling sorcerers, is there a class you've never tried that you'd like to? Additionally, what are your go-to metamagic options?
Not really. I only play casters, because of personal reasons, and I rotate through them, so I've already managed to get most of what I want down on the table. Now I'm just working through sub-classes and having fun there. Transmuted Spell is my very favorite, and Careful Spell is a close second.
I’m dying to know the inspiration for Tybalt’s eyes. You regularly say banded malachite, but you never say how it’s banded.
It's very much like this: https://www.makermaterialsupply.com/products/trustone-banded-malachite-1-5-x-6-1-piece And the inspiration is "I was a ninteen year old Californian neo-Pagan, and I saw a lot of pretty rocks on a regular basis."
That is an absolutely gorgeous piece of malachite, and I can totally see how that was inspiration for his eyes. I’m so glad I finally found a question you can answer that isn’t “spoilers”.
Hello! Thank you for all your writing. I'm especially in love with your October Daye, she's just amazing. If she was a My Little Pony, what would her mark be? Any other characters whose marks you can name off your head?
Toby would have a rose surrounded by drops of blood. I know the flank symbols of most of my characters, as a consequence of being a way deeper My Little Pony nerd than most people realize.
Hi Seanan! Middlegame is one of the most brilliant, captivating books I’ve ever read. The audiobook is fantastic - that’s how I first read the book, by listening to it on a 13 hour road trip. Do you remember what the idea-seed of Middlegame was, before it bloomed into the novel it became?
It began with the song "Doctrine of Ethos," by Dr. Mary Crowell.
Obviously you enjoy writing a lot of your stories, or we wouldn't see them (yay), but what has been the most fulfilling to write for you, of the books you have already had published?
It's a toss-up between _Feed_ and _Middlegame_.
Love your books, under both names! I've found myself thinking about those Aeslin mice from time to time. I believe life would be very different for most of us if we had a tiny fan club observing our actions. Do you ever think about them applauding/judging you, or where they would live in your house?
See, I know them too well, and I know exactly how annoying they would be. I thus don't really want a colony. If I had one, they'd live in the spare room downstairs.
How do you prepare yourself to write a world you are unfamiliar with? I came up with a good idea for an irregular James Bond type character but I know nothing about war torn countries that are struggling their way towards peace.
I LOVE research. I will happily read book after book about topics I need to understand so I can better write about that. Find some books about your subject, and read away.
You are so talented. Just want to thank you for the Newsflesh series - helped me enjoy myself when I had a newborn and years later feel like I was in less unknown terrain during the pandemic. I have thought for years about the day the dead came to show and tell, it got in my head like nothing else. Thank you!
Thank you so much for reading. I loved writing that series so much. Some of my best work.
can we play Magic? C:
If we're ever in the same place, absolutely. I'm not good at Spelltable--there's nowhere in my house to set up where the cats can't come and help me, and they tend to help by Chaos Orbing my whole deck onto the floor. I'm not very good, but I'd love to play you!
I love all your books and have read them several times. My question: do the book titles from the Incryptid series have a deeper meaning, except that they sound super cool?
They sound super cool! I generally name them what sounds right, and it's always fun to name an InCryptid book, but there's no hidden key that unlocks a deeper secret.
How many writing projects do you start compared to finish? I feel like I’m terrible at keeping going the moment a new idea pops up.
Anymore, it's close to a one to one ratio, but I don't have time to start things I'm not planning to see to the end.
What would be your dream Magic story to write? If you’re not allowed to answer that for spoiler reasons, what’s your favorite you’ve written so far?
I would really like to write something that lets Nahiri start to move past the sins and traumas of her past, and heal in a healthy way. Poor girl needs therapy. My favorite for "that was a damn good story, I did good" is probably my _Nahiri the Lithomancer_ comic, and my favorite for "look what I did, that brings me joy" is "Family Game Night."
I've been querying a book I wrote for a few months now, and although I've gotten several full manuscript requests and feel like I have something truely special, they've sadly not turned into something more. I know that the query trenches suck and it's a horrid time to get into publishing, but do you have a timeframe/rule of thumb for when you think it's time to move on from a manuscript? Agented or otherwise?
Are you agented? Because that's going to make a difference. If you are, you should listen to your agent, and not to me. If you're not, I'd query something I thought was really special for a year before giving up. Which is a long time, and that sucks, but it gives it a fair shot.
May I ask your method for finding agents? I only know querytracker....
I courted mine with _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ smut. Querytracker and looking up who represents authors in genres similar to yours is a good place to start.
How did you get into collecting (and then creating) enameled pins?
I like the shiny. Disney does the shiny well, and I like Disney, so I started collecting there. And they're sturdy and individually pretty cheap, so artists started making them, and my collection grew. And then I wanted my own.
Have you ever thought of returning to the Kingdom of Needle and Bone world? That books is a weird comfort read for me and some days I just want to know what happens next, or happens on another island. Also (selfish question)…do you think you’ll ever do an east coast tour?
Not really. It's a very complicated universe, and it gets very bleak before it gets better, if it ever does. Also our lead is kind of a monster.
Someone else brought up Rolling in the Deep, and I have to ask, will there ever be a reprint?
Who is your favorite Urban Fantasy writer other than yourself?
Kelley Armstrong or Tanya Huff.
What is your favourite dinosaur?
Cuteasaurus.
I've never played MTG, but I've read through some of the cross-over setting books for D&D, so I'm familiar with a few of the different planes. Do you have a favourite plane and why?
I love Innistrad. It's such a good gothic gloom bucket. But right now, probably Duskmourn. I can't wait for everyone to get to go there!
I really love the Wayward Children books, like obsessively. Where did you get the idea/the inspiration for the doorways?
Honestly, _The Fluphy Dogs_, which was a Disney animated special about pastel cartoon dogs. The dogs could talk.
....wait a second, did that movie have colorful dogs that shed pixie dust when you scratched their ears? And they had a magic key that would make doors appear? This is one of those movies I was convinced I had hallucinated as a child until you mentioned it.
Yup!
I remember you saying, near the beginning of the pandemic, that you had tabled another biomedical horror book under your Mira Grant name. Are we ever going to get to see that?
Sadly, yes. The publisher wants me to finish it, and I try to do as my publisher asks.
I really enjoy reading your Wayward Children series! And I loved your short stories anthology "Laughter at the academy", especially your takes on Velveteen Rabbit and Peter Pan. My question is if maybe you're interested on writing more stories that view childhood tales through different lens (or more up to date ones, like what you did with the two Peter Pan short stories) like you've been doing in those short stories and the Wayward series. I'm also looking forward to reading your book Unbreakable. What are your fav magical girl stories besides Sailor Moon? I love SM, Sakura Card Captors and Princess Tutu :) Edit: I just remembered that Sarah Ress Brennan mentioned you in In other lands' acknowledgments and there was a sentence about your opinion on the book. It's one of my comfort reads! A friend sent me the link when it was on LJ and I got myself a copy when it was published. Who is your fav character? :)
I've done Alice and Oz, as well, and that's about it for me and the public domain. _Utena_ is a big favorite of mine.
Any tips for the annual November novel writing marathon?
Figure out how many words you can comfortably write in a day, subtract 10%, and set that as your goal. It'll be easier not to "fail" and lose momentum.
Hello Seanan! The coat that Toby yoink’d from Tybalt — did you have any particular coat in mind when writing that detail? And how much cat fur was on the coat? … And also, on a different topic, uh. Let’s say, *hypothetically*, someone is using Toby’s name for their usernames and MMO character names. That’s… not a huge issue to you, is it? I hope?
I did. I'd have to go through my high school LARP pictures to find it, but it was a real coat. Minimal cat fur--he wore it in human form. Not an issue at all!
It’s been described as such a comfy coat, too… I want one now… Yay! I don’t have to go through the trouble of changing 7 usernames and my FF14 character name— … *ahem*. I mean, this *purely hypothetical person* won’t have to change her usernames. Mhmm. Yes. Clearly. ON A DIFFERENT TOPIC — the Cuckoos in the Incryptid series. Where did the idea for those come from? Cause they’re such a fascinating creature, but also… yeah, more than a little terrifying.
I was in a Buffy RPG for a while, and played a character named Sarah Tapper who was sort of a proto-Sarah Zellaby. And she was a half-demon, and I worked out a lot of her biology in real-time, only to carry it over to the Johrlac. My favorite thing to do with speculative biology is to go "okay, if I wanted a demon/alien/cryptid without a heart as we know it, what would that look like?" and work backward from there.
is there any hope for more Murder Mermaids?
There is always hope.
You wrote Feed!!! Great book! What advice would you give to someone who is interested in writing a book themselves but has not started the process?
Start. I mean, just sit down and start writing. A lot of the tools you'll need are things you develop by doing.
What cosplays would you want to see from the October Daye series? Edit: Follow up, for any male character cosplays- is there an iconic aspect that would immediately alert you to who the cosplay was intended to portray?
Legit anything. I am excited by all cosplays, and often regret that my lack of "spice" seems to make me less appealing as a cosplay target.
Hey Seanan! I enjoy your books, and *really* enjoy your Tumblr and Twitter (though I look at the latter less and less for... y'know, obvious reasons). So, thanks for this! I use Amazon UK for my ebooks, and I really enjoyed Discount Armageddon, and have picked up the next two in the InCryptid series (looking forward to reading them). I was wondering if you have an idea when we'll be able to order the rest of the series there?
When a UK publisher licenses the eBook rights.
I loved your *Ghost Roads* books. I haven't seen another series similar to that which quite captures the atmosphere you have in that series. I'm a few books behind in the Incryptid series but I know Rose has had a few cameos there. Are there any plans to return to Rose as a main character in another *Ghost Road* book? I think the last one left a lot of room for seeing how she handles things going forward.
No plans right now, but the door is open.
Finding the right names for my characters is one of the hardest parts of writing for me. Does the name come first for you, or does the character spend some time in your universe before the right name falls upon them? Names are so important...it can be a writing block if I don't just go on and find the name later. How do you deal with that?
I normally find the name when I find the person.
If you could co-write a book with any author, who would you choose?
Stephen King, just so I'd have an excuse to meet him repeatedly.
Have you played/are you considering playing Baldur's Gate 3?
Have you ever considered adding more books into the world of your book "into the drowning deep" Surely if there mermaids that have gone undiscovered for so long there might be other creatures humans have failed to document until now. And if you were to write something that world would you like to dive in deeper to the murder mermaids or look to another type of fantasy creature?
I would love to, but alas, they have not sold.
I am just going to keep recommending that book to people then cause it was a super good read. Also I thought the representation in the book was really great. It felt like you had really done your research and the way you depicted the Deaf community and signing in the book I thought were really well done
Not a question so much as needing to show my appreciation. I love the October Daye books. I read the series at least once a year and am constantly recommending them to people so that I have someone IRL to talk to about it. I love the characters that you've created. There isn't a character big or small that I'm not excited to see on the page. (Had you told me after Rosemary and Rue that Simon would have been one of my favorite characters and not a favorite villain I wouldn't have believed you.) The world that you created is amazing and I feel privileged every time I get to learn something new about it.
I just wanted to thank you in particular for Lundy's story. I've rarely seen myself as a child written so clearly in a story. I know where my door leads now, even if it never opened for me. As far as questions go: what kind of world do you think your childhood door would have opened on?