i’m genuinely having so much fun writing a jock protagonist. can’t believe i never tried this before. all these years i’ve been limiting myself needlessly
i’ve created an extremely elaborate magic system based on linear algebra and not once does the narrator ever explain how it works. he doesn’t know. he doesn’t care. that’s nerd shit. he is going on a lad’s night out and if you try to tell him anything about equations he’ll put his fingers in his ears and go “lalalala”
i feel it’s important to add that my otherprotagonist is an academic and does know how the magic system works, but he doesn’t get a POV chapter until halfway through the story. which means that over the course of 40,000 words we gradually build up a solid working idea of this world and its laws, as understood by Jock Protagonist - and then it switches to Nerd Protagonist, who’s like, “just so we’re clear, he was wrong about basically all of that.”
2. The Magician’s Apprentice. 4.8k. Let’s get into it. Simply one of the best things she’s written, has all sorts of echoes for the Locked Tomb and altogether a barn burner. (tw: grooming)
3. Chew. 3.7k. Zombie fiction set in WWII. (tw: sexual assault)
4. Union. 5.5k. I love Union and think it doesn’t get enough hype. Deeply, deeply Kiwi and also quite unsettling. A great follow-up to Nona.
5. Princess Floralinda and The Forty Flight Tower. 216 pages. A novella, get it from your library or as an ebook, alternatively, Moira Quirk does a great job with the audiobook. This is a fairy tale satire, as pointed and black-hearted as you can imagine. A main course & a must-read.
6. The Woman in the Hill. 3.9k. I’ll be honest, I think this one is skippable, but then you can say you’ve read them all. Lovecraftian horror, told in an epistolary format between settlers in the New Zealand bush.
7. Undercover. 59 pages. Plop your money down (or find a pirated version), it’s worth every penny. A undercover cop risks her life to investigate rumors of a ghoul in a gangster’s speakeasy. Blood, devotion, deceit–everything you could want in a TMuir story.
8. The Deepwater Bride (links) Dessert. Available through hoopla, your local library or several ebook anthologies. Teen Hester Blake, from a family of seers, determines that blonde, Converse-clad Rainbow Kipley is destined to be the bride of an uncanny god. 22 pages and it’ll change your life.
BONUS: self-published webcomic APOTHECIA, illustrated by Shelby Cragg. Space monsters, teenage girls & corruption, oh my.
I tried to find every hint about Alecto that Muir has given in interviews! I recommend reading through the full interviews bc they are all delightful to read.