Notorious Virtues: Alwyn Hamilton and a 1920s Heiress Fantasy

Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today I am joined by Alwyn Hamilton who has in them she's halfway through a really exciting series aimed at I'd say young adult outputs and it's called the first part is called the notorious virtues. So welcome Alwyn, welcome to MythMakers. Thanks for having me Julia, I'm excited to be here. Now you might be able to tell a keen listener that Alwyn's accent isn't the same as mine, so Alwyn tell us where you're from and how you made that long road to being a fantasy writer. Yeah of course so the accent is Canadian, so it's one of my passports. I was born in Canada and my parents worked for a company that was based in Canada, based in Toronto, but to had offices in France and offices in Italy as well and so when it was just me we'd move between all three and then my brother was born and ruined everything, settled somewhere permanently and so we ended up settling in France just because they have a better education system and so that's where I grew up in France. So people always think, oh you're a French Canadian, no I'm Canadian and French, it's different and then I ended up coming to the UK for university when I was 18 back when you still could with a French passport, pre-Brexit and just sticking around and staying here. And yeah and I think growing up in France is probably one of the big things that made me a fantasy reader because I was everything that was sort of written in English was a foreign world to me whether it was we're going to prom or we're going to fight dragons that was equally not something that I had in my daily life and I just found sort of fighting dragons a little bit more relatable than sort of oh we're kissing boys at prom or we're going to English boarding school or all those things that were equally fantasy worlds to me that did have a little bit less jeopardy and a little bit less magic for and does interesting. So I hugely think that growing up sort of in a second culture is one of the things that made me a fantasy reader over a reader of other genres as a kid. So were you reading French fantasy? So I'm wondering if the French homegrown fantasy is a different track from the sort of obvious ones for English speakers? I never really was. No I speak fluent French and I went to French state school for 15 years but I have never really read for pleasure in French except for comic books. comic books is a big thing in France and well I do think that my French is excellent it will never be as good as my English and I'll never be as comfortable in my English but I think also part of that is because quite quickly it became a divided thing in my brain that reading in French is reading for school and reading for pleasure so if I had to turn for a book for fun it would always be in English so I never actually read and actually the first time I ever had was reading something similar to my classmates was when Harry Potter became a phenomenon and that was the first time that we had something in common because I'd always be reading something they'd never heard of they'd always be reading something I had no idea about and then Harry Potter came up and I was like oh my god we can actually talk about this now but of course the catch was all of the titles of sort of proper nouns in the book series were different so like Hogwarts was Poudlard you know things like that so they'd say like oh I love the part where he goes to Poudlard and I was like I don't know what you're talking nice lard what is that so it wasn't quite the sort of bridge but yeah it's interesting what you were saying about how the sort of living in France thing made anglophone world particularly American by the prom reference seem like fantasy because I think one of the things about that Harry Potter series is that a lot of it is just boarding school stuff without much magic you know the sort of house points and plague you know all that stuff the structure and that's a foreign world to me having never been to boarding school either and I think there is something exotic about the idea of kids dispatched to this world um aside from before you even get as far as magic yeah yeah I suppose that's that's true yeah I there was a certain sort of appeal because I also did read a fair few boarding school mystery books oh yeah they exist too like they have eyes or things like that so there's something appealing about independent from your parents hmm off to off to have an adventure whether it's magical or not isn't it well that the first rule of writing for children is get rid of the parents yeah I mean that could be literally that they're gone I a the classic orphan or it could mean that they're the problem yeah should be mysteriously abroad yes really abroad I've used that and I don't want to kill off parents there because if they're there they'd reign on the parade of the child and you know what where's the space for adventure anyway we must and talk more about your book notorious virtues which I devoured I started reading it on Thursday and finished it on Sunday and it's quite a long book um it's oh it's 500 pages and I didn't do the skip read you know sometimes when I'm reviewing books I I'll quickly get the gist you know I do that I actually sat and read it all the way through which make as a massive vote of confidence in the story so tell us about notorious virtues yeah so so the notorious virtues is my second series of books so I wrote a trilogy as my debut called Rebel of the Sands which was first person sort of action adventure and I loved writing it and I love those characters but by the time I got the end of writing three books from one point of view I was like you and I need to make other friends girl like I was like we need to talk to other people I've been in one head for quite a long time and there are also quite a lot of action sequences in Rebel of the Sands and and so when deciding what I wanted to write next I very was very clear on the fact that I wanted to write something a little bit less action heavy that sort of I got to there is there are certainly action sequences yeah there are but there's also parties and ballgowns and caviar and things that you can't have when someone is racing for their life across the desert and so I pitched this idea as 1920s New York eras is meet scrim fairy tales so the conceit was that it's a family that has passed down wealth and magic generationally through trial of virtues and it's very much based on all those fairy tales that you hear that are sort of you know the king had three sons and he didn't know which one should be king after him so he sent them on a quest for a golden bird and they passed an old lady on the road and got the first one spot on her the second one kicked her and the third one was like here have my sandwich and oh god it turns out that the old lady knows where the golden bird they were sent to find is and by not being a complete prick the third one is the winner and sort of ascends the throne by virtue of his virtues essentially so it's essentially that test that happens generationally to test who is the worthiest to inherit so and so I sort of wanted to explore that theme and also explore the theme that we tie sort of money to worth to sort of if you're rich it's because you've earned it or is it you know generational wealth but also that not all virtues are created equally you know just because your brave and jumping out of a plane doesn't necessarily make you a good person sort of all sorts of different different virtues can be mean different things and not all are sort of measured equally and I would say and then I also wanted to subvert the trope so one of the there's four main characters and one of the main characters Nora has been very entrenched in the family the whole time and then one is a new rival to the family which is quite a sort of classic fairy tale trope of sort of being plucked from obscurity and and brought into this family but I wanted to explore that in reverse because I have a friend who is a social worker who once pointed out to me that there is a real lack of books that are both that are sort of positive to give to children who are not being raised by their biological parents and children's literature coming back to sort of Harry Potter is the example it's the oh you're being raised by the horrible dursleys but oh your your birth family is you know wonderful and glorious and gives you access to this magical thing and that's a you know a lovely story and a frequent trope but she works frequently with kids in foster care or kids in adoption that's not the right message to give to them she says there's sort of two that she really thinks are positive for kids in that situation and one of them is Superman because Superman is being raised by a lovely adoptive family but it still acknowledges his birth and that's why he has his powers and then the other one that she thinks is really healthy for kids is kung fu panda because he is being raised by the crane but it does not erase his pandanus and so her point was basically I wish that someone would write more positive adoption stories more positive fostering stories and apparently what I heard was terrible birth family so my way of sort of inverting the trope was was not to write a positive adoption story I hope many people do but to write that trope of oh you're plucked from how you're being raised back to your birth family but oh they're awful they're just some of the most self-involved people and you're also you're going to be made to prove that you're worthy to belong to them essentially so yeah so that was sort of the the origin point of everything so the one who's within the family is Nora and the one plucked from obscurity is lotty what I found interesting about the trial of the virtues is that the people running the trial the creatures running the trial it seemed very sour and that's why they're notorious virtues they're not like a religious saint like virtue they are you can be an awful person and still win a trial yeah yeah on a technicality or being in the right place or doing it quicker so were you sort of purposely adding this sour note to that you started off with the idea of the three kids and the old woman which is usually straightforward virtue there you go save the cat um so were you adding this sour note to sort of slightly slant the fairytale idea here because very dull creatures aren't very reliable no I I think that's part of it and I think so what I started by doing quite straightforwardly is sort of listing what virtues it was possible to be tested there were some very obvious ones like bravery and and things like that but I also wanted I think I approached it from a character point of view first I wanted to make it challenging for our main characters Nora um who is the one in scouts in the family is from the beginning of the book smarter than everyone else that is never in question uh and so it was very deliberate that there is no trial of intelligence there's nothing in there for her to sort of just already validate who she already is and prove that she's smarter than everyone else she has to live up to other parts of her of who she is and sort of push herself a little bit so that was very deliberate to kind of to sort of challenge to sort of challenge her and who she was and both of them and who they thought themselves to be essentially um and sort of try them in their most difficult things that they might have to live up to there is other eras is other than the two of them competing in these trials the whom is modesty who is a very difficult person who is not who is a person who is sort of exactly what I'm talking about within terms of sort of not our all virtues are created equally that she is from the outside she looks glamorous and beautiful and fun and you know and she's nice and it up but underneath she's actually quite a bitter nasty person who is sort of grubbing for this money yeah and so I kind of wanted to highlight her is the reader you very much know the wrong person is being rewarded but she is the one who faced the troll you know you can't argue with that it's it's that's the you know the sort of the tricky thing and I don't want to spoil or anything but it sort of hopefully brings you slowly to who their grandmother is as well yeah no I mean blame the parents blame the grandparents why she's like that yeah so you've done the period of the sort of 20s flapper periods you mentioned that you had a sort of in mind New York I was also thinking midford sisters and of course if you know the real midford family which is a fascinating messed up family from the English class system and I was also thinking Berlin with that kind of sour note of the sort of cabaret feel to the world heading towards fascism or something really dark which fits with the grim yeah obviously in fantasy you're allowed to mash all these things up but why the 20s why aren't you doing the classic swords and sandals you know dragon fantasy from with the castles you know yeah why not that and why 20s I think there's a there's a few different reasons one of them is one of them is going to be quite boring and practical so I'll start with that which is that rebel of the sands my trilogy is set in kind of like an 1880s ish technologically and one of the characters Nora's grandmother her other grandmother not the one she shares with all the other eras says is a teenager in the notorious in rebel of the sands so so there is a link they are on the same world these two series and I very much did want to link them that's a character who appears in the second and third book of the trilogy and you meet her when she's a teenager and the hell has gone off and is now someone's grandmother and I wanted to sort of say that evolution so just in terms of sort of time passage and where we all technologically with rebel of the sands it made sense that it was 1920s and I wanted to have the sort of technology present the other reason that I want to do it was sort of thematically which is that that sort of depression era 1920s I think is a big time of a sort of financial and so sort of divide and huge change it's the time when we see a huge disparity between wealth sort of coming out of the of the 19th century into the 20th century and also we do we see wealth now but it's not the same wealth as wealthy people who have the money in the 1920s that you know the Vanderbilt the Gettys and things like that that money was all dispersed over generations all those people who made money from railroads and industries and things like that has been quite dispersed over the last century since then essentially so I kind of that's partly where the idea came from of this fear of dispersing the money is where the Holtz Hall's the main family in the book have found that sort of keeping it on one person keeps their power and keeps them keeps them running the system essentially that by not dispersing their wealth that is how they have never changed and grown and evolved and maybe seen that the world is evolving around them essentially yeah that's interesting that idea of consolidating the money in one because of course that's how kingships work yeah and there is a sort of fantasy trope of thinking the kings of the answer you know return of the king that if you have a king you're fine yeah never a king benevolent magnate in the case of your worlds you everything's fine yeah but you're actually unpacking the fact well what about concentrating it on that one person what happens to everybody else and how it yeah perverts their way of behaving I also had a a feel of the sort of Russian revolution yes that's very much yes because it's so fragile the society if the world were like a sleep number mattress everything would adapt for your comfort because as your life changes and your body changes sleep number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night and now it's the final days of our everything's on sale event save up to $12 hundred on mattresses our Memorial Day event ends Monday to experience a whole new world of comfort visit a sleep number store or go to sleep number dot com sleep number to a good life sleep so yeah the you've got this um this this story with lotty and Nora but you've got some other characters in in there um you've got some male characters Theo and August uh August is the journalist CEO's a sort of bodyguard figure if I if I thought of everybody and then there's the sort of the old folk tale yes yes as well so that's 2345 different POVs how do you manage that and how do you avoid the problem of say the reader just liking I know Nora and not wanting to read about August because that's a real challenge for multi viewpoint books yeah it was a challenge I and also even just the the challenge of getting into the habit of writing in third person having written three books in first person when I was first drafting I would literally switch mid-sentence without realizing I'd be writing sort of she walked down the street I looked up at the sky backspace backspace backspace she looked up at the sky you know kind of um so it you know it took it's a muscle uh within writing like everything else I think that I had to build up and notorious virtues was a huge learning process I had never been a planner before I had always sort of roughly known where I was going and seen big pillars but I discovered that with multiple points of view I really did need to plan a little bit more yeah um and then the other thing that you always have to be conscious of and uh is there are four points of view but they are all geographically in the same place um and their story where they all do have individual stories their stories do crossover at and then merged towards the end so I wanted to be very conscious of you know when we're in you know a room with all four of them even though we're in Norris point of view that the others do need to be sort of acknowledged and um and say something and sort of have been noticed by the point of view character because you as a reader do care about them as well because they were your POV character last chapter and they were your pew they'll be your POV character in the next chapter so um so it's a so I don't have a have a good answer to this is how it's done it was very much a learning process and trial air and sometimes I would find myself halfway through a chapter that they were all in and then realized this would be much more resonant from a different characters point of view so I would go back to the beginning and all the sort of events would be the same of you know we're going here and we're doing this but it would I would have to rewrite the whole thing because it was now no longer in Theo's point of view it was in Norris point of view um or what have you said so um having said that I think a lot of people have picked favourites and that favourite tends to be Norris so I'm also not oblivious to that uh I think you manage really well because um I think it's for me it's between Lotty and Nora thank you yeah yeah because I think that August and Theo are plot drivers that they have part of the plots um that's their driving and I think that's how you how you answer that question is you make sure that when you switch to a chapter there's something in that that you need to know that I've got soft spot for August of course um August actually wasn't when I pitched the book I pitched it with three points of view characters I didn't August wasn't part of it and then as I started to write it and Norris um storyline became more and more about the mystery because um the reason that these trials are happening is because Norris mother who was the ares hasn't expectedly been murdered and so there's also sort of a murder mystery investigation amidst these trials happening and uh very quickly became apparent why Sherlock Holmes has a Watson why you know if run as a psychiatrist this girl needs someone to talk to you know she needs someone to sort of have be her partner in not in crime and crime fighting and crime investigating but he's also her way into experiencing a lower class life um because she's been this gilded butterfly or seemingly a gilded butterfly and uh he's sort of struggling journalist um who really has to worry about where the next paycheck is coming from so I think that was a great choice um good in that one Theo uh so in lotty is the one put a put a put a put a put a put a put for lives for yeah so the Hauptswalze are our main family who are sort of the ones holding these trials um and they the one of the reasons have accumulated so much land so much wealth all of these things is because they have the ability to create a space that's outside of the dangerous of the woods that every one lives in. So there's these sort of enchanted woods that are a little bit like the woods that you read in fairy tales that you go in and you might get lured off the road by a big bad wolf kind of thing. And they have the power to protect people from this and in order to like live on their land and be protected, people have offered them things over generations whether it's you know chickens or or money or in the case of one night who came along running from something in the woods it's his loyalty. So a thousand years ago essentially a night fleeing from something in the wood that had captured his love, stumbles into there and says that if they protect them then if he is protected by the family then he and his descendants will protect the family forever. And so a thousand years later his descendants are still protecting the descendants the original Holtzfall and this is not a decision any of them have made. None of them have ever been allowed to make the sort of life decision of what do you want to be because the answer if you were born into this family as night you are going to be a protector of this of this family. And there are some who see that as their duty and as their purpose in life and there are some that very much chafe against it. So yeah and it's got a self-destruct element is because it's a magical pact. It's not like. Exactly. Not like you can just be like actually I think I want to be an artist. Yeah exactly. Explore my other side. Yeah and it's and it's sort of point out that even if you're really not suited to it that's your life and there's some people who are just not that great at it but they weren't given the option to become an artist and but and there is a very sinister element to it that if the head of the family tells them to do something they have to do it. And I don't know if you I just one of my favorite books from childhood and I see you find the the things cropping up from your childhood without realizing it. I don't know if you've read Ellen Chanted by Gail Carson Levine. I love that book. It's a it's a Cinderella retelling where as a child Cinderella is given the gift of obedience quote unquote unquote under gift so that she'll be the perfect young lady and that's how she ends up in denture to the step family as they realize that if they tell her scrub the floor Cinderella she has to do it and that's how she sort of gets into that situation. I that's one of my sort of childhood books I've read easily a hundred times and you find these things influences from your childhood creeping into your adult books. You're like oh that's you know the bit of the knights having to do what they're told that's pure Ellen Chanted that's where that came from. Yeah so me and fantasy is obviously very often a mirror we sort of reflect up against society I kept thinking of a lot of modern parallels particularly about inequality in wealth I would I would say that are equivalent of the getties and what have you these days are much less stylish agreed but did you was that something you had consciously in your mind or is it something you saw afterwards because I think it off for me it often works afterwards I find oh yeah that's worked out something which I didn't realize I was thinking about. Yeah I think I think I worked out afterwards because I think looking back on it how quickly things have changed in the last few years is apparently when I started writing this book it was pre-pendemic it wasn't we weren't it you know obviously the wealth disparity has always been there but it wasn't as obvious as it has become in the last few years of you know pick your crisis pandemic elections wars you know terrible things that have happened I think the wealth disparity has become more and more obvious there's an there is another version of this book that doesn't exist anywhere in reality but this book could have very easily been told from the point of view of the Grims and be about toppling sort of the the power hungry I mean the the holds falls are literally referred to at one point to sort of sitting on their hoard of money like dragons and there is a there is an element of that it could be about the brave Grims fighting and killing the dragon and taking the wealth in order to sort of create equality that would be a much more sort of straightforward version of this story I didn't want to do that because I kind of already done it in rebel of the sands it's not about wealth inequality it's about dictatorship but that is the story of sort of the little people rebelling against the big power so that's why I didn't want to do that but the the narrative could very easily be switched and it would be a different a different book not from the holds falls point of view so I wanted to try that line quite carefully of making them interesting characters that you want to follow but not being like isn't art rich people the best aren't they just you know so I don't I don't think you particularly have a heroic class because I found the Grims very unreliable and I'm not convinced there'd be any better running the place than the rich the current rich people my shorthand for the Grims whenever I was sort of referring to them quickly talking about the books with his magical communists and as you said sort of Russian revolution the best of intentions can work out very very foolish yeah and I think you'll see more of that in book two of how how it's working out for them essentially how idealism translates into action poorly sometimes yeah no I can I can I can see the logic of that going so one of the questions I was thinking about partly because I was I was thinking about this when I was teaching other people writing is about how magic systems work so you know magic in fantasy works like a currency yes how you spend it so have you got favorite magic systems from other fantasy books you've read and what kind of thinking went into how your own economy of magic works so if I give you a scale so in Harry Potter there seems to be no end to magic if you know the spell you can do it it's not yeah whereas in some other magic systems it's like a sort of rare resource that has to be mined or something like that yeah so where are you where are you in your magic economy I it's interesting I was thinking about this the other day because I I do a mentorship program for for yeah a mentorship for a program and I was talking about to my mentee about her magic system and sort of saying that you can't have it both ways of it being you're born with it and also you can learn it and I think those are the two that I think of for for me I think you can be born with it and get better at it get trained at something or you can it can be something that you can learn from books and and things like that and I have I think tended towards the born with it magic in my systems so far so the magic in Rebel of Sands primarily exists with children who are children of supernatural beings and humans they're sort of demigods by any other name so I they all have a power like a sort of how Hercules has super strength they have and things so that's I think that's always sort of a a touchstone for me in this one the power is sort of very much directly quite as you said they're spending it's very much directly linked to money it is another form of wealth and it's also being used to power cars but also power you know charms that can fix your hair quickly or whatever sort of things frivolous if you have the money to spend non frivolous if you need it to heat your house kind of things so it's I want to treat it very much like like money in the situation the thing that's really important to me and that matters to me both as a writer and a reader for magic systems is that there be some sort of sort of touchstone to come back to for me that's always a creation myth all of my whether it's true or not or whether it's whether it's it's true to this characters or actually true in the story I will always have some kind of myth of the making of magic or the making of people of why we are here so that myth in the notorious virtues is the very tale the interstitial fairy tale chapters that you were referring to tells the story of how the family got their power to begin with and so that that is always clearly there and anytime there might be sort of a question or can magic do that I can always sort of come back to that touch point in terms of favorite sort of favorite magic systems in books there are a ton I love the magic system in Libertigo's Grishaverse series I always think that that one's very sort of clever is called the little science in her in her books and so it works out it sort of is treated like a sort of additional sign like a higher science something that could be taught and learned but there are also people who would treat differently who are very superstitious of it there are histories of people with these powers being either mistreated or killed and their bone treated like relics that could do magic things like that that I thought was just genius and fascinating and then one that I've read really really recently is ml1's blood over bright haven would you like me to spoil or it or shall I not yeah house how spoilery okay I can't I just it's very spoilery but in that is a I'll I'll make it as unspoiled as I can there is a city that that is sort of that is clearly built in the Arctic that is shielded by magic that is run entirely by magic and and it is and it is and it is sort of the bright haven of the world but as the the book goes on a young woman who is the first female practitioner of magic and is very much breaking down those gender barriers starts to sort of discover the darker side of it and what the actual cost of it is and it is an absolutely harrowing book and a harrowing discovery and it's a wonderful read and I think I've rarely seen sort of the cost of magic done better than that in terms of the book I highly recommend it I we were reading it for book club and someone finished it sort of literally an hour before book club and we all got a sort of series of raging sort of text being like what do you mean it's a standalone there's no sequel that's where it ends what do you tell sort of thing and we were like oh literally just finished it this this will make for a fun discussion yeah I've got one which is in the sort of YA area is a writer called Madeline Celia I think she's written a series of books and one of them is called the Spoken Mage series and what I found them through download you know she's I think she's more in that space but anyway what I really like about her idea is that it really exposes a class system so magic in her world has been sort of corralled by those who can write it and they become the sort of the ruling classes and there's there's training and strict rules about how to begin and end your spells and the quicker you get the shorter the spell is they're more sort of powerful magician you are and then out of the blue this working class lasts from a not you know happy lovely family and discovers that she can speak magic and explode the system and they don't know what to do with her because in some ways she's weaker than them and in other ways and she obviously hasn't been brought up in the right classes and in other ways she is more powerful because she's more flexible right and the series I think it's three or four books explores what happens when she enters that system that's been doing magic one way and she comes in of another and I really I really like that yeah and another series I have enjoyed the magic system is the Trudy Cannivan Magician's Guild since yeah and I mean they've been a lot in around oh and the other one Garth Nyx and Sabriel I've just reread um liberal recently and I'm just thinking I really like your magic system with the with the right the descriptions underlying everything it's great if you haven't read those highly recommended I can't yeah I can't see a bell without thinking of Garth Nyx yeah and then the reference uh this is that um the abhorcer who's like the necromancer figure a good but good has bells that take you through the gates towards death and it's just brilliant it's wonderful wonderful book series yeah so um we usually finish all win with having a bit of fun about just thinking about all the fantasy worlds we've enjoyed in books and on screen or wherever and we think of one theme from your book and work out if we were going to take that idea elsewhere where would we have the best experience and I your book has a lot of of those parties the bright young thing parties of you know sipping champagne and dancing the night away where do you think in all the fantasy worlds is the best place to go for that kind of high-class party we're not talking like a hobbit needs up with you know champagne and caviar and dancing it's so funny because the first one that came to my mind uh was at the rose bargain by Sasha Payton's write the book that came out about this time last year which is that sort of an alternate regency version of England uh where essentially for the last few hundred years instead of by the kings and queens uh with things have been ruled over by a fairy queen who sort of appeal appeared on a tutor battlefield and took over just because sort of the magic and all of these these beautiful uh these beautiful things immediately came to mind and then I thought of the quite sinister side world and the fairy so I thought maybe not that and the next one that came to my head is um uh I recently read this this may be recency bias but I recently read the Raven scholar by Antonia Hodgson which is a phenomenal book she's a former crime writer who has written a murder mystery fantasy and one of the things in her world is that there are different animals that you can be associated to that you can sort of pledge your your allegiance to essentially and it determines the course of your life so for instance um you know people who pledge the fox might be thieves or assassins what have you and the thing that I really loved about it that I felt is often missing fantasy books is that if you pledge yourself to the monkey that makes you an artist so they're incredible singers and painters and dancers and all of these things that I sometimes find that we miss out in fantasy books just because we're so preoccupied by the plot and the killing and the sort of you know even I think there was a scene in the notorious virtues where they went to sort of an art gallery opening that just had to get caught for pacing and time as you say it's it's quite a long book but they throw a great party the monkeys and the the sort of people who are pledged the monkey temple in the book because they sort of put up beautiful um you know canopies and gorgeous you know and you can watch a performance while you sip your wine and sit there and enjoy yourself um and I think that is what what comes to to my mind because I think it's sort of the creativity and the beauty of that make would make for sort of a very beautiful beautiful party. So that's what came to my head. Oh that's a good pick. I feel as though I need to go slightly different from you now. So um I was also thinking Regency as sort of um good air. I always get the the name wrong is mr. Strange and Dr. Norrell or Dr. Norrell or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Narell yeah um that because that's the Regency bias as you say um but I think probably um I would go for sort of a sci-fi version of it and I think you could have a hilariously elegant party but bit spoof in the world of Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on one of the planets is probably in that universe a party planet. There probably is. I would say for David Rocks would turn up yeah so I think I'll choose that just to put go a little bit different um I think you've given me some great book recommendations whilst we've been going on so I'm going to have to make your brain smaller and then move over the heave and not overbraid have them yeah your red books ones harrowing ones ones less so okay um but I would say we've both read your book but I want to really highly recommend it to um our listenership if you like if you like your parties in the 1920s with Grimm's fairy cell trial uh it's it's a brilliant read and you were telling me that it's going to be two parts and you have written the second part that's right yeah the second title yeah it's called the glorious vices uh we were just talking about how difficult before we got on here we're talking about how difficult tidaline a book is uh and it was so difficult tidaline lignatories virtues that we titled the second book at the same time but so we always know it's going to be the notorious virtues and the glorious vices and it is due out very early next year so Jan Feb of 27 yeah so if you're like my daughter and won't start a series until you know this it's going to be complete rest assured it's going to have the second part so you can start on the first part this year and pick up the second part next year anyway oh and thank you so much for joining me and all the best with um the glorious vices thank you it's for a pleasure thanks for listening to MythMakers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Center for Fantasy visit oxfordcenterforfatasy.org to join in the fun find out about our online courses in person stays in Oxford plus visit our shop for great gifts tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide if the world were like a sleep number mattress everything would adapt for your comfort because as your life changes and your body changes sleep number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night and now it's the final days of our everything's on sale event save up to $1,200 on mattresses our Memorial Day event ends Monday to experience a whole new world of comfort visit a sleep number store or go to sleepnumber.com sleep number to a good life sleep