ATommy Muncie has wanted to be so many things that he’s lost count, but still ended up writing about all of them. He creates future worlds and watches his characters destroy themselves as they follow their hopes and dreams from Earth to space and back. And just sometimes, they’re allowed moments of triumph.

Shadow’s Talent is his début novel and book one of The Talent Show series, four years in the making, and completed while doing volunteer work for the National Trust. Tommy’s ‘real world’ career has taken him from the slopes of Somerset to the south coasts, and he hopes for a long lifetime of outdoor graft and voracious typing combined.

Anthony Vicino: What started you on your writing journey?

Tommy Muncie: I was seven years old and the first story I ever wrote was about me being a space explorer, because we were doing space and planets at school and my teacher built it into our English lessons as well.

It really wasn’t a case of ‘I’m destined to write sci-fi’ but it’s a nice fit when I look back on it now. I was one of those kids who liked fiction before he could even read, and plenty of adults who knew me as a kid remember me saying I wanted to be an author. I wrote garbage all the way through my school years trying to get as good as my heroes, and I carried it on into my early twenties and I thought ‘I still like this, let’s actually try making a go of it.’

AV: Are there any topics/themes in particular that recur in your fiction?

Tommy Muncie: All my books so far center around the idea of people trying to get back what they’ve lost. Even the people who are trying to change the way they live or even who they are find themselves doing it, because what they’re trying to get back is respect for themselves, or sometimes the respect of others.

Then there’s the importance of telling the truth, and the consequences of not telling it. If anyone asked me what the two Carnathia’s Underground books are really about, it’s that. After I wrote them and worked that out, I realised that’s a pretty big theme in the Talent Show books as well. Given all this ‘fake news’ crap that’s around at the moment, I feel like now’s the time to be writing about that sort of message!

AV: What makes for a great story in your eyes?

Tommy Muncie: There has to be a question I’m desperate to have answered, or several, and the sense that the reward for reading it will be some sort of discovery or revelation. It’s why I love crime fiction and mystery at least as much as sci-fi. Maybe that’s what makes a great page-turner rather than a story though, because I think the story comes from the character – it has to belong to them and not just happen to them. They have to have a personal stake in what goes on in the book, and they have to be someone the reader feels is worth the time.

AV: You started your publishing career with Shadow’s Talent. Tell us about that story and what made it special enough to tell?

Tommy Muncie: It’s the story of a young man about to turn 18 who wants to be a spacecraft pilot. He’s already tested well for the aptitude, but society in the 2200’s only tends to recruit people from a particular class. Or unless you’re recommended by people who are. Good news for Shadow then, he’s about to start meeting people like that, after being witness to a high profile murder and creating a big stir with his witness testimony.

What I think made it special enough to tell, for me, was the depth I managed to get out of what sounds pretty simple. I spent three years writing stories with Shadow and the people around him before it all made sense, and before I had the confidence to hit publish with a draft I thought was good enough, but along the way I realised this story had potential to be part of something huge. I don’t mean huge in terms of bookselling success, I mean it in terms of world-building. A lot of my writing heroes do long books with complex worlds, and this was the story that made me think ‘I’ve got my first shot at doing the same right here!’

AV: What’s your favorite thing about the character, Shadow?

Tommy Muncie: The way he constantly pushes his luck. It’s what I find admirable and tragic about him all at the same time – enough is never enough for him, and he’s always hearing that voice that says ‘maybe you should stop here’ but he just can’t help himself. He sometimes tries, and at one point in Ghost of the Navigator I even convinced myself he had chance of becoming different, but it couldn’t last.

It’s my favourite part of him because a character like that is impossible to run out of ideas with. And it’s part of what makes him a daredevil, which is pretty fun to write about.

AV: You shifted your attention for awhile to focus on Carnathia’s Underground series which follows a shapeshifting assassin. Tell us a bit more about that story and what it’s all about.

Tommy Muncie: Carnathia is a planet I created in the Talent Show series, which to most of the Earth population is unreachable. I decided not to wait until Talent Show Book 3 (when interplanetary travel really comes into play) to start exploring it. I tried some shorter stories set on it and some Wikipedia-style writing, and the best thing that came out of it was the story of Screft, the shapeshifter, It’s partly a story about how people often see what they want to.

The two CU books are the story of how and why Screft is trying to change himself into a human permanently, how he tricks Oscar into helping him, and the people in both their lives who would love any excuse to ruin everything for both of them.

AV: How does Fighter’s Mark compare to Shadow’s Talent?

Tommy Muncie: I feel like I took Fighter’s Mark less seriously. Shadow’s Talent had a deeper, more reflective feel about it that drew on some of the more literary authors I’ve read as well as SF. Fighter’s Mark is…well, I still like the description I came up with one night on my blog: ‘If Quentin Tarantino and Clive Barker got drunk one night and said “Let’s do a sci-fi project together” it might have turned out something like this.’ Not that I think I’m worthy of my heroes or anything, but that’s the kind of vibe I had.

Fighter’s Mark is also easier to read. Its style makes it more of a page turner. Shadow’s Talent is the slow-burn sort of crime mystery.

 

AV: Have you changed your approach/process of writing since you first sat down to write Shadow’s Talent?

Tommy Muncie: Honestly, I don’t think so. When I look at what I was doing, the kind of writing habits I had and how I re-worked and refined a novel into the finished product, I can’t see much difference.

I hate regimental writing routines and never have a set slot in the day where I force myself to write. I’m a hardcore discovery writer, or ‘pantser’ as it’s better known to other writers.

As long as I’m putting pen to paper and getting a book down, it doesn’t really matter when, or how many words I get on a particular session. Sometimes I get 500, sometimes I get 5K. When I got to the end of GotN, I was working at a trickle, then one day just decided ‘Door locked, music on, let’s finish this’ and got 11k in one afternoon in the time it usually took me to get 4 or 5.

AV: I know you’re working on the third book in The Talent Show series at the moment. What can we expect from that story, and when can we look forward to seeing it on the shelves?

Tommy Muncie: The biggest thing about this book is that the surviving cast of the Carnathia’s Underground books are going to meet some of the Talent Show cast and interlock the two in the continuing story of both worlds. You can read the TS books without having read CU.

Deception Crossing is the book that takes the TS series out into the big wide universe. I’m drawing on the influence of writers like George RR Martin and James Clavell and Peter F Hamilton this time around: big worlds, big cast of characters, high stakes to play for and loads of gambit pile-ups.

It won’t get released until next year, that much I can pretty well guarantee. By the time I’m ready to book my editor, it’ll probably mean March 2018 before I can look at a release date.

AV: Where can readers find/connect with you online? Feel free to pimp your wares here! Thanks, Tommy!

You can find my author blog and website at http://www.tommymuncie.com

I don’t have a massive social media presence, but I do like twitter: https://twitter.com/Chacron

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