Finn McLellan (they/he) is an autistic disabled transmasc butch fantasy writer, hailing from the wilds of the northern UK.
When they’re not writing they’re busy immersing themselves in a variety of ridiculous hobbies, most of which also involve disappearing into fantasy worlds and/or waving swords at people.
Author Links:
Website: saranadosfiction.com
Introduction to: Argentum in Aqua
Bluesky: house-of-five.bsky.social
Mastodon: wandering.shop/@house_of_five
Patreon: patreon.com/saranadosfiction
Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/saranadosfiction
Why choose Gothic Gaslamp as a fantasy setting for your serial, Argentum in Aqua?
So, honestly, that happened somewhat by accident! I’ve been fascinated by the Gothic ever since I was old enough to start reading Victorian literature – both Dracula and The Woman in White were very much formative influences – and, when I started writing my own fiction, I knew that I wanted to experiment with some of the same tropes and feelings.
I’ve also always loved fantasy, and when I started creating my own fantasy world to set stories in (or, at least, a more fleshed out version of some of the worlds I’d been experimenting with before that point), the Gothic influences just ended up bleeding into it because I was writing about things I enjoyed and focusing on building a world I wanted to spend time in.
(Knowing that what I was writing was called gaslamp fantasy came a lot later – I’d been calling it dark/low fantasy for a while and being mildly irritated that that description didn’t quite fit, and then came across the term in the context of Girl Genius [seeing as the term was coined to describe that particular comic originally] and had a sudden moment of ‘oh, hang about, that’s what this is!’)
How has your writing – and the serial itself – developed since the first installment in 2018?
Hooboy. So the easy answer to that is ‘I got better at writing’ (which is definitely true, and part of the reason that I’m banned from editing the early chapters until this draft of the trilogy’s finished, because otherwise I’ll just get distracted trying to rewrite things), but there’s a wee bit more to it than that.
When I started posting chapters in 2018, I didn’t actually plan on making Argentum a serial at all – I thought I’d post a few chapters as a teaser, then write the whole thing offline, then self-publish. Turns out that people actually reading and commenting on your writing is a whole lot of fun, and that having readers is a very good way of making my brain remember that writing is something I enjoy doing, and thus serialisation occurred.
What that’s meant in terms of the serial itself is that the chapters have become a wee bit more self-contained, and I’ve wound up doing a lot more thinking about balance in POVs – who have we seen a lot of recently, who might readers want to see more of this month, and so on. It’s also meant that I’ve become a lot less worried about how many words I’m writing and how long the books are going to end up being: the story will take as long as it takes, and that’s fine.
While writing the serial, have any characters surprised you in terms of their arcs and development, or has everything gone according to plan?
Oh, my crew – and half the secondary characters, in fact – seem to absolutely delight in surprising me on the regular, which means there’re a whole lot of arcs and plotlines which have absolutely not gone the way I originally expected them to.
As a very obvious example, Anneke (who I’m going to talk more about in a moment) was originally intended to be a one-scene secondary character who showed up to explain some plot to one of the MCs, provide a little comic relief along the way, and then promptly exit stage left to go have their own adventures somewhere else. Instead, they showed up, took one look at Fest (the MC in question) and apparently decided that he a) wasn’t going to get anywhere without their help and b) could really do with a new best friend (which, honestly, I’m not going to argue with).
Also one of my villains decided to play with poisons almost entirely off his own bat, which was an unexpected surprise. Though… we’ll see how that pans out for him.
Other than your MC, which character do readers love, and which do they love to hate?
So you remember I mentioned Anneke just now? Turns out that a loudly opinionated very autistic priest of the goddess of liminal spaces and transitions with a small pile of deeply specific academic grudges is exactly the kind of person several of my readers absolutely love – I actually feel a wee bit bad that the fact that Silver in the Ashes is mainly set outside the city means that we don’t see more of them.
But hey, the next book’s back in the city proper, and they’ve not been idle while the crew’s been away. In terms of love to hate, I think that crown very much has to go to Avebury, who’s the lead player in my villainous trio.
He’s a smug, arrogant, bigoted [unprintable] who’s very much the kind of person who thinks that calling someone a ‘credit to your species’ or telling someone that they’re ‘doing remarkably well despite your obvious disadvantages’ in a calm and polite voice is an excellent idea, and that anyone who gets upset about that kind of thing is just showing exactly why he’s right to believe himself superior to them… and that’s before we get into the murder, blackmail, poisoning, manipulation, and everything else he’s got going on.
How do you approach queerness and queer identity in your work, and what informs this approach?
So in terms of Argentum, I’m very much writing a world where queerness is just seen as a natural part of life (to the point that it’s widely known and accepted that magical physical transition is a service offered by temples). That doesn’t mean there’s no bigotry at all around it, but it’s personal rather than societal and generally limited to words rather than actions – it’s perfectly legal and generally seen as unremarkable for two men to get married, for instance, but a small number of folk might make snide comments or refuse to refer to them as husbands because of personal prejudice.
On a specific (non-exhaustive) note regarding queer identity among the crew, Viola and Archer are both quite open about the fact that they’re attracted to people of their own gender (Viola’s a lesbian, while Archer’s bi), and wouldn’t generally expect to attract more than a raised eyebrow or a muttered comment as far as negative reactions go. Sabbat, on the other hand, is very explicitly not open about the fact he’s trans, though in his case that’s much more to do with wanting to keep his private life private (though he did also have a bad experience with being outed when he was younger).
Part of why I’m writing it that way is a desire to write a story where neither I nor my readers have to worry about encountering the kind of bigotry we might in the real world in that regard, and part of it is, honestly, wish fulfilment – I’d love to live in a world where physical transition just involved going to a temple and getting a tattoo!
If you had to pick 3 things you want readers to take away from your work, what would they be?
Ai-yah, ask me a hard one why don’t you? No, but for serious, this one is tricky because I’m very much someone who writes with the story in mind rather than the message (with the exception of some of my short stories, which are very much more message-forward). If you sit me down and make me choose, though:
1) You don’t have to go through awful things on your own. If you’re struggling, talk to someone you trust and who cares about you, and let them help you.
2) Just because bigotry’s wrapped up in nice words and a posh accent doesn’t make it not bigotry.
3) Trans folk can be heroes too – and, more specifically to this story, we can be heroes who’re more grey and more complex just as much as cis folk can. (Also trans guys and trans masc folk are just as much allowed to swear and drink and smoke and behave in ‘adult’ ways as any other adults – we’re grown, not children who can’t be trusted with our own bodily autonomy).
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