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Finn Longman

@finnlongman

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• Author: THE BUTTERFLY ASSASSIN trilogy; THE WOLF AND HIS KING; THE ANIMALS WE BECAME
• Medievalist specialising in the Ulster Cycle
• They/iel/siad
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COVER REVEAL 🦉 “You exist because of a crime, because of a curse, and because of a trick...” Blodeuedd never asked to be made. Created from flowers of oak, broom, and meadowsweet to marry a man cursed never to have a human wife, Blodeuedd has no knowledge of the world, no family outside the marriage, and no power to choose. But a caged animal still has claws, and Blodeuedd will find a way to be free, whatever the cost. Gwydion knows what it is to be unmade. Haunted by the years he served in animal form as punishment for his brother's crimes, Gwydion has turned his tricks to his nephew's happiness – and the creation of Blodeuedd is the greatest trick of them all. But his creation asks questions he cannot answer and drags from the depths of the forest the past he has been trying so hard to forget. Now they both must face their unmaking. *From the author of The Wolf and His King comes a spellbinding new novel retelling the medieval Welsh story of Blodeuwedd in a profound exploration of cyclical trauma and transformation.* THE ANIMALS WE BECAME is coming this November from @gollancz, and next year from @erewhonbooks. I am excited (and a little nervous!) to bring you all this book about gender, trauma, and compulsory heterosexuality, as expressed through nonconsensual animal transformations and deeply unreliable narrators. Also a fair smattering of medieval Welsh law, to be honest. It is both like TWAHK (it's medieval, it's about bodies in crisis, I got carried away with the historical thesaurus while editing it) and entirely unlike it (there's no romance, the sex is slightly more explicit, and I would describe the mood as less melancholy but angrier and certainly not *happier*). It also has more women in it, though the gender of the protagonists is a bit of a shrug and a noncommittal hand gesture situation. It is a very trans book. They're all having an absolute time of it with gender in this one. More details and preorder links are on my website! Why not pre-order while you're buying TWAHK in paperback? ;) Cover art once again by the wonderful @tomrobertsillustration, with cover direction by @rachael.lancaster! #books #fantasy The cover of THE ANIMALS WE BECAME by Finn Longman, featuring an owl emerging out of flowers against a starry background. Trees on either side are carved with deer, boar, and wolves blurring into each other with knotwork. by @finnlongman
193
2 months ago
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I wanted to share a still image of this lovely cover (art by @tomrobertsillustration) as well as the reel from earlier, so that you can properly appreciate the glorious colours and details of the artwork! THE WOLF AND HIS KING is a retelling of the twelfth-century poem 'Bisclavret', about a werewolf knight and the king who loves him. It's coming out from @gollancz in November and – exciting news for my US followers – from @erewhonbooks in January 🎉 It's a deeply medieval book: I've been asked whether it's a romance, and I don't consider it to be a Romance in the sense of modern genre romance, but on a plot level it IS a romance in the sense of "chivalric romance"! (There is, however, a lot of yearning, and it does have a happy ending, so it's not too far off the modern definition.) There is probably too much about parchment and manuscript production, there's rather a lot of Latin, and there is definitely more religion than is typical for queer fantasy novels, because I really wanted to embed it deeply in the material and intellectual culture of its ~12th-century setting. Tonally and stylistically it is very different to my YA novels; thematically, I would say there's overlap, as both are substantially exploring loneliness, bodily autonomy in the face of chronic illness/pain, and trying against all the odds to become a better version of yourself. I look forward to sharing more about it with you over the coming months :) #books #reading #fantasy #bookstagram #coverreveal #lgbtq #queerbooks #medieval #bisclavret #werewolf by @finnlongman
49
2 years ago
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That first night in her tiny flat, she cuts off her hair and her name... THE BUTTERFLY ASSASSIN trilogy is very different to THE WOLF AND HIS KING. YA thrillers about a traumatised teenage assassin trying (and failing!) to live a normal life in a fictional closed city in near-future Yorkshire, with no romance and some pointed political commentary about the arms trade, it's quite a different vibe from twelfth-century werewolves and yearning. But there are many of the same themes running through them: they're both ultimately about pain, about wanting control over your body and your life, and about being denied it by something inside you that takes and takes. They're also both about loneliness. But while TBA is a much darker, sadder book than TWAHK, I think they're also both about being seen at your worst and loved through it, even when sometimes that love is a challenge you're not ready to meet -- a challenge that demands you face the version of yourself you'd prefer to run from. If you've enjoyed TWAHK, then I can't 100% guarantee you'll also love TBA, because they're very different. Still, I'd encourage you to check it out, because you might be surprised by how much overlap there is. (Just be aware that being YA doesn't mean TBA pulls its punches when it comes to character deaths.) And if you loved TBA, then TWAHK might not be quite up your street, but on the other hand, it might be exactly what you're looking for -- this time in a slightly gentler package, with a little less trauma and murder involved... Full details and content notes for all my books are, as always, on my website. #books #reading #TheButterflyAssassin #UKYA #bookstagram #coverlove by @finnlongman
5
10 months ago
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Whew, rereading Moth to a Flame (the third book in my YA trilogy) was a strange experience. This book is carrying a lot of the emotional and thematic weight of the trilogy, and as a trilogy that is deeply concerned with the arms trade, everyday militarism, and structural/societal complicity in atrocities, those themes have only become more painfully topical and relevant since I finished writing this book in 2023. I knew I was writing about the real world -- I was doing it on purpose -- but I didn't expect these heartbreaks, horrors, and ethical challenges to become part of everyday life in the way that they have. Would I have written this book differently, if I were writing it now rather than in 2020-23? Of course, but that's because any book I write now is going to be different to a book I wrote six years ago, because I am different to the person I was six years ago. Still, I found this one more challenging than I expected: it felt like I wasn't just being asked to process the events of The Hummingbird Killer, but also to grapple with real violence and questions of justice and repair. And while that was always the goal of the series -- the authors' notes make that clear -- I feel it's intensified in ways I didn't entirely anticipate. But maybe that's just because I was experiencing it as a reader almost for the first time, rereading these after a pause. They're also themes I've returned to in my adult books: The Animals We Became is very much about guilt, separating justice from punishment, breaking cycles of violence, and trying to repair damage that can't be undone. Both books' handling of these themes is shaped by their plots, settings, and the perspective(s) of the viewpoint character(s), so ultimately it's up to readers to gauge if they think I came to the same conclusions in TAWB as I did here in MTAF. I found picking quotes hard, because a lot of the ones that are most meaningful to me are very long passages that wouldn't fit on the slides, or which only work in context. Here's what I went with in the end. Are there any quotes you would have picked that I left out, if you've read these books? Let me know in the comments. #books #reading #dystopia by @finnlongman
0
2 days ago
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I had SUCH a good time rereading The Hummingbird Killer! Don't get me wrong, it's an absolute bloodbath and precisely nobody is having a good time at any point in this book... but *I* was enjoying myself immensely. I think this is my favourite of the three. It's so lovely to come back to your own work three and a half years after publication and find so much in it that you think is great. I had a hard time picking quotes to include here, but I think the ones I've chosen do a good job of summing up the vibes of the book. This trilogy is about a traumatised teenage assassin who is trying and failing to live a normal life in a closed city in Yorkshire -- and in this book, she's not even trying, or rather, she's trying to live a normal life *at the same time* as working as a contract killer. But the blood seeps through and stains everything, and Isabel's double life can't last. This book is about violence, of course, and culpability, and the point at which you stop being able to pretend you don't care, and about how sometimes it's easier to give up and become the worst version of ourselves than to accept that maybe we could have made different choices. I do think this book felt way less YA than the first book; Isabel is now nineteen, living with an eighteen-year-old flatmate; she has a day job; most of her friends are adults. So while I think it's probably a better *book* than The Butterfly Assassin, it might be a weaker YA dystopia, by virtue of not fitting so neatly into that category. But for some readers, that crossover appeal might be a point in its favour! If you've read these, which book is your favourite? I would've done a poll, but I don't know how to do that on desktop 😅 Any favourite quotes that I missed? If you haven't read them, they're available now in paperback, ebook, and audio :) #books #YAfiction #dystopia by @finnlongman
0
2 days ago
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This weekend, I decided to reread my debut novel, The Butterfly Assassin, as well as the rest of the trilogy, and give all three books a brief feature on my grid. This was partly for the benefit of newer followers who might not have encountered my earlier work, and it also gave me an excuse to go back to them! I know some authors who never reread their own work, and I sympathise with that. It's extremely hard not to nitpick -- especially when returning to a project four and a half years after publication, when you've grown as a writer and a person and you're wondering how you might write it differently if you tackled it now. But that's why I wanted to focus on picking out quotes I enjoyed, so that I could keep my focus on what I love about my own work, not on constant self-criticism. It's too easy as writers to slip into that, and never to celebrate our achievements properly. I actually found a lot of lines that I liked, and really struggled to pick which ones to include here. Quite a few of my favourites also contained explicit spoilers, so I decided to stick to those which were a bit more ambiguous in terms of plot, for the sake of readers who haven't had the chance to check out my YA books yet. So, in the end, it wound up being a slightly random selection of my Kobo highlights 😅 But if you've read TBA, which quotes would you have included? Let me know in the comments! And if you haven't read it, The Butterfly Assassin is a YA dystopian thriller about a traumatised teenage assassin trying and failing to live a normal life in a closed city in Yorkshire. Paperback copies are increasingly rare (so if you want one, go grab one now) but it's also available in ebook and audiobook in all the usual places. #books #reading #YAbooks by @finnlongman
10
3 days ago
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The last quote from The Wolf and His King that I'm sharing for now – I think I've thrown enough of them at you, don't you? If you haven't picked up TWAHK yet, maybe these will have encouraged you to do so. It's out now wherever books are sold (ebook, audiobook etc everywhere, paperback in most places, hardback in North America until January). I did quite a lot of research into medieval hunting when I was writing this book, including spending a bunch of time looking at actual medieval hunting manuals – there are some beautiful manuscripts from a couple of hundred years after the twelfth century setting of this book, so it's a great place to look for lovely miniatures and illustrations. I put only a fraction of what I learned on the page, in the end, but I like to think some of it sneaks through in the metaphors and imagery. Anyway, I could have chosen a lot of different verse passages for this final quote. I picked this one in part because it's NOT one I ever see quoted, and also for the melodrama. #TheWolfAndHisKing #fantasy #books by @finnlongman
10
6 days ago
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Me promoting The Wolf And His King before it came out: "This is my happiest and most light-hearted book to date!" Literally all the early reviews: "So this book is about grief..." In fairness the bar was on the ground. Have you READ my YA books? (No? Time to fix that.) But it is also possible I am not the best judge of these things. I have never claimed to be writing genre romance or romantasy or cosy fiction (for all it might be quite intimate and character-focused), so the tone felt light enough to ME, but I realise some people's expectations were not shaped by the absolute bloodbath of my earlier novels, and that might have skewed the scale a bit. Anyway, most of this quote – if not all of it – can be found among the very oldest lines I wrote for this book, way back in 2019, because the first thing I drafted was a brief fragment of the king out hunting and encountering the wolf. From the very beginning, it emerged in second person. I've also realised, collecting these quotes, that I talk about syllables a lot in this book. I suppose there's an orality to it, an echo of spoken poem and sung story. #TheWolfAndHisKing #books #fantasy by @finnlongman
0
7 days ago
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Last few quotes as part of this brief flurry of giving TWAHK a moment in the spotlight before I let TAWB take over my feed. These lines hold a very special place in my heart. Bisclavret's werewolfism is literal, but it's also a metaphor for chronic illness and disability, and sometimes that's more obvious than at other times. And it was also deeply important to me to engage authentically with medieval Christianity and the worldview of my characters, allowing them to have complex and multifaceted relationships with the faith that shapes their world, although it remains a background part of the story and not a central focus. This line, about shepherds and absence from church and tending the animal in one's skin, was a late addition to the book, and came from a conversation with my Heresy Reader / Catholic Consultant about Confession and expectations regarding church attendance in this period. In the search for accuracy of vibes, I came to this image and metaphor that I loved, which greatly improved the paragraph. #TheWolfAndHisKing #fantasy #books #historical by @finnlongman
0
7 days ago
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Some more lines from The Wolf and His King for you – giving this book a moment in the spotlight before I shift my focus to talking about The Animals We Became. The quotes I'm sharing are a mixture of lines I really like, and lines that I feel do a good job of conveying the overall themes and ideas of the book in a brief snippet (not always the same lines!) – and avoiding too many spoilers, for those who haven't read it yet. If you've read the book, which lines would you include? Background image is Tom Roberts' lovely wrap-around art for the cover. #TheWolfAndHisKing #fantasy #books by @finnlongman
0
7 days ago
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Some more lines from The Wolf and His King for you – giving this book a moment in the spotlight before I shift my focus to talking about The Animals We Became. The quotes I'm sharing are a mixture of lines I really like, and lines that I feel do a good job of conveying the overall themes and ideas of the book in a brief snippet (not always the same lines!) – and avoiding too many spoilers, for those who haven't read it yet. These ones I chose in part because they reflect the overlap between this book and my PhD research on friendship in medieval literature! If you've read the book, which lines would you include? Background image is Tom Roberts' lovely wrap-around art for the cover. #TheWolfAndHisKing #fantasy #books by @finnlongman
3
7 days ago
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Some more lines from The Wolf and His King for you – giving this book a moment in the spotlight before I shift my focus to talking about The Animals We Became. These lines are favourites of a few people, which is always nice to see. The quotes I'm sharing are a mixture of lines I really like, and lines that I feel do a good job of conveying the overall themes and ideas of the book in a brief snippet (not always the same lines!) – and avoiding too many spoilers, for those who haven't read it yet. If you've read the book, which lines would you include? Background image is Tom Roberts' lovely wrap-around art for the cover. #TheWolfAndHisKing #fantasy #books by @finnlongman
14
8 days ago
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