Interview: T. J. Martinson
In T. J. Martinson’s forthcoming novel, Her New Eyes, an experimental eye transplant with unexpected side effects upends the life of a sixty-eight-year-old florist living in modern-day Indiana. Soon after the procedure, the protagonist, Susan, begins receiving sporadic visions from another life. Yet, these visions aren’t coming from any old life—Susan is experiencing the life of none other than American icon Marilyn Monroe. The predicament rapidly grows serious as Susan starts physically transforming into the starlet herself, gradually losing her own life in the process. We follow Susan as she struggles to understand her shifting identity and retain her sense of self.
I appreciated the novelty of Martinson’s blending of history, speculation, and the commonplace—a glimpse into the humanity of an icon through the life of a seemingly mundane protagonist. Martinson’s dedication to language and immersive detail imbues the story with authenticity and leaves us asking questions about identity, iconography, and agency. In this interview, Martinson and I discuss the traditions of Marilyn Monroe storytelling, nonlinear structures, the art of the foil, and tonal blending.
—Kari Shemwell
Kari Shemwell: You aren’t the first person to tell a Marilyn Monroe story. We’ve long been fascinated by her life and demise. How do you think your work fits into this storytelling tradition?
T.J. Martinson: Marilyn Monroe fiction seems divided into three interrelated camps: the semifictionalized, literary biography (e.g., Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates), the alternative-conspiratorial history (e.g., Marilyn’s Red Diary by E. Z. Friedel), and the loose roman à clef (e.g., The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid). It feels precarious for me to say that my novel breaks from self-asserted traditions but suffice to say that the novel mostly washes its hands of realism and goes full tilt toward speculative fiction, foregoing faithful or conspiratorial recreation of Monroe’s biography; instead, her presence is primarily a character foil for the novel’s true main character, Susan. Susan is deeply conditioned by a distinctly Midwestern deference, at least in terms of her ability to articulate what she desires, much less exercise these desires (as a Midwesterner myself, I see and resent these traits in myself), whereas Monroe possesses a finely tuned will sharpened by her savvy maneuvering of a sexist mid-century film industry. So, when Monroe begins to take over Susan’s body, hijacking Susan’s life such that she can continue her own into the twenty-first century media landscape, Susan’s identity threatens to be washed away by the tidal wave of personality that is Marilyn Monroe. The tragedy of the novel, at least as I see it, isn’t relitigating Monroe’s tragedy but exploring Susan’s. Speculative fiction was the way to get there, insofar as it afforded the creative latitude to bring Monroe into a specific place, a specific time, and a specific person while toying around with the how and why of it all.
KS: The speculative element of this story requires a nonlinear structure. Really, in this novel it’s more like two storylines running parallel. In these types of structures, the reader never knows when they’ll be pulled from one storyline and thrust into another, but in this case, neither does the protagonist. How did you approach creating this structure?
TJM: The parallel storylines (Susan’s and Monroe’s) are meant to be very interruptive to one another, shifting point of view somewhat uncertainly and tugging us back and forth between persons and temporalities. Honestly, this technique was my favorite part of writing the novel. I wanted Monroe’s memories to feel at times arbitrary and other times very deliberate, perhaps arising in response to something Susan is experiencing or else arising spontaneously, the way memories often do. While I was working on Susan’s narrative, which for most of the novel is the more straightforward in terms of plot, I always had the option to take a break and work on short, flashlike stories for Marilyn. That approach became a really productive process, because when I’d find myself losing steam in one area of the story, I’d just jump into the other, and more often than not it would shake something loose on the other end; if nothing else, it kept me curious. When it came time to begin weaving the two storylines together, different arrangements would result in new juxtapositions, contradictions, or complementing themes I hadn’t ever foreseen, which is a magical feeling for any writer. I tried to take note of some overlap or tension I was seeing between the storylines and then revise with those new possibilities in mind.
KS: I love the idea of unforeseen dynamics arising while writing the story, of stories being so organic, ephemeral even. Like, if I sat down to write a sentence right now, it would be an entirely different sentence than if I’d sat down to write it one minute earlier, when another thought or smell or memory was passing through my mind. I think we can see those surprising moments appearing between these two foils, a sixty-eight-year-old woman who doesn’t see herself as particularly courageous or assertive and the bombastic public persona of Marilyn Monroe. Can you tell us about some of the surprising ways you found these two characters coming together?
TJM: An element of character I preach to my creative writing students, and something I often need to remind myself of when writing, is that good character foils have something in common with each other, something deep and maybe inexpressible, and it’s from this common desire or trait that the differences between them take on meaning and stakes. I wasn’t sure what this commonality was when writing the story, but I discovered it when arranging one of Monroe’s flashbacks, one where she is transitioning out of domestic life with her first husband and into the “industry.” As a part of that transition, she is beginning to rethink or repackage herself as a public commodity, shifting from the red-headed Norma Jean Baker to the blond Marilyn Monroe, which marks a poignant metamorphosis of identity, as she is essentially constructing a self-aware fiction that will, in some ways, take over previous constructions of her identity. When I slotted that particular story alongside a moment when Susan is beginning to really feel the “loss” of herself as Susan, it leapt out to me what these characters share beneath all their differences: a shifting sense of self that first distorts but then dictates their lived reality. From there, the contrast in how they preserve that sense of self and exercise personal agency becomes much more meaningful and three-dimensional.
KS: You’ve crafted a narrative voice in this novel that really strikes a balance between quiet literary realism (slice-of-life style) and the more unexpected, uncanny tones of many speculative pieces. Were there any challenges in finding that balance? Were you influenced by anything in particular?
TJM: A challenge for me was restraining some of my own impulses toward absurdism within speculative fiction; while it’s something I enjoy reading and while there is some of that in the novel, I didn’t want the novel to read as farcical or cynical, so I pruned a lot to strike a more sincere, subdued, and overall, eerie, feeling. Some of my tonal influences included Richard Flanagan’s The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, Laura van den Berg’s The Third Hotel, and pretty much anything from Margaret Atwood. There are others, of course, but all those authors I mentioned are so good at earning a speculative premise through the crafting of their characters, essentially anchoring a unique, far-fetched premise within a particular character’s psyche in a way that feels not only natural but necessary. As opposed to beginning with an imaginative premise but dropping into it a character who is meant to explore the limits of the premise rather than live it. I think anchoring the premise in character lends itself to that uncanny tone, because an already speculative world is further filtered through the perception and experience of a carefully crafted and fully realized character, enabling a sense of familiarity alongside the innate defamiliarization of speculative fiction. In writing the novel, I wanted to emulate those examples of character-driven speculation.
KS: How does this piece differ from previous works you’ve written? Do you see the whispers of your past stories and novels within this one?
TJM: The biggest difference is that when I was writing Her New Eyes, I didn’t necessarily have a “genre map” to follow. When I was writing my debut novel, The Reign of the Kingfisher (2019), which is a superhero story overlaid atop a mystery, I had at my disposal myriad conventions from both genres to help guide the plot or else deviate intentionally. Her New Eyes required a very different writing process, in large part because the speculative fiction writers I took inspiration from are all so distinct from each other. So, without really knowing in advance what beats and progressions I wanted to hit or avoid, the process felt a bit like walking a curious dog who wants to sniff after everything. The initial draft was all over the place—especially the plot, structure, voice—and most of the actual storytelling happened in revision once I could discern what the story actually was about. That said, there are plenty of echoes of past works. I’m a pretty nostalgic person, and that permeates just about everything I write—usually, the past interrupting the present. Not to mention, what’s really the difference between a superhero and Marilyn Monroe? They both captivate us, they exercise power, and they keep returning to us in some form or another, time and time again.
KS: That’s very true. Certain characters (real or imagined) never get old.
KARI SHEMWELL is a writer based in Kentucky. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. Her most recent publications include the Pushcart Prize-nominated story “Fish Head” from The Normal School; “This Road May Flood” in the Masters Review Volume V anthology; and the short story “Shirt Eater,” which was a finalist for the Lascaux Prize and published in The Lascaux Review. She currently teaches creative writing at Murray State University. Find her on Instagram @KariShemwell.
T.J. MARTINSON is the author of The Reign of the Kingfisher (Flatiron Books, 2019), Her New Eyes (Clash Books, 2025), and Blood River Witch (Counterpoint Press, 2026). His short fiction has appeared in [PANK], LIT Magazine,Permafrost Magazine, Pithead Chapel, JMWW, Heavy Feather Review, Midwestern Gothic, and others. He is currently an assistant professor of English at Murray State University. Find him on Instagram @tjmartinson.
