steampunk

One of my projects this year has been fleshing out the on-demand version of the live class I teach, “Hex Engines & Spell-Slingers: Writing Steampunk and Weird Western.” I recently finished up the project and wanted to share some of the results.

Here’s the sections and the suggested reading lists.

Everybody’s tried to make a meal they mess up. A pile of perfectly good ingredients that just won’t come together into something palatable despite our best efforts. And when time and money and supplies are tight, sometimes tossing out the pot and starting over is not an option.

In each act of my new spacepunk steam opera novel, FLOTSAM, the four-person airship crew sits down to a meal. They come together to eat, to debate, and to problem solve. Their thoughts in these scenes are filled with worry over finding work, getting paid, keeping the ship in good repair, and staying out of trouble long enough to spend any money left after that.

Each meal is a backdrop to what’s going on in the story at that moment: an easy, familiar meal to celebrate getting away from a confrontation in one piece; a load of their favorite takeout as distraction from unpleasant news; and, finally, a dinner that goes horribly wrong before coming together in the end.

I have enough coming out in 2018 that some of the different campaigns are colliding a bit. Some are self-pubbed projects, others are with presses but I’m helping with the marketing where I can.

If you’re someone who would like a review copy or copies of any of the following, please drop me a line with your contact info, where your reviews appear, title(s), what format you prefer, and where to send it. I don’t mind sending e-copies out to people who want to review it on Amazon, GoodReads, etc, but be aware that requests for physical copies may both take longer and that I have a limited number available, so I try to send those where I get the most bang for the buck that’s coming out of my pocket. If you’ve got a podcast and would like me to appear, I’m happy to send copies of my work beforehand.

Here’s the list of what’s coming in 2018 in alphabetical order:

Creating an Online Presence for Writers, 3rd edition. (Plunkett Press). Nonfiction, covers how to create and maintain an online presence in order to build a writerly brand and sell books. Appearing in July.

Godfall and Other Stories by Sandra Odell is a collection from Hydra House that I’m editing. These stories are both fantasy and science fiction, and are usually on the darker side, with occasional flashes of humor. They’re wrenchingly strong at times, and I’m very excited to be one of the people making this book real. Appearing in mid-April.

Hearts of Tabat (WordFire Press). Novel, secondary world fantasy. While this is the second book of the Tabat Quartet, you do not need to have read Beasts of Tabat to understand it. Appearing in mid-May.

If This Goes On (Parvus Press) is an anthology of political science fiction focusing on what the world will look like a generation from now. Open for submissions through the end of March, the anthology will appear in conjunction with the 2018 elections.

Moving From Idea to Finished Draft. (Plunkett Press) Nonfiction writing book based on this class, which contains stories illustrating each section. Appearing in April.

Tales of Tabat (Plunkett Press) is a collection of all the short stories and novelettes set in Tabat, including several pieces original to the collection. I’ve got that tentatively slated for September.

The World Made Flash. Plunkett Press. A collection of all my flash pieces along with several essays about writing very short fiction should appear in July.

I am also re-releasing my first solo fantasy collection, Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlightin print form, and a new version of steampunk collection Altered America with the horrible typos removed in both electronic and print form.

If you’re promoting your own book this year and are interested in doing a guest post here, let me know! Here’s my guidelines for guest posts.

This is the short story that I read from at Norwescon this year; many thank yous to the people who turned out to listen on the last day of the con when many of us were tired and hungover and ready to go home and gorge on Easter candy.

This is part of the Altered America steampunk series, even though it takes place on the European continent. If you’re curious about the others in the series they fall in this chronological order:

Clockwork Fairies
Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?
Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart
Snakes on a Train
Rappacini’s Crow
Rare Pears and Greengages (contained in Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight)

There will be more; I’m finishing up another Artemus and Elspeth story, this time set in Matamoros, Mexico, which should go up next month. I’m also collecting these in an ebook that will go out free to Patreon subscribers within the next two months.

As always, I’m releasing this for free due to the support of my Patreon followers; please check out Patreon if you want to help fund creators doing what they (and you) love best.

So here you are:

Web of Blood and Iron

The Hotel Gevaudan put manservants and maids up in their own rooms, one attic below the hotel staff: housekeepers, valets, clerks, kitchen help. The manager lived on-site as well, his family taking up half the floor below that. I’d heard his children more than once playing blind man’s bluff and squeak piggy squeak in the back stairwells.

I wouldn’t have minded a room to myself, but instead I had a cot in his Lordship’s suite, down on the third floor. I was lying there enjoying the Cannes sounds of birds and street bustle and funeral rumble of the trains and reading when I heard the door fumbled open and Lord Albert lurch in.

Alive for another day.

This is a children’s steampunk retelling of Sleeping Beauty; I originally wrote it for the Fairypunk project, but I wanted to get it out here and figured there’s plenty of other fairy tales I can tackle when it’s time.

Seven Clockwork Angels, All Dancing on a Pin

If a clock has ticked, it must tock, and thus time moves along. And in every tick and tock, there’s a story, and sometimes more than one.

Once upon a tick and tock, there was a great Lord and a greater Lady, who were Patrons of the Arts and Sciences. They endowed libraries and laboratories, and commissioned portraits and poems and marvelous machines that could play chess or spin a silk thread so fine you could barely see it or that could even build their own, tinier machines to make tinier machines in turn, and so on and so on, until they produced the head of a pin inhabited by seven clockwork angels, all dancing.

The Lord and Lady loved the works they commissioned, but they yearned to produce something of their own. And one day it came to pass that the Lady announced to her Lord that they had collaborated very well indeed, and that she would soon produce an heir.

Their daughter was fine and fair. They named her Aurora, after the Aurora Borealis, and to celebrate her christening, they invited all the scientists and artists and musicians and philosophers and inventors they had helped.

The day of the christening, Aurora was given amazing gifts: a pair of spectacles that could see everything from the smallest cell to the farthest star; a flowering garden whose trees produced avocado pears and pineapples, cherries and peaches, all from the same branch; a clock that could tell her the time on the moon and predict the next three days’ weather with reasonable accuracy; a talking parasol that recited cheerful limericks in the morning to amuse her and long, languorous epics in the evening to lull her to sleep; and sundry other delightful devices and contraptions, each more cunning than the last.

Happy Monday to everyone. Here’s a piece of fiction for you, “Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?” It’s steampunk, and it fits into the world I think of as Altered America, a steampunk setting where one of the pivotal events, referenced in this story, is Abraham Lincoln deciding to use zombies in the Civil War.

Other pieces of this world are shown in Rappacini’s Crow, Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart, and Snakes on a Train. At some point this will become a novel — you may notice characters are converging on Seattle, where most of the action will take place, and I’ve got some stories in the works, most notably a novella, “Blue Train Blues,” about a high stakes race between car and train across a landscape plagued with vampires.

This is a Patreon post, funded by the generous patrons listed here. If you’d like to see more of these stories, consider becoming a patron.

Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?

Jemina noticed the Very Small Person the moment the little girl entered the train. The child paused in the doorway to survey the car before glancing down at her ticket and then at the other half of the hard wooden bench, high-backed, its shellac peeling, that Jemina sat on. Jemina tucked the macrame bag beside her in with her elbow.

The child was one of the last passengers on, which was why Jemina had been hoping against hope to have the bench to herself, at least for part of the two day trip to Kansas City. The train began to roll forward, a hoot of steam from the engine, a bell clang from the caboose at the back of the train, the rumble underfoot making the little blonde girl pick her way with extra caution, balancing the small black suitcase in one hand against the pillowy cloth bag in the other.

She arrived mid-car beside Jemina and nodded at her as she struggled briefly to hoist her suitcase up before the elderly man across the aisle did it for her. She plumped the cloth bag in the corner between sidearm and back and sat down with a little noise of delight as she looked around. Catching herself at the noise, she blushed, fixed her gaze sternly forward as she folded her hands in her lap, and peeped at Jemina sidelong.

Jemina tried to imagine how she might appear. She knew herself thin but nicely dressed and pale-skinned. The lace at her throat was Bruges, the cross around her neck gold, the gloves on her hands white and clean. She looked like a school-teacher, she imagined, but not a particularly nice one. She felt her lips thin further at the thought.

Steampunk continues to manifest as a genre, although it seems to me it’s not as relentless in its novelty as it used to be. Perhaps once you have reached the point of being parodied in a Key and Peale episode, you cannot claim to be cutting edge anymore? Not to mention that I’ve found steampunk jewelry making kits at the local craft store and the local Value Village flyers featured “How to Make a Steampunk Costume” along with Pirate, Vampire, Zombie, Superhero, and Sexy Barista.

I love the texture of steampunk and have been enjoying seeing continued riffs on a theme that has a long way to go before it’s played out. Here’s six that I’ve enjoyed in the past couple of years. It is by no means an exhaustive list, but each of these bring in aspects of other genres in a way that showcases how much life such a mixture can produce.

Clockwork Lives by Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart The book description had me at “steampunk Canterbury Tales” and it’s got some of that adventure’s flavor as it moves along following the adventures of Marinda Peake as she strives to make her life worthy of her father’s legacy. I picked up the lovely hardcover version of the book, which is very prettily put together, complete with facsimile marbled endpapers, high-grade paper, and nice illustrations.

City of the Saints: A Scientific Romance in Four Parts by D. J. Butler There’s a frenzied genius to Butler’s cast of characters, which includes Richard Burton, Samuel Clemens, and Edgar Allen Poe, all turned into intelligence agents vying with each other and the agents of the Kingdom of Deseret against a background of a Utah transmogrified by the steampunk filter into something rich and tangily textured. This book is fun not just for the quick-paced story but as an alternate history that plays with a number of known characters in ways that only add to their legendary nature.

The Emperor’s Edge by Lindsay Buroker. Buroker is a great example of what indie publishing can be. I came to her Emperor’s Edge series because she’d offered the first one free for the Kindle. Smart strategy on her part, because they’re fun fantasy romps that are addictive as crack, with a cast of characters that are entertaining and engaging, and a slow simmering love story that stretches out over the course of the series.

The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato. The Clockwork Dagger is the first of a series; the sequel appeared this June. Another strong romantic subplot, but the focus is the journey of Octavia Leander as she struggles to understand her growing healing powers. It’s an unexpectedly satisfying book, and I’ve got the sequel queued up and in my TBR pile.

Cold Magic by Kate Elliot. The first of a terrific trilogy, this combines epic adventure and steampunk as the orphaned Catherine Barahal travels through a pseudo-Victorian world caught up in the middle of social upheaval. One of the joys of big fat fantasy book series is knowing that you’re in for a good, long ride, and Elliott delivers that in spades. (And if you haven’t read her before, you’re welcome. She’s one of the underestimated fantasy writers, IMO.)

A Thousand Perfect Things by Kay Kenyon. Kenyon writes some of the best social science fiction around, and here she turns that skill to steampunk. The warring countries of Anglica and Bharata meet on a mystical bridge that spans the sea distance between them, and the description of that mode of travel continues to resonate in my head as one of the most interesting landscapes fantasy has to offer.

Crooked by Richard Pett. Imagine Lovecraftian steampunk, with machineries of flesh and rot, and mysterious elixirs of immortality, and you might come close to Crooked. Eerie and wonderful, it’s a marvelous and chilling read that shows how steampunk Cthulhu can becomes.

And here’s a bonus that I ran across while researching links for this post, and found a must-buy: The Diabolical Miss Hyde, by Viola Carr. The description made it irresistible. I love books that pay tribute to classics by reworking them in interesting ways, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a particular favorite of mine. I’ve saving this read for sometime when I want to curl up and lose myself for a while.

#sfwaauthors #sfwaauthor

Hello! If you’re new to this blog, this story is part of my Patreon campaign, which you can support here.

This story is a prequel to Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart; I’m working on a third involving Elspeth and Artemus. Other stories in this world include Rappacini’s Crow and Clockwork Fairies.

Snakes on a Train

Elspeth folded her hands in her lap, trying to keep her brows from knitting. She hated trains.

They were dirty, with bits of smut and coal blown back from the massive brass and aluminum steam engine pulling them along, and engrimed by successions of previous passengers.

They were noisy, from the engine’s howl to the screech of the never-sufficiently-greased axles as they rocketed along the steel rails with their steady pocketa-pocketa-pocketa chug seeping up through the swaying floor.

And they were oppressively full of people, all thinking things, all pressing down on her Sensitive’s mind, making her shrink down into the hard wooden seat as though the haze of thoughts hung like coal-smoke in the air and if she sank low enough, she’d avoid it.

She glanced over at her fellow Pinkerton agent, who returned her look with his own slightly quizzical if impersonal gaze. All of the curiosity of their fellow passengers was directed at him, perhaps the first mechanical being they’d ever seen, with silver and brass skin and curly hair, eyebrows, and moustache of gilded wire.

Working on a dieselpunkish piece, tentatively entitled “The Blue Train.” People may notice I tend to skip around a bit on project. By my guess, I think I’ve got about a dozen pots boiling at any given time, and at least two of those, right now at least, are longer works. I think this one will end up a reasonable length of around 5k, though.

By six PM, his lordship was up and ready to be shaved and dressed. I had sandwiches sent up, something to tide him over till he went out. His haggard eyes were pouched and heavy as though he hadn’t slept.

“Where to tonight?” I asked as I stirred the lather, smelling of bay rum, and spread it over the black shadows on his jawline.

“Jenkins,” he said. “He’s set up some sort of game in his car on the train. Says it will be novel.”

“Novel” is not a word one likes to hear from an older vampire. So often their ideas of novelty involve pain.

“Have the front desk call me a taxi.” He studied his lapels, fingering the wide black expanse, before he held out an arm and I placed his watch, freshly wound, on his wrist. Gold, not silver. A showy piece, but one vampires would appreciate. They like gaudy on other people.

He looked at me. “Do you want to come?”

He hadn’t asked me that before. It wouldn’t be anything new to have me there waiting on him while he gambled, but previously I’d avoided the vampires. They like nonhuman blood more than human and they’re not hesitant about feeding on servants. Would his presence keep me safe?

But there were tired blue shadows under his eyes. He needed backup. He needed a friend there.

His servant would have to do.

It’s been fun, but lots of research in an era I haven’t done much with. Otoh, the point of divergence from our own is almost a century earlier so lots of leeway.

This is the steampunk world (Altered America) I’ve been writing in lately, and I’m pleased to say Beneath Ceaseless Skies just took another of the stories set in it, “So Little Comfort.” The title of this story is “Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?”

She was awake. She jolted upright, disturbing Laurel, who said something drowsily. Jemina stroked her hair with her right hand, settled the child back into her lap. Her heart still hammered uncomfortably.

She looked out the window into the darkness and could see only the reflection of the car’s interior for a moment. Then as her eyes picked out detail, she saw the stars hanging far overhead, the blaze of the Milky Way, a curdle of starlight spilling over the plains that rolled out as far as the eye could see.

Chuggadrum, chuggadrum, the sound of the wheels underfoot, the everpresent vibration working its way through her body as they hurtled through the night towards Seattle.

They’d promised her a laboratory of her own. A budget. Assistants.

Things she could do without interference. That was worth a lot, for a woman in a field that held so few other of her sex.

“I have nightmares sometimes too,” Laurel said.

Jemina’s hand sleeked over the curve of Laurel’s skull, cloth sliding over glossy hair.
“We all do.”

“What are yours about?”

“The war. What about yours?”

Laurel lay silent so long that Jemina thought she had gone back to sleep. But finally she said, “How my parents died.”

Jemina’s fingers stilled as though frozen. She waited.

“We were in the house and they came,” Laurel said. “My uncle said they were supposed to stay on the battlefield and no one knew they went the wrong way.”

Her voice was subdued, thoughtful.

“It would have been all right, but papa heard them at the door and he went and opened it. That was how they got in.”

Jemina saw in her mind’s eye, despite her attempt to force it away, the scene: the man mowed down, devoured with that frightening completeness that zombies had, before they moved on to the rest of the house…

“How did you get away?” she asked.

“I jumped out the window and ran away. I tried to get my brother first, but it was too late, so I ran.”

“Your brother?”

“He was just a baby. He couldn’t run.” Laurel moved her head in slow negation. “Too late.”

Jemina closed her eyes, feeling the story wrenching at her heart.

These things happened in war. They were sad, yes, but unavoidable.

The wheels screeched as the train unexpectedly slowed. Both of them sat up to look out the window.

“Whose are those men?” Laurel asked.

“I don’t know.” But she suspected the worst, given the fact that the group had their bandanas tugged up around their faces, that many had pistols or Springfield rifles in their hands.

“They’re bandits!” Laurel’s voice was excited.

“Yes,” Jemina admitted.

They waited. Around them, everyone was abuzz, but stayed in their seats.

The front door of the car swung open and two men entered, both holding pistols, red cloth masking everything except their eyes. Both were hatless, their stringy hair matted with dust and sweat.

“We’re looking for a fellow name of J. Iarainn,” one called to the car at large. “You here, Mr. Iarainn? If not, I’m going to start shooting people one by one, cause according to the manifest, you’re in this car.”

Jeminia held up a hand. “I am Jemina Iarainn.”

Her gender astonished them. They squinted at her before exchanging glances.

“You’re headed to Seattle and the War Institute to work? Some kinda necromancery?”

“Yes to Seattle, yes to the War Institute. No to necromancy. I hold joint degrees in medicine and engineering, specializing in artificial limbs.”

Exasperation kept her calm. Why should these dunces not believe a female scientist could exist? And necromancy — she was, by far, tired of that label. She worked with devices for the products of such technology, but she wielded the forces of science, of steam and electricity and phlogiston.