Book Release Day: Among Friends (stand-alone novelette)

 

In pre-Civil War Delaware, farmer Thomas Covington is part of a network of Quakers who help escaping slaves headed north. When he shelters a runaway, a slave-catcher comes calling…only it’s not human. The hunter is an automaton, relentless and incapable of mercy. Dealing with the automaton will test Thomas’s Quaker belief that there is “that of God in every person,” and force him to consider whether the mechanical intelligence may be enslaved by its programming, leading to unexpected questions for the Abolitionist movement.

One of my favorite pieces of short fiction in recent years, first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, reprinted in The Shadow Conspiracy III. Here I read from the beginning, to give you a taste.

If you enjoyed the story, please leave a review! Here's where you can find it.

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Author Interview: R.A. McCandless on The Clockwork Detective, Writing, and Life

Recently I reviewed R.A. McCandless's excellent steampunk novel, The Clockwork Detective, here. I said, 

The last couple of years have brought a slew of wonderful steampunk adventures with resourceful, kick-ass heroines, and this one by McCandless is a worthy addition.

Here I chat with the author about his inspiration, his future projects, and his advice for aspiring writers.

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you come to be a writer?

R.A. McCandless: I came out writing, which was a weird delivery for the doctor. But really, I found myself telling stories early in grade school. We'd have assignments to write a complete sentence using a set of vocabulary words, and I'd get bored with that. Instead, I'd use the words to tell a short story. From there, it was only a short jaunt to writing my own stories.

Dragons are one of my chief inspirations. I've only included one once, in a short story. But any world where dragons can conceivably exist—please and thank you! That's almost any fantasy or science fiction story, which creates a broad palette for me to enjoy. From there, it's a hop, skip, and a wardrobe journey into another world that I'm fascinated to start exploring and sharing.

DJR: What inspired The Clockwork Detective?

RAMcC: I’ve always, always, always loved the steampunk/dieselpunk aesthetic. I’d been approached by a publisher to submit a horror story for an anthology they were doing featuring Kevin J. Anderson. I love Anderson, but I’m not a horror writer. I knew this might be my one chance, so I buckled down and started working on a story. At the time, I was watching a lot of “Murdoch Mysteries” and “Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries” and really enjoying that pseudo-steampunk atmosphere. It wasn’t a huge leap for me to incorporate the same setting into my story, and suddenly I had Constable Aubrey Hartmann, solving mysteries, riding airships, and going on adventures.

Short Book Reviews: A Steampunk Detective, with Centaurs

The Clockwork Detective, by R.A. McCandless (Ellysian)

The last couple of years have brought a slew of wonderful steampunk adventures with resourceful, kick-ass heroines, and this one by McCandless is a worthy addition. Aubrey Hartmann is a veteran of recent war, having lost the lower part of one leg, and now works as a constable. Her prosthetic is a clockwork device that needs to be rewound regularly and isn’t a perfect fit but does keep her mobile, if in pain. As a result, she’s become addicted to laudanum (opium). Her current assignment involves investigating the murder of a druwyd (druid, local witch-doctor holy man) in a little town near the Fae-ruled Dark Wood. Here is where the world-building of The Clockwork Detective sharply deviates from the usual Victorian gears-and-whistles steampunk. Magic is not only real, it’s part of everyday life, and the human wars are overshadowed by the possibility of a terrible conflict with the Fae.

Aubrey’s research leads her into the Dark Wood to question the denizens there, those being centaurs, who are not only fierce fighters but wonderfully oblique and weird. The blending of Victorian mechanistic steampunk, mythology, and magic is seamless and believable. The story moves from murder mystery to international thriller to magical encounters of the terrifying kind. Aubrey herself is a wonderful combination of vulnerable addiction, resourcefulness, keen intelligence, and general all-around bloody-mindedness. I look forward to reading her further adventures!

The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to praise it. Although chocolates and fine imported tea are always welcome.

Guest Interview: Heather Albano, Author of the Keeping Time Trilogy

Welcome Heather Albano, author of the wonderful steampunk time-travel novel, Timepiece, and its sequels. I reviewed it here. She's graciously agreed to give us a peek behind the scenes.

What inspired your novel?

(I love telling this story.) It started when afriend of mine told me about a dream she’d had, in which a package arrived in the mail for her then-infant son. Inside the package addressed to him was a package addressed to me (how odd, she thought) and inside that was a velvet bag containing a pocket watch. Opening the pocket watch, my friend discovered the period casing contained a futuristic-looking screen cycling through images of different historical times and places. “I think I had your dream, Heather.”

I tried to write a story about her son and me and the pocket watch, including a reason for the nested packages, but I couldn’t get it to gel. A pocket watch seemed to belong to an older era anyway…so maybe this wanted to be a Victorian time travel story. Maybe steampunk—huge mechanical monsters stomping down a gaslit street? Yeah. Stomping after what? What would mechanical Victorian monsters hunt? Something natural run amuck, of course. The Victorians would totally build monstrous scientific artificial things to constrain monstrous natural things.

Okay, so where did the run-amuck natural things come from? And when? It would have to be long enough before the Victorian era for the organic monsters to become a problem, for a solution to be generated, and for the solution to become its own problem. Seventy to eighty years, say? The “Victorian era” spanned a long time, of course, but I meant the Sherlock Holmes / Jack the Ripper / Dracula / H.G. Wells part of it—so call it 1880 to 1895. What was going on in England seventy to eighty years before, say, 1885?

Five seconds later, I was scrambling for Wikipedia to look up the dates of the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo. Five seconds after that, I knew exactly what the story was about.



What was your favorite part of writing the Keeping Time trilogy?

My favorite type of reading experience is the one in which I suddenly realize the story I thought I was reading is not the story I am actually reading—the moment when the addition of a perspective or a backstory changes the context entirely. So it’s not entirely true that I wrote the first two books just so I could rewrite the scenes from a different character’s perspective in the third…but it was my favorite part of writing the third. Other people were in the middle of their lives when Elizabeth’s exuberant bildungsroman intersected with them, after all, and their stories have a different shape than hers…

Short Book Reviews: A Heroine of the Martian Revolution

Arabella The Traitor of Mars, by David D. Levine (Tor)

First I must offer an explanation of why it took me so long to review this book, which entails a bit of background. I was introduced to the work of David D. Levine through his science fiction short stories, which by the way are awesome and utterly award-worthy. I loved the concept of the first “Arabella” book, Arabella of Mars. Intrepid heroine/coming of age! Steampunk airships travel between planets! Adventures on Mars! What more could I want? Oh yes, a bit of stowawaying and a touch of romance. I loved that first book.

Alas, when I picked up Arabella the Traitor of Mars, I did not realize there was a middle book (Arabella and the Battle of Venus). I started reading Traitor but quickly (as on the first page) realized that much, too much had happened. Who are these other people and why does Arabella have a prosthetic foot? I set it aside, thinking to pick up the middle book at some vaguely future time and then return. In the way of things, that future time kept stretching further and further away.

Then, as fate would have it, I heard Levine read the opening chapter at a convention, FogCon to be exact. First of all, Levine is an amazing reader, expressive and elegant, perfectly conveying the mildly Victorian steampunk flavor of the narrative. Two sentences in, I was captivated. Ignorance of the middle book evaporated into insignificance. So I returned to Traitor, now perfectly willing to let the story carry me along in trust that all would be made clear from context. And it was.

The Victorian sensibilities of steampunk play out in a parallel to English imperialism, with striking echoes of the occupation of India and the Opium Wars in China. Arabella remains true to her Martian roots, loyal to her principles and her alien friends, and courageous enough to leave her dearly loved husband to warn Mars of the impending assault. The chase sequence is one of the best, most dramatically perfect, I’ve ever read, worthy of the best of Patrick O’Brien or C.S. Forester. And the rest of the book is just as good. The series is highly recommended.

The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to say anything in particular about it. Although chocolates and fine imported tea are always welcome.

[ARCHIVES] Guest blog: Chaz Brenchley Steampunks Mars (With Added Hockey Sticks)

Chaz Brenchley is an amazing writer -- I've been an unabashed fan ever since I read Bridge of Dreams, which led me to write to him, begging for a story for my editorial debut, Lace and Blade. (That story, "In the Night Street Baths," was reprinted in Wild Stories 2009.) Now, many literary adventures later, Chaz sets his sights on Mars, complete with steampunk and a girl's boarding school placed in a failed hotel that was once a Norman castle. Read on for the delicious details...

One of the joys of living in the heart of Silicon Valley is that NASA Ames is just over there, and SETI HQ is even closer. We live among the cool kids - and the cool kids like to share. I went to NASA for the recent transit of Venus; and ever since I moved here, I’ve been going to SETI’s weekly colloquium where planetary scientists and cosmologists talk about the latest discoveries, or the specific projects they have on a new mission, or the latest weird theory that’s almost a guaranteed Nobel prize if it should ever prove true (“but right now there are only two people who believe it, and they’re both in this room”), and like that.

So there I was with planetary scientists at my fingers’ ends for the asking, and lots of Mars talk going on around the time of Curiosity’s landing, so it’s really no wonder that I started thinking about Mars fiction. Real Mars, not so much, for it is dry and inhospitable and I have written my desert books already - but old Mars, Mars with canals and an atmosphere and aliens? Oh, yes. Very much yes.

And very much within that spirit, I wanted to steampunk it up a bit; and there was a lot of talk at that time in my social media about how steampunk tended to assume British Empire overtones, as though that were the only choice, and how it so very much was not. So I thought somewhat about that - but I did keep coming back to the British Empire, because I am far from home and the more time I spend in California the more inveterately Brit I become, and because I am the son of an Empire brat (Grandad was a major in the Scots Guards; Mum was born in Rangoon and grew up in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, speaking Malay more readily than English), and because above all I was really curious. If Mars were a province of the British Empire, how would that actually work? How could it happen, and what would it mean - to the Empire, and to European and world history? And to Mars, and to the presumptive Martians? How do you impose colonial rule on a race that has no concept of empire, or statehood, or governance? And does it make a difference if you’re there by their courtesy, via their aetherships, for reasons you still don’t understand? And how do you negotiate even the broadest heads of agreement where you can barely communicate at all? 

Short Book Reviews: More Steampunk Airship Adventures

By Fire Above, by Robyn Bemis, Tor

In this sequel to The Guns Above, Robyn Bemis continues the steampunk adventures of a woman airship captain.  Once again, Josette Dupree, captain of His Majesty’s Signal Airship Mistral, along with her intrepid crew and not-so-intrepid supercargo, aristocrat Lord Bernat Hinkal, have been given an impossible mission: with glamorous but woefully inadequate repairs to the airship, she is to play a largely ceremonial role at the capital city. None of the real damage the airship sustained in the last batter has been repaired, including the “steamjack” engines. The bags are filled not with expensive, inert luftgas but explosive “flammable air,” a very bad combination with an engine apt to throw off sparks. Needless to say, Josette is unprepared for the courtly intrigues into which she is suddenly propelled (and with which Bernat, who grew up in such a milieu, is happy to reverse roles and become her guide). In the air, conducting a battle in three dimensions, Josette is as cunning as she is courageous. But thrown into the viper’s nest of courtiers or forced to face her own romantic feelings for Bernat’s brother, she finds herself all too fallible.

Josette has no intention of becoming a trophy hero and soon maneuvers to lead a mission to free the border state where her estranged mother (and Bernat’s lover) lives. From there, one mishap after another balloons (excuse the pun) into disaster.

As in the first adventure, I was impressed by the detailed construction of the airships, as well as the scientific (hooray for physics and chemistry!), mathematical, and engineering principles involved, as well as the strategies when battles are fought in three dimensions (up/down as well as side/side and forward/backward). The action sequences were breathtaking. My reservation, as before, pertains to the creation of a political geography so akin to Western Europe that it made no sense to not use the actual nationalities and thereby avoid reader confusion with made-up names and cultures. That reservation aside, I heartily recommend the series and hope to see more Josette’s unfolding stories (and I expect to see her, like Horatio Hornblower, become admiral one day).

Short Book Reviews: Steampunk Airship Warfare with a Woman Captain

The Guns Above, by Robin Bennis (Tor)

Just wonderful! This steampunk military drama incorporates brilliantly realized airship technology, with the same level of loving detail and respect for the resourcefulness of the people on those ships as found in Patrick O’Brien’s novels, with international intrigue, military maneuvers and derring-do. 

Josette Dupre, one of the few women aviators in a made-up European country, became captain of her own airship almost by accident by being the highest-ranking surviving officer after a disastrous battle. Her troubles are only beginning, though, for she is sent on patrol with a crew that doubts her abilities, an experimental airship that is likely a death trap, and a dandified observer with a secret mission to prove women have no place in the air corps. 

Josette has a complex, appealing blend of confidence based on experience, keen common sense, bravery, and self-doubt. The book is nicely paced, full of exciting twists, and intriguing technology. As with the O’Brien books, I was struck by the level of scientific, engineering, and mathematical knowledge of the airmen. I’m not a military buff, but I found the action engrossing and the characters appealing. The sly humor, aimed mostly at the dandified aristocracy, added a wonderful touch. I found the geography and political history of the various fictional countries unnecessary and confusing at first, detracting from the dramatic action, and would have preferred closer parallels with existing European states. Otherwise, this was a fun, lively, and ultimately satisfying read.

Short Book Reviews: Steampunk Victorian Revolution

Rebel Mechanics, by Shanna Swendson (Macmillan Children's Publishing Group) Steampunk and 

alternate American history, spies and skullduggery and steam engines, oh my!

From the beginning, I was captivated by this tale of an 1888 America that never freed itself from Britain, a world ruled by aristocratic “magister” magic-users, Masked Bandits and airships, and an intrepid heroine. With the focus on plot and character, perfect for young adult audiences, the world-building is handled with subtlety. Verity Newton arrives in New York City to take up a position as a governess, only to become entangled with the Rebel Mechanics, a fellowship of engineers committed to freeing themselves from the tyranny of the magisters through the creation of steam engine powered devices that anyone can operate, regardless of magical talent. (A particular charming twist was the role of the novel Jane Eyre, and its reflections on the role of governesses!) I hope this will be the beginning of a series of Verity’s adventures and the eventual liberation of the American colonies. Fans of Gail Carriger will particularly enjoy this book.

Supporting A New Writer 2: Following The Dream

Recently, I received this letter from Wendy, a fan with whom I’d been corresponding. It spoke deeply to me, and rather than answer it alone, I asked some of my writer friends to join in a series of round table blogs on the issues raised. If you’ve been there, too, I hope you’ll follow along and offer your own wisdom.

I've been trying to reconnect with writing friends after a hiatus from the creative life. I've spent the past year or so taking care of my mom and working to pay the bills. Mom passed away in October.
When your last parent passes away, it changes you in many ways. That foundation you always relied on -- even as an adult -- is gone for good. Whether you're ready or not, you are truly on your own in the world and must somehow carry on without their nurturing presence. One of the most difficult aspects of my mother's final days was the fact that she had so many regrets about life. She once had goals and dreams, but left them behind out of fear and a belief that these dreams were just not possible.
I'm 54 years old. More than half of my life is over. Writing has been a dream/goal of mine since childhood. My mom was the only one who believed in me. I don't want to leave this world regretting the fact that I never pursued this dream to the fullest. To be honest, my writing "career" never took off. I let fear, doubt and the negativity of others keep me from my dreams. I want so much to be brave, to take risks with my creative life. I truly wish for a group of fellow writers who are willing to give me the encouragement and support I need to write with my heart and soul, to grow as a writer and a human being. And I want to be a support for others as well. How do I get back into the writing life after leaving it on the back burner for so long?

  Katharine Eliska Kimbriel: Do you want to write, or do you want to have written? Is it getting the story down on paper or computer that drives you, or the thought of who will receive the story? Is publishing critical? Are you looking at markets before you even write the tale?

Because these struggles can kill your muse. I wasted a lot of time, once NYC decided that the stories I wanted to tell were not viable, tossing them synopsis after synopsis, trying to get their interest. You don't have to deal with NYC at all, if you don't want to--self-publishing can be done, and done well, if you are willing to pay for good editing and cover art.

The best things I have ever written come when *I do not censor the Writer.* The first draft, you must tell your Editor Voice (and you have several) "There, there, you will get your chance to say something" and keep writing. The first draft of a story, you tell yourself the story. The second pass, you decide what you need to tell this story to other people. There's usually editing--few of us can write a first and second pass in one go.

Beware the Critic Voice. That is the voice of every slighting comment, every undermining statement, every spiteful word ever tossed your way. A strong and smart woman once told me, "The Critic is never you." But the Critic exists, even if no one has ever slammed your dreams of writing because you never whispered that dream aloud. It takes time to smash those slighting words down to dust, to weigh opposites in your hands and mash them together, halving their impact. But you can whittle down The Critic.

Most people I know who adore telling stories can't stop. When they *cannot* tell stories it triggers depression. Right now you are going through that huge transition (it just happened to me, too) where suddenly, at reunions, you are the oldest person in the room. Right there is a huge adjustment. Be gentle with yourself, ask your heart what it wants to write, and give yourself permission to write. That time is NEVER wasted. In my youth I would tell people "I have to work." I didn't say write, because it wasn't how I paid the rent, so they would say "You can do that after the movie, dinner, bike ride"--whatever.

It is for you. Women worldwide are told to put their heart on hold and take care of everyone and everything else. If you don't take something for your own heart, you will have nothing to give others. Take the writing. It may turn out to be something you can offer the world.

Katharine Eliska Kimbriel reinvents herself every decade or so. The one constant she has reached for in life is telling stories. “I’m interested in how people respond to choice. What is the metaphor for power, for choice? In SF it tends to be technology (good, bad and balanced) while in Fantasy the metaphor is magic – who has it, who wants or does not want it, what is done with it, and who/what the person or culture is after the dust has settled. A second metaphor, both grace note and foundation, is the need for and art of healing. Forthcoming stories will talk about new things that I’ve learned, and still hope to learn … with grace notes about betrayal, forgiveness, healing and second chances.” A Campbell Award nominee.




Irene Radford: For as long as I can remember my family told me that writing down my little stories was okay because I would learn to write well, a requirement for succeeding in the business world. Their ambition for me was to run the PTA. However, I mustn’t bother sharing my little stories with anyone because I could never succeed as a writer.

Period. End of conversation.

Except we kept having this conversation every time I got an idea for a new story or book or trilogy…

I’m not certain why my brain suddenly clicked into realizing that I can’t know I’ve failed until I try. It may have had something to do with my 10 year old son entering every mail-in contest the postman delivered. One of those contests was for Harlequin Romances. I won 4 free books every month for 3 months. Then of course I was expected be hooked and start paying for my book fix. But one of the option books I could order was “How to Write Romances for Love and Money.”

I tried it. Over the period of a couple of months I followed the guidelines and deconstructed several of my favorite romances. And then I wrote one. When I thought I was ready to submit I asked a friend of a friend about proper manuscript format. That person put me in touch with another friend of a friend who was active in Romance Writers of America.

I attended one workshop and went home to re-plot the book. The local chapter of RWA led me to a critique group. I re-wrote the book again and again until I submitted. And accumulated rejection after rejection.

At some point in this depressing process I discovered that not only did I need to try before I admitted failure: I had not failed until I gave up trying.

RWA and my critique group led me to an agent, and though we never sold that first romance, I found my voice in fantasy. And I succeeded. October 13, 1993 at 1:33 PM I received THE phone call, that DAW Books wanted to buy, not only the first book I had written for the fantasy market, but also 2 sequels.

Thirty-five books later I still haven’t found a reason to give up trying.

My few words of wisdom for those starting a writing career or re-starting one, is keep on trying. Apply butt to chair and hands to keyboard and keep writing. Five minutes a day, four pages a day, whatever works for your schedule. And keep on until there is nothing left inside you that demands to be written.

Then give it a rest for a bit until the words start bubbling out of you and write some more.

Irene Radford …aka P.R. Frost, aka C.F. Bentley, has been writing stories ever since she figured out

what a pencil was for. A member of an endangered species, a native Oregonian who lives in Oregon,

she and her husband make their home in Welches, Oregon, where deer, bears, coyotes, hawks, owls, and woodpeckers feed regularly on their back deck.

A museum trained historian, Phyllis Irene has spent many hours prowling pioneer cemeteries deepening her connections to the past. Raised in a military family, she grew up all over the US and learned early on that books are friends that don’t get left behind with a move. Her interests and reading range from ancient history, to spiritual meditations, to space stations, and a whole lot in between.

Magic, Mayhem, and Steampunk: An Interview with Julia Verne St. John

I’m delighted to have Julia Verne St. John as my special guest. She’s the author of The Transference Engine, a steampunk novel of magic and machines set in an alternate 1830s London, just out from DAW Books. Here’s the skinny on the book:

Madame Magdala has reinvented herself many times, trying to escape Lord Byron’s revenge. She destroyed the Transference Engine Byron hoped to use to transfer his soul into a more perfect body and perpetuate his life eternally. A fanatical cult of necromancers continues Byron’s mission to force Magdala and Byron’s only legitimate child–Ada Lovelace–to rebuild the machine and bring Byron back.

Magdala now bills herself as the bastard daughter of a Gypsy King. She runs a fashionable London coffee salon and reading room while living a flamboyant lifestyle at the edge of polite society. Behind the scenes, she and Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, use the massive library stored at the Bookview Cafe to track political and mercantile activity around the world. They watch to make certain the cult of necromancy surrounding Lord Byron, the poet king who worshipped death, cannot bring him back to life.

On the eve of Queen Victoria’s coronation in June of 1838, rumors of an assassination attempt abound. Both the Bow Street Runners and Magdala’sarmy of guttersnipe spies seek to discover the plot and the plotters. Who is behind the mysterious black hot air balloon that shoots searing light from a hidden cannon, and who or what is the target? And who is kidnapping young girls from all walks of life? 

Desperately, Magdala and her allies follow the clues, certain that someone is building a new Transference Engine. But is it to bring back the dead or destroy the living?

Deborah J. Ross:What was your inspiration for The Transference Engine?
Julia Verne St. John:  The character of Madame Magdala sprang from The Shadow Conspiracy anthology published by Book View Café. As co-editor I was in on the brainstorming for the shared-world anthology. The moment we decided to insert the Bookview Café as headquarters for the spy network seeking out evidence of a conspiracy to insert life-like automata into places of power with Lord Byron jumping from human body to automaton leading the way, I knew that I had to write the story of the woman in the corner reading the tea leaves. She ended up re-inventing herself as I wrote. She does that
periodically.

What I’m Reading – The Hospice Edition

When I packed to travel out of state to help care for my best friend and her family during her final weeks of life, I had no idea how long I would be away. The ereader my daughter had passed on to me provided the ideal solution of how to carry a variety of books with me. I read at night as part of my bedtime ritual and I couldn’t anticipate what I would need at the end of each day. Horror, which has never previously appealed to me, might resonate with the depth of the grief of this entire household as we let go of hope and say goodbye. Maybe not, but should I bring some just in case? What about my favorite and unabashedly unguilty pleasures – fantasy and science fiction? Something to challenge my mind and make me think? A genre I don’t usually read? Mystery? Nonfiction?

I loaded up my ereader with a stack of books from Book View Café, picking a few from authors I’ve loved and choosing others practically at random. Here’s what I’ve been reading and why.

I started with three pieces – two novellas and a novel -- by Marie Brennan. I’d never read her work before she joined Book View Café, so when I found Midnight Never Come in a bookstore (and it looked interesting), I grabbed it. It’s the first of a series called “The Onyx Court,” set London during the reign of Elizabeth I. My husband and I had gone through a phase of watching every film biography of Elizabeth I that we could find, so that was an automatic plus. Brennan created a second, faerie court, hidden belowground but interacting in secret ways for England’s benefit. Fits right in with Sir Francis Walsingham and Dr. John Dee, and other historical characters. I enjoyed the book immensely, so the first thing I read was more Brennan, a novella set in the same world although slightly later in time. Deeds of Men is a murder mystery, with characteristic Brennan twists. I was glad I’d already read Midnight Never Come because I was already in love with the main character, but this would also make a good introduction to the series. I also picked the two “Welton” pieces, a prequel novella called Welcome To Welton and then the novel Lies and Prophecy. Both reminded me a little of Pamela Dean’s excellent Tam Lin, only set at Hogwarts if Hogwarts was a college and magic was public and widely spread. What kind of curriculum would a college offer? Dorms, room mates, cafeteria food, professors, meddling parents, the whole shebang. But Brennan doesn’t leave the story there; it turns out that the reason people have magical abilities is that they’re descended from fae who mingled with humans during a time when Faerie was closer to Earth. And now the two worlds are drawing closer again, and the Seelie and UnSeelie Courts are in deadly competition for who gets to rule, whether to enslave or ally with humans. And our college kids are caught up in it all. Brennan’s easy prose and likeable characters drew me into her world, a lovely escape at the end of each day.

GUEST BLOG: Steven Harper on Havoc In The Family

Can you keep a secret?  I totally based one of the characters from THE HAVOC MACHINE on a real person.  Truth!

They tell you at Author School never to do that.  It results in hurt feelings or even lawsuits.  Kathryn Stockett, author of THE HELP, was embroiled in a legal battle over this very issue, in fact.  But me--I'll get away with it.

The character in question is Nikolai, a boy of about nine years, and the person he's based on is my son Maksim.

I first met Maksim at an orphanage in Ukraine nearly nine years ago.  He was three, but looked two.  My wife and I talked to him and played with him every day for two weeks, and he always cried silently when it was time for us to leave.  That soundless weeping was a dagger in my heart every time.  One of the greatest joys of my life was when we told him he was saying good-bye to everyone else and coming home with us.

Maksim did everything firmly.  When you asked him a yes-no question, he nodded his head once, firmly, or shook his head once, firmly.  He ran firmly.  He pointed firmly.  When he learned enough English to make himself understood, he had firm ideas about what a family should be like, and he voiced them firmly.

"We need to do a family activity," he would say.  "We have to go to the park."  Or, "A papa is supposed to show his son how to ride a bike," or "Brothers are supposed to help each other."

Reaching More Than One Audience

I sometimes joke that my work is fiction -- "I make it all up" -- but that isn't true. All writers draw to some extent on our own experiences and environments, not to mention what we've studied, heard about from other people, or researched properly. Whether we take a real-world element and put it unchanged into a work of fantasy or science fiction or whether we use that element as a springboard to create something "new" (AKA, a fantastical variation), we weave things, people, and events that actually exist into our fictional worlds.

For my novelet, "Among Friends," (F & SF March/April 2013), I drew heavily on the history of Quakers and the Underground Raillroad. The sfnal element in this story, which might be categorized as antebellum steampunk, revolves around the interaction of the Quaker community and a slave-catching automaton. While history, particularly the biography of Thomas Garrett, provided a wealth of plot points and setting details, the heart of the story was how this community of people might question whether a mechanical device partakes of the Inward Light. I used the Quaker community because it's one I know well, at least in its present progressive version. My husband is a member of the Religious Society of Friends, Pacific Yearly Meeting, and I've attended meeting regularly for a number of years. I'm not a theologian, Quaker or otherwise, but I have first-hand familiarity with the ways of thinking and speaking about spiritual issues in that tradition. Quakers today, as then, strive to see "that of God in every person." So how would they regard an entity that looks human -- would they "try what love can do"? Would that entity, treated as if it had moral agency, then acquire the ability to seek the good? With the goal of creating a vivid and internally consistent culture, one that is familiar enough to the average reader to be comprehensible and different enough to be fascinating, I wove together historical research, personal experience, and a fantastical element. Mindful of my own limitations, I asked several "weighty Friends" to review the draft for background accuracy.

GUEST BLOG: Steve Harper on Writing Steampunk

THE SPEED OF STEAM, by Steve Harper

A couple weeks ago on a Friday afternoon, a file landed in my email. Big one. It was the copyedited manuscript for THE IMPOSSIBLE CUBE, the sequel to THE DOOMSDAY VAULT (which is now on sale and has mad scientists and zombies in it). Could I go through the manuscript and pop it back within ten days?

Whoa.

A number of writing blogs have already commented on the speed of writing these days, how just a few years ago, I would have received a big pile of paper in the mail with red marks all over it, and after I went though it, I would have had to make a trip to the post office. Now I read and upload a file, yada yada yada.

I just want to add that it feels wrong.  For steampunk, I mean.

See, I think part of steampunk's appeal is the way it slows us down. Steampunk puts us in a world before telephones and jet planes. When communicating with someone on the other side of town meant dashing off a postcard. When newspapers lived by the telegraph wire. When international travelers went by train or ship or even dirigible, and going around the world took eighty days instead of eighty hours. When a new advancement in processing speed meant the Royal Mail had worked out a more efficient sorting system. Our world goes so fast, it's nice to take a break in a place in which everything goes a little slower.

As a result, it feels like all steampunk should be written at a rolltop desk on a big, clunky typewriter with a sticky H and a crooked M while a Victrola plays scratchy music in the background.  Manuscripts should be bundled into boxes tied with brown string.  Letters to one's editor should be scribbled with a fountain pen and dropped into the afternoon post.

And yet, I flip words into a 2-terrabyte computer with dual-core processor hooked up to the Internet via high-speed DSL cable modem while four speakers croon a mix by Danny Elfman, and I toss letters to my editor into the aether of the Internet  It makes me feel out of sorts and wrong.

Not wrong enough to make write the long way, mind. Anachronism does have its limits.

But I'm a writer with a good imagination. So when I write steampunk, in my head my computer becomes a typewriter and my contact lenses become spectacles. My sweatshirt becomes a tweed jacket and my study with central heat becomes a drafty garret. My dog and my pot of tea become . . .

Well. I suppose not everything has to change.


Steven Harper usually lives at http://www.theclockworkempire.com . His steampunk novel THE DOOMSDAY VAULT, first in the Clockwork Empire series, hits the stores in print and electronic format November 1.