Steampunk, Writing and Publishing

Fashion Friday: C is for Corset

2012-03-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

Corsets are a defining element of steampunk fashion. A friend of mine once said that if your corset doesn't leave bruises you're not wearing it right, but I think that may be taking things a little too far. Thanks to modern elastic materials and better manufacturing techniques you can get the benefits without the pain of whalebone and steel digging into your ribs.

Unfortunately, the health consequences of wearing tightly laced corsets hastened their demise. Medical studies in the 1880s and onward showed how tightly laced corsets caused problems with heart, lungs, circulation, breasts, uterus, gall bladder and colon. In some cases tight lacing was directly linked to organ failure.

Not to worry these days though. So long as you don't take my friend's advice modern corsets will not do you any harm.

I love the above picture. I suppose in those days it was enough to fool the unsuspecting, but anyone with half an eye for photoshop will quickly pick up the fact that everything below the bustline on the right hand picture is drawn, not photographed at all. The shadows are all wrong, the buckles on the garters don't have the right amount of detail, and the stockings lost their tendency to curl at the top.

A more modern corset. This one by Lageuse leather corset with brass rivets and only a slight bit of 'glue some gears on it and call it Steampunk' is a pretty typical high-end model.

Ooooh, Shiny! This corset by Nola incorporates actual brass for the trim. She has a few 'making of' pics on her website as well.

That's it for me this week. Until next time, keep your boilers hot and your fashion steamy!

The Real Story Behind the Three Little Pigs

2012-02-29T15:14:00.006-08:00

Very clever advertisement from The Guardian.

Fashion Friday: Prosthetics

2012-02-24T15:21:00.001-08:00

I've been looking into prosthetics for my latest novel and I came across some amazing examples of Victorian era ingenuity. The first, above is a one-of-a-kind mechanical arm currently in the London Science Museum. Built sometime between 1850 and 1910, it is one of the most 'Steampunk' looking artifacts of the actual Victorian era I've seen. All of the joints are flexible and lock in place so the arm can be posed for eating, holding cards, or whatever the wearer needs. The only thing it doesn't do is move on its own.

This hand is significantly older, created for Götz von Berlich (circa 1480-1562) after he lost his hand to a cannon-ball. He used it with both lance and sword and reportedly was quite effective in battle.

Last, a modern prosthetic. If you haven't heard, there was a South African runner who wanted to compete in the Olympics on these, but the IOC blocked him, saying that the prosthetic legs gave him too much of a competitive advantage. Who says the Six Million Dollar Man was Science Fiction?

Anyhoo, I'll just run off into the sunset in slow motion accompanied by weird electronic music... Na na na naaa... na nana na nananana. (Oh god I'm old, does anyone else remember? Anyone?)

'Pologies for the lack of updates, they'll be more frequent in the future.

Lamp Project

2012-01-11T13:29:00.000-08:00

For Christmas I made my wife a DIY lamp. Maybe it's not exactly 'steampunk' but I like it.

I intended to write it up as an instructable, but due to time constraints I didn't take pictures of the process. The whole thing is fairly simple though and should be easy to build if you have the tool-sense.

I bought the base at a hardware store as a pre-assembled box, and drilled a few holes in it for the electrical. The bulb is fluorescent to reduce heat (the lamp does get warm when in operation but only a little above body temperature on the top).

The top, decorative part is made from a fish-bowl with a 500ml Mason jar in the middle to make room for the lightbulb. Between the jar and the bowl, the space is filled with sea-glass (if you don't live near the ocean that's glass which has been tumbled in the waves along the shore until it's smooth and translucent) and marbles. I didn't have enough actual sea-glass collected so some of it was artificially made by smashing bottles and throwing the glass in a rock-polisher with some coarse grit until it was smoothed off a bit.

The base of the fish-bowl portion of the lamp is secured by four wooden brackets. They were the hardest part of the whole project and I had to borrow my father's workshop and tools to make them. They are glued to a square base with a hole in the middle for the lightbulb to fit through.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-21T11:42:00.001-08:00

Monday Inspiration: Weird Science

2011-12-12T14:30:00.000-08:00

Victorians were probably not the worst for generating silly pseudo-scientific ideas about the natural world, but they did have some inspirationally bad theories.

For instance, the above kit, which was kept at emergency stations along the Thames in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in case of a drowning was considered as important as artificial respiration. It contains several vials of tobacco. A pipe to get the tobacco smoldering and a choice of bellows or syringe to insert the smoke rectally.

Yes, there's a literal truth behind the expression about blowing smoke up the ass.

Tobacco smoke enemas were commonly used to treat hernias and cholera as well.

Then in 1811, a scientist named Benjamin Brodie had to come along and explain that nicotine actually impedes circulation, so by the middle of the 19th century the kits had mostly fallen into disuse. Party-pooper.

I suspect the only reason they ever thought it was an effective treatment was because a few fakers got this treatment and 'revived' suddenly upon having a metal tube, followed by hot smoke forcibly inserted in their nether regions.

Stephen Fry explains it very well below.

Fashion Friday: The Real Thing

2011-12-09T13:49:00.000-08:00

Most of what I post here is just imitation or interpretation. Very few people can afford the level of workmanship that went into genuine Victorian-era luxuries, and those who can afford it seem to prefer spending their money on Botox and pool parties where they can show of their newly Botoxed faces (at least that's what I've learned from the popular media, my own experience is limited).

The real thing is a whole different packet of crisps.

Top is a the full view of a billiards table built for Queen Victoria's jubilee in 1887. The cabinet in the background is for scorekeeping, behind the door is storage for cues, chalk and balls. Lower picture shows detail of the table which is covered in carvings depicting pivotal events that led from William the Conquerer to Queen Victoria.

The King's dining room at Windsor contains work from the 1600's onwards, but in my mind really represents the kind of opulence of the era. Enough art to fill a moderate-sized gallery packed into one room.

The Ballroom at Buckingham painted during the time of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. The deep reds and blues, offset by gold trim make it just seem royal. Colour combinations which would be garish for smaller, less opulent spaces just work amid the lush settings. It would really have been something to see in its day.

Royal Albert Hall was completed after Prince Albert's death and named in his memory. Truly they do not make theaters like that anymore.

Glue Some Gears on it and Call it Steampunk

2011-12-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

Now that it's almost Christmas time, you might need to explain to your loved ones what is, and is not Steampunk.

Monday Inspiration: Criticism

2011-11-28T11:04:00.000-08:00

It may seem like an odd place to draw inspiration from. Odd but necessary, if you want to get anywhere. It is oh-so easy to tell yourself your writing is great and write a novel in a vacuum. Things get harder when you ask writing associates to critique your work and they come back with less than stellar reviews.

At first you don't want to even read all the comments. It's depressing. Then over time you think about them and realize there's a lot of value in what they said. After a few days you see how you can use that feedback to make some dramatic improvements and take your manuscript to the next level.

When you've been through all that, and polished things up as well as you can there's the gauntlet of finding an agent. If you make it that far it's easy to think you've got it made. A successful agent who makes a living by her eye for what will sell chose your manuscript out of the pile of thousands she receives every year. It's easy to get carried away at this point, imagining your book on the shelf next to some of your favorite authors. Imagining what the cover will look like. Chatting it up with fans at book signings... Ahh the life of a successful author.

I heard the author of The Golden Mean, Annabel Lyon, on the radio talking about her first few months after being published. She had been nominated for a major Canadian award, but still hadn't got much money from the publisher so needed to keep her day-job working in Munro's Books in Victoria (yes, strangely enough, THAT Munro, Alice Munro's ex-husband). When a customer would bring her book to the checkout she'd offer to sign it for them. Inevitably the customer would frown, clearly thinking, "Crazy woman, why would I want you to sign my book?" She'd flip to the author's photo at the back, hold it up next to her face and try to copy her expression from the photo. The customer would redden and thank her kindly for signing the book and she'd get a giggle from the episode.

That's where the thoughts tend to run when you've got an agent. What kind of great anecdotes am I going to have when I'm a famous author?

Then your manuscript goes out to publishers, and you get feedback from an editor. It's the same process all over, but harder this time. You've probably lived with the book for a year or more now, so you're getting a bit tired of it. On top of that all your dreams of massive, rock-star success pile up in a train-wreck. One more hurdle to overcome. Another, higher bar has been set and the manuscript is not clearing it. Time to knuckle down and get back to work on it, knowing that even this is not the last edit. If you're lucky it's the penultimate overhaul of your manuscript, but if the changes are accepted it will still mean another round. Then several more rounds of minor revisions.

The only way to survive, at least for me, is to find inspiration in the critiques. I look at them and think about how much better the final product will be for all the advice and feedback I've received. Maybe I will get to be a writing rock-star one day, but I won't have done it alone. There will be a litany of people to thank for telling me what I got wrong, taking me down a peg when I needed it and inspiring me to do better.

Fashion Friday: Office

2011-11-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

Being a writer, one of my favourite types of Steampunkification involves office spaces. If you have a limited amount of space and you want your workstation to fold neatly away into your Steampunk home this first piece is sure to fit the bill. Nobody would ever guess you have a fully functioning computer desk in there. Perfect for time travellers who want to keep their high-tech devices hidden away too!

The next piece is just a fabulous antique roll-top desk. I've always loved roll-tops, I don't know why. If I ever have the money to get myself a really nice office space this will be the desk I'm looking for.

This office space, from Because we Can has a great feel to it. I love the wall map, perfect for fine-tuning my plans for world domination over a game of pool.

Last, the stealth-computer. I love the way the screen sits in the typewriter where the paper would have sat in the original model. Now if they can just get e-paper working well enough nobody need ever suspect your typewriter is more than it seems.

RC Steam Trike

2011-11-12T10:54:00.000-08:00

Perhaps more Dieselpunk looking than Steampunk. Cool though.

Fashion Friday: 5 Weird Steampunk Works

2011-11-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd do something a little different this week. It turned out to be more than just a little different. Enjoy.

Kris Kuksi created this assault bicycle, which I presume comes standard with a can-opener, even though it's not visible in the picture. The Swiss Army Knife of vehicles, I'm sure it's prepared for any contingency. Need a fifty megawatt green laser to fight off martians, check! Kryptonite dispenser in case you end up at-odds with Superman, check! This puppy has it all.

Too bad no human is strong enough to actually pedal the thing.

I'm not sure if this guy is supposed to be a Cthulu worshipper or a mad scientist who accidentally crossed his face with a squid. Either way it's pretty creepy... and weird. Needs goggles though.

This corset by Etsy seller Louiseblack is fairly disturbing. She needs to figure out how to get a realistic hologram in there to really blow people's minds.

Yes, that's a working computer mouse. Yes, that's a real skull. Why you'd want to have your sweaty palms on the skull of a deceased animal all day long, I'm not entirely sure. But, if that's your thing you can find it on the Internet. Is there anything the Internet can't do? (The answer is yes, it can't erase images of things better left unseen, you know the ones I mean, but give it time and they'll have an app for that)

Taxidermist Lisa Black created this last example. Yes, she's a taxidermist, that means it's a real heart. I presume it's not human... I certainly hope it's not human.

That's enough weirdness for one blog post, please comment, I love to hear from my readers.

Monday Inspiration: Google Maps

2011-11-07T09:16:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder how authors a hundred years ago did it. I mean, I've travelled quite extensively, I've been to Europe eight or ten times, Australia, all through North America and a little island hopping in the Caribbean, but I haven't been to half the places that come up in my writing. The Internet in general is an invaluable tool, I can find out that the floor of St. James Church on Piccadilly is made of stone, and as I've mentioned before, the catalpha tree out front of the church was probably not there in my timeline.

But Google Maps, especially the feature with the little yellow guy called Streetview lets me get right into the middle of things. I can look around and really get a feel for a place and imagine what it would have been like a hundred years ago.

I'm sure that many authors before the age of the Internet just got things wrong. If you read Robinson Crusoe with a modern knowledge of geography you'll immediately spot some problems with the flora and fauna on his desert island. It seems more European in many ways than Caribbean. Not that I would ever criticise Defoe for his lack of research, it was a lot of work in those days, if you could find the information at all.

My story begins here.

It took me a few hours to find the appropriate location in London, but once I'd found it, and explored around a bit I knew it was the perfect location for Robert (our hero) to be stuck begging in the streets from the wealthy visitors to Pall Mall.

Recently he's been on a trip. From London to the docks at Southampton.

Then off by ship to Freetown.

Inland from the coast of South Africa.

Where he finally winds up in the middle of the desert.

Even there, in the middle of nowhere, I can find pictures and I can explore the roadways to get a feel for the surrounding landscape. If I didn't have a book to write I'd probably spend a lot more time exploring, but for now I have to get back to work.

A Soulful Homage to a Contemporary Literary Great

2011-11-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

Truly some of the most memorable quotes from the current generation of intellectuals have come from Mike Tyson.

(Don't hit me Mike, I'm just kidding!)

Glass Steam Engine

2011-11-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

An Advertisement for an Amazing Victorian Invention

2011-11-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

Inspiration: Where do Ideas Come From?

2011-11-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, as I was stepping out of the shower I had an epiphany about my current WIP. I knew how the beginning and the end had to go, but there was a lot of murkiness in the middle. Just as I was towelling off it hit me. The perfect middle. I hopped into my clothes and jotted down a few notes so I wouldn't forget anything.

I listened to the radio show Spark: Technology and the Wandering Mind on the weekend. In one segment they talked about how human brains spend about 30% of waking hours thinking about things other than the task at hand and how this idle brain activity is where most of our creativity spawns. Like sleep and dreaming it is an essential activity if we want to keep our brains in proper working order. The best time for mind-wandering, they explained, is when you're working at a mundane task which doesn't occupy your full attention.

On the show, they discussed how many people are crushing that creative thinking-time by constantly plugging themselves in to their wireless devices. It's most noticeable in children, the scientist explained, because they have such active imaginations, but the 50% of American kids who are exposed daily to handheld computers of one kind or another (leap-pad, iPhone, whatever) show demonstrably less creativity than those with less exposure.

Which, combined with the shower got me to thinking. All of my best ideas have come to me while I was away from the computer, but whenever I'm sitting at my desk and struggling to come up with story ideas I tend to just sit here. I blog, visit writer's forums and such, but as long as my mind is occupied there's no room for that perfect solution to filter through to the surface.

I will try an experiment over the next few weeks. I will spend more time away from the computer to give myself time to think. I'll see if I get more writing done, or less.

In the meantime, I'm just glad I don't have a smart-phone and I'm not addicted to Facebook.

The Machine

2011-10-31T09:31:00.000-07:00

Cool animated short about a machine who would conquer all the obstacles in his path.

THE MACHINE from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

Fashion Friday: Book Cover Art

2011-10-28T13:28:00.000-07:00

A blog post on Publishers Weekly got me thinking about the importance of good cover art, so I thought I'd assemble some of my least favourites. Maybe next week I'll actually pick some good ones, but these are way more fun.

Now, the moment you've surely scrolled past my intro for, thus ignoring my hard work. The top (or bottom) 5 worst covers.

These first two represent the art movement I like to call "Photoshop Diarrhoea", sharks, dogs and flamingoes, nothing is safe! If you can find a picture of it, just paste it in there, the more the merrier!

There is no shortage of bad cover art in old SF and Fantasy. This one pretty much sums it up. Green men in green spacesuits travel in their green UFO to visit the floating giant blue cat-head people. I don't even want to get in to the problems with the title. I have no idea what the book is about, and I'm a bit scared to find out.

I think this is meant to be erotica for retirees. The grin on grandpa's face is just... disturbing.

Last, the classic when it comes to bad title decisions. No comment necessary.

Bonus! A sixth bad cover! Do I deliver the goods or what. The possible captions here are endless, create your own and leave it in the comments. I'll post the best next week.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Writing, Titles and Mind Space

2011-10-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

As I've discussed before, I started on my latest manuscript with the intent to keep it dark and gritty. The actual Industrial Revolution was not a very pretty time for most people. Well, it's really starting to take shape now. I'm 45 pages into the first draft and I know where things are going. The path is a little fuzzy in parts, but I know how the novel ends now.

I am finding it much harder to write than my previous novels though. For those I set a quota of 2,000 words a day, and almost never failed to hit that mark. For this one I'm lucky to get 1,000 words a day. Partly because it is more closely related to our own history, and I have to pause quite often to research bits of information. Was the catalpa tree in front of St. James Church on Piccidilly around in 1911? I looked up pictures of the church, but it took me nearly a half hour to find out if the tree had been there when Robert Bexley visited there in 1911. Apparently not, one source said 'around 1900' whereas another said 1929, the latter seemed more accurate. Maybe that's just a boring detail, but I find that getting the little things right lends an air of authenticity (although I no doubt have made mistakes and will be properly strung up by the history buffs when the book is released). The other reason why the going has been slow is that it's hard, putting myself in Robert's shoes. Things pick up for him later, but at this point his life really sucks, and I have to be right there in my head for it to strike the right emotional tone.

Well, with any luck I'll be done the first draft before the end of December.

The other thing this novel has been giving me difficulty with is the title. For my last two I had titles fairly early on that sucked, but I could leave them alone, later as the manuscript evolved the right title just came to me and I'm happy with how they came out. With this one it's like a scab I can't stop picking at. So far it's been, "Dark Mechanics", "Dark Machinations", "Under an Iron Moon", "Heart of Iron", and "Perpetual Motion". None of which works, or makes particular sense. I'm tempted to change it again, this time to, "Ghost in the Machine", but that's too close to "Ghost in the Shell".

Anyhow, that's my progress for the past two weeks. 45 pages down, another 250 or so to go.

Ira Glass on Writing

2011-10-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

The first stages of creatively expressing yourself.

Monday Inspiration: Wood

2011-10-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

I love some good woodworking. Nothing better to offset the cold technical metal components than some naturally beautiful wooden parts. You don't have to be a woodworking genius either, as shown below a simple block of wood (and a clever imagination) can turn your iPhone dock into a work of art.

This desk lamp is far more complicated, and maybe it could work with brass, or other materials, but the wood gives the mechanical a natural, graceful feel.

Finally, I'm sure this Christmas gift will be a hit. Puzzle boxes are awesome in general, but I only dream of having the skills to make something like this. Truly a work of art.

Windmills, Cool Steampunk Style Animation

2011-10-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

Can a windmill, powered by magic, fly out of the darkness?

WindMills from Wind Mills on Vimeo.

Monday Inspiration: Absurdity

2011-10-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

It takes a lot of imagination to come up with something pleasingly absurd, I mean absurd enough to be interesting, eye-catching, without being so absurd it's just silly or stupid. That fine area in between is populated by some of the most interesting things in the world.

Lisa Black and her Steampunk Taxidermy fits the bill in my mind. That's all we need, cyber-zombie-bambi. Crossing three genres at once.

Of course you don't have to try to be absurd, magazines like Popular Science and Science and Invention tried their best to actually predict the future. It's only with the benefit of hindsight that we can see how truly loopy some of the ideas presented there were.

I'll leave you with this important public service message, you know, just in case.

The Raveonettes - Heart of Stone

2011-10-15T19:01:00.001-07:00

Great animated, Steampunk-themed music video. (click on the blue-outlined thumbnail to play)

Fashion Friday: Where do I Find Cool Parts?

2011-10-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

I see this question a lot on Steampunk forums. Partly the answer depends on how much you want to buy. If you're planning on starting an Etsy shop, or just want to have tons of bits, your local auctioneer may be a great place to start. They often have boxes of antique clocks, old machinery, tools etc. Just be sure to check out the kind of auction you're going to. Many auction houses list their upcoming auctions online, so check there first.

For smaller purchases, try estate and garage sales, try to imagine what's inside the items you're looking at, because the best (and cheapest) gears are often hidden away, and the owner may get upset if you go around smashing their antique clock collection open before buying them.

If you have a little more money, or you don't like the random nature of the above suggestions, try Etsy or Ebay. Things are more expensive there, but you can browse until you find the things you need.

Last, and cheapest of all, ask to poke around your parent's or grandparent's basement. Often they'll store things away for decades without any real plan for the items. You can find some amazing things to take home for the price of a little wheedling. They may even throw in a hot meal!

I love searching through this stuff, everything I find gives me ideas, and has me wishing I had more time and money to spend on crafting. If you've created something recently, or you'd like to share your own tips for finding parts, please comment.

Obvious to you

2011-10-14T09:31:00.000-07:00

This one is for all the frustrated creative minds out there.

Dark Steampunk

2011-10-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

I've always preferred dark, edgy fiction. Partly it just seems more realistic to me. If you take the kinds of risks associated with nearly any Fantasy or Action/Adventure series the odds are friends are going to be badly hurt or die.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for good triumphing over evil in the end, I just think too many authors take the easy road to that end, they coddle their characters too much. I don't think of myself as sadistic towards my characters, but I do want them to suffer, so that their eventual triumph is all the more poignant.

That is why I'm drawn to dystopian societies I suppose. That and it just seems fitting to me that Steampunk should be presented in a hard-edged fashion. After all, wasn't the Industrial Revolution one of the worst times in the history of man to be alive? Unless you were among the lucky few who owned the factories that is. If you were unlucky you could be apprenticed to a chimney sweep at age six, and if you survived the long hours of torturous climbing (often encouraged to greater speed by the master sweep literally lighting a fire under your ass), you'd most likely die in your teens or twenties from 'soot wart' an especially aggressive form of cancer caused by the coal tar they were exposed to twelve hours a day.

In other words, life was like a troll, short, brutal and ugly. Perfect for writing good fiction.

As I wait for responses from the publishers my agent has sent my manuscript to I'm contemplating writing a completely different sort of steampunk novel. The year is 1912 and the Industrial Revolution is going much better than anticipated. Already machines have grown so efficient that the work-force required to run a factory has been reduced by a factor of twenty. Men who were merely wealthy a dozen years before are now sultans of once unimaginable wealth. Hiring a few hundred men for a private security force to prevent sabotage beats keeping on thousands of vermin-ridden, ever-complaining peasants.

Enter Robert Bexley, young scion of the Bexley dynasty, proud, arrogant and lazy. He helps the wrong lady in distress and finds himself on the other side of the law for the first time in his life.

Monday Inspiration: The Universe

2011-10-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry this is a day late, long weekend for Turkey Day here in Canada.

I am constantly in awe of the Universe. The incomprehensible enormity of it all, as Carl Sagan used to say biiillions and biillions... A billion doesn't really mean anything to me though. 1/7th of the population of Earth, grains of sand on a beach, whatever your comparison, it's just too large a number to grasp. Then to think there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, most of them with hundreds of billions of stars. Numbers that high cease to have meaning that a human brain can properly understand. Here are some pictures I like to look at to help me wrap my brain around the subject.

This is Galaxy Messier - 101, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy. It has around 100 billion stars, which means it's about average-sized as far as galaxies go (they range from around 10 million to 100 trillion stars).

This is the Hubble Deep Field picture. It shows approximately 3,000 galaxies, of an estimated total of 170 billion galaxies in the observable Universe.

What inspires you? I'd love to hear your thoughts, or suggestions for future Monday Inspiration posts.

Fashion Friday: Bathrooms

2011-10-07T11:21:00.001-07:00

I thought I'd take a bit of a different angle on fashion today and look at some interior design. The bathroom is not exactly the first place people would think of when they consider Steampunk-ifying their lives, but there are some very cool ideas out there.

Toilets are of course, essential, and while I probably wouldn't want (or, for that matter be allowed) to have either of these models in my house, they do present some interesting design ideas and elements that could be incorporated into a simpler, less extreme version (a man's home is his castle after all, so the throne has to be at least somewhat comfortable).

This shower is more my style, I could absolutely see something like this in my house one day.

The Bathroom at Smith and Mills Restaurant in New York is delightfully steampunk looking (although in reality it's just very old), it was made out of an old elevator car, and the sink comes from a train berth. To empty the sink you fold it up against the wall.

Finally, here's a Steampunk bathroom I think I could actually get my wife behind. I love these old-style tubs that sit in the middle of the room like that.

Endings

2011-10-06T14:23:00.000-07:00

I'm reaching the end-stage of plotting the sequel trilogy to Aetherstorm, so naturally I've been thinking a lot about endings lately. I think readers will find the ending to Aetherstorm mostly satisfying. The main conflict is resolved, but our hero, Konrad, does not exactly live happily ever after, and the antagonists are not punished in a really satisfactory way.

I plan to end the Aether Cycle on book four, the third book of the trilogy, and leave the world I've created for good. So the ending to the series has to be completely satisfying, to me and my audience.

The problem is that there are irresolvable conflicts (see the previous post). Short of genocide, there will be war in this world. I can live with that, some conflicts are not meant to end, and it gives things a certain feeling that life really does go on, unlike a fairy tale there simply is no such thing as happily ever after.

A lot of the characters will die, although it saddens me to kill them, there are some I have created who I am really going to miss, but if ya wanna make an omlette... Other characters will live of course, and I want to leave them in a better place than I found them.

The antagonists must get their comeuppance. For everyone else, life goes on, much as it was before. Anything else just wouldn't ring true to me, real life is too complicated.

Why Steampunk?

2011-10-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

I first learned about Steampunk many years ago, when issue #4 of Girl Genius had just hit the stands. My brother is an avid comic collector and he encouraged me to read them. I found them really cool, but at the time I was busy with many other things, and the whole idea of Steampunk got put on a back-burner in my mind.

A little over a year ago, I was struggling to get my first novel out there, (which is still unpublished, with some re-writes and more experience I'm sure it will do well though) and looking for my next big idea to base a novel around. I hit upon the idea of a world of flying cities, which naturally dovetailed into the Steampunk genre. After I had some idea of the world I wanted to set my tale in I began to work on plot, carefully avoiding exposure to Steampunk other than what I already knew in the hopes of creating something truly new and innovative.

So the world evolved. A rift in the Aether caused massive mutation throughout Europe, and made it possible for people to tap a nearly unlimited energy source. The physically superior cousins to humans created were labelled Synari, and enslaved by Humans. Their population exploded as they outbred humans 10:1 and their generally obedient nature encouraged sales to cultures across the Earth. Because it was a recipient of slave labour, not a continent destroyed by slavers, Africa became far more significant than it is in our world.

But, as with all good things (well, good if you were a Human), it came to an end. The Synari decided they didn't like being slaves. Riots broke out in every major city in the world. Wealthy industrialists and politicians saw the end coming, so they created flying cities. The aristocrats, their servants, soldiers and such left the Earth, never to return. Cities with less wealth built zeppelins to escape, and those on the coasts fled to the few island chains that had been purged of Synari.

Humans cannot allow the Synari to breed too much, or develop a civilisation capable of advanced technologies, so they run aerial patrols, gassing Synari camps whenever they are found. The Synari, angered by this treatment would destroy every last Human to be free of their tyranny. But neither is capable of destroying the other, and there is no possibility of peace, because peace would allow the Synari to spread, and once their numbers grew great enough they would surely win any war between the two.

Into the greatest flying city in this world, enters Konrad. An eighteen-year-old, with a secret.

Werewolves and Greek Demi-Gods

2011-10-03T14:36:00.000-07:00

It's not steampunk, but well worth the watch for fans of dark fantasy. Remarkably well done for a fan film, I'd go watch something like this in the theatre if it was a feature film and it had a larger FX budget.

Welcome to Hoxford, the fan film from Julien Mokrani on Vimeo.

From Vimeo: "Raymond Delgado is no ordinary prisoner...
On a good day he'll take the time to tell you he's the son of Zeus before he tears out your jugular. On a bad day, you won't even have a moment to call out for help.
After a yet another "incident" Raymond has been transferred to Hoxford, a correctional facility and mental institution known for its radical methods.
At Hoxford, Raymond’s not the only predator...
Come nightfall, under a full moon, bloodcurdling screams pierce through the darkness of the prison courtyard. It's hunting hour!
As the other Hoxford prisoners huddle in the obscurity of their prison cells trembling in fright, Ray cracks a smile. He thrives on confrontation.
Lock a human beast in a cage with a legendary monster and, in your opinion...
Who will devour? And who will be devoured?"

Monday Inspiration: Kinetic Sculpture

2011-10-02T21:46:00.000-07:00

I love kinetic sculpture. Something about the machine as art just makes a shiver of delight run up my spine.

Brett Dickens displays seven of his wall-mounted kinetic sculptures. What can I say other than geargasm!

Theo Jansen creates awesome walking sculptures powered by the wind.

Finally, if you're like me, and you grew up playing with Hot Wheels, you'll appreciate this one. Over 1,000 cars circle Chris Burden's building-sized Metropolis II.

Fashion Friday: Gears

2011-09-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

Gears represent all things mechanical, they are, in a way, the last great technological achievement that everyone could understand. Once we started moving away from gears to electronics, consumer products became opaque. With a moderate level of technical skill you can fix something with gears most of the time, it needs oil, or a screw is loose, maybe needs a new part, but if your car's CPU is on the fritz, forget it! You need a professional. No more getting your hands dirty figuring out what makes it tick, you're more likely to just break it.

That is one of the reasons why they are emblematic of the steampunk movement. In a very real way, gears represent a simpler age, when people worked with their hands, and we were the boss of machines, not the other way 'round (if you doubt that machines own people you haven't seen this video, where a woman texting on her phone falls into a fountain).

So, steampunkers put gears everywhere, jewelry (pic from Creative Habits)

computer cases (pic from Datamancer)

even fingernails

Gears are everywhere in steampunk. It's impossible to get away from them. In fact they would feel rather oppressive if they weren't so cool.

What do you think? Got any cool gears to show us?

A Trip to the Moon

2011-09-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

A conversation I had on Facebook about steampunk in cinema got me thinking about this film. Arguably the first Science Fiction movie ever made. Of course it doesn't hold up by today's standards, but at the time the special effects were absolutely amazing. Director Georges Méliès based his film loosely on Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells.

Why aren't there more steampunk movies?

2011-09-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering this for a while. Is it because the few Steampunkish films released have done really poorly, like the Wild Wild West, and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, or because Hollywood just hasn't caught on to how cool a well articulated Steampunk film could be?

Bloodrunsclear created this fake Weird West movie trailer by chopping up other films.

He did another fake trailer for the movie version of Leviathan.

And, I had to pick one actual steampunk movie. Here's the steamboy trailer.

Monday Inspiration: Industrial Decay

2011-09-26T13:31:00.001-07:00

Every few months I go to google images and search for 'industrial decay'. I don't know why the pictures I find inspire me, or even what impulse made me first try that particular word combination, but I love the result. The images I find are so inspiring I have a hard time staying focused, so many different stories spring to mind.

I know some steampunkers like glittery brass and cleanly etched lines on the samovar in their manicured Victorian salons, but not me. Give me dirt and grime, rust and decay any day. It's far more visceral and this, is the sort of thing that gets me going (well this and coffee).

S. Marshall takes wonderful photographs, including these of an abandoned French bunker. Originally built in the late 19th century, it was in use until sometime during the early '90s.

Another by S. Marshall, this time of the Rankine hydroelectric plant's tailrace.

Baldo2008 has a fantastic array of photos taken in abandoned factories.

From Staticpulse, a couple of HDR photos of ducting.

To explore the world of industrial decay on your own I highly recommend starting with The Industrial Decay Network

Fashion Friday: What's up with the Goggles?

2011-09-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

There are many opinions as to the origin of goggles in steampunk. Some say it came from the real-world movement and translated into literature, artwork and film over time. This crowd leans towards the theory that goggles were first worn in a steampunk context at Burning Man, as simple eye protection, because of all the dust.

Others say it's because goggles were simply more common in the Victorian context. Eye protection was worn by those shovelling coal into the engines, scientists performing experiments, and some trains had passenger compartments open to the air, where passengers wore goggles to protect themselves from the wind.

However, as far as I can determine, the first use of goggles in a steampunk context I can find is in Phil Foglio's "Girl Genius". Way back in 2000, he published the first issue, and already goggles were an important part of the aesthetic.

Whatever the source, they're a staple of steampunk garb. From the complex lenses worn by The Dark Power.

To forehead (or hat) worn decorative goggles.

To the genuine antique models.

Goggles will always be one of the defining fashion accessories of steampunk.

Now, does anyone know of a good place to shop for goggles, or do you have a goggle story? I'd love to hear about it, leave a comment below.

Dragoncon 2011 Costumes

2011-09-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

Beat Down Boogie put this wonderful compilation of costumes from Dragoncon together. Fantastic stuff, I think I'll have to put D-con on my list of places to be next year.

Chad Vader made an appearance too. If you're unfamiliar with the series, it's a web-based show about Chad, a relative of Darth's, who works as the day manager at a 24 hour grocery store.

Monday Inspiration: Music Video

2011-09-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

The imagination that goes into music videos astounds me. Yes, there are a lot of crap music videos, but the art form allows for a certain freedom of expression that leads to wild and wonderful spasms of pure creativity.

First up, Denmark, by Portland Cello Project

Of course, the classic, Cloudbusting, by Kate Bush, my first exposure to steampunk.

Sleep Isabella, by Abney Park. Just a stage performance unfortunately (which is still good, don't get me wrong). I can't wait to see what they'll do if they ever get a budget for a theatric-style music video.

Last, but not remotely least, some steampunk hiphop, Fighting Trousers, by Professor Elemental.

Steampunk Peter Pan

2011-09-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

Every year the Vancouver Film School (where I went for my computer animation degree many years ago) creates a series of short themed films which all the students in their various disciplines work on. This year the theme was Steampunk Peter Pan. The following are this year's final products.

Hook

Tinkerbell

Obsession

Pan

Forever

Hats

2011-09-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

One thing which steampunk is bringing back to the world is the hat. It's an important bit of clothing, worn by every culture in every time period since men started making tools, yet in the past hundred years they've fallen completely out of fashion. Baseball caps do not count, especially if worn backwards or sideways, that's actually pushing hats lower on the fashion scale than wearing none at all.

Hats are style. As Neil Gaiman wrote in Anansi Boys, "...all you need to wear a hat is attitude..." If you can wear a hat without feeling silly in it, it makes you look good.

So, here are some good places to look, when you start shopping for hats.

These men's hats from Museum Replicas cover all your basic needs. Museum Replicas also has an excellent collection of other costuming odds and ends. I especially like their leather greatcoat.

Naturally Etsy is a great place to look. Shops like caribbeanrosepirate (pictured above)

TheBlondeSwan

and rosewoodstitches, provide a wide variety of hats, mostly in women's styles.

If your tastes run to the wildly decorative, you might want to give the House of Wormwood a look (pictured above and below).

There is a hat to suit every steampunk style. Just remember, it's all about attitude.

A Serious Comedian is a Dangerous Thing

2011-09-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

This seems to fit with the Burning Man video from earlier this week. This is one of the greatest political speeches ever given, if not the greatest. It's as appropriate today, if not more appropriate than it was 70 years ago.

Monday Inspiration: Burning Man

2011-09-12T10:27:00.000-07:00

I've never been to Burning Man, but I really want to go. I look forward to videos like this each year. The outpouring of raw creativity there is like no other time or place on Earth.

Maybe when Aetherstorm hits the bestseller list I can finally afford the trip. ;)

Anyone here been? If so I'd love to hear your thoughts.

By the way, if you're not familiar with Burning Man, you may want to check your surroundings before hitting play, there are a few fleeting chest shots of women wearing nothing from the waist up but bodypaint or pasties.

Short Steampunk Documentary

2011-09-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

A short PBS documentary on the steampunk movement, interviews with artists, thoughts about the roots and where things are going into the future. If you ever have trouble explaining to other people exactly what steampunk is, point them here.

...And Then vs. But and Therefore

2011-09-09T15:20:00.000-07:00

Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park creators) crash a writing course and deliver some pointers. I think subliminally most writers know this rule, but I've never heard it spelled out in quite these terms before. Well worth the two minute watch.

Representation

2011-09-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

Up until now I've avoided going into any detail on my progress in finding an agent. I'd heard from several sources that talking about the search on your blog is considered bad form.

I will go through my experiences in the process in greater detail in future posts, but for now, let me just say I'm proud to announce that I'm officially represented by Regina Brooks of Serendipity Literary. This is a huge step forward for my writing career, and although we still have to do edits, find a publisher and get the book out there, this is probably the biggest and most important step towards that. Only about 1/2 - 1/3 of agent represented books get published by a good publisher, but fewer than 1 in 100 manuscripts actually get picked up by an agent.

So, like Sissyphus I've ascended the peak, only to see that there's more climbing to do. Unlike Sissyphus, the end is within sight, and possibly within grasp in the near future.

E-ink

2011-09-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

I saw this today and thought it was pretty amazing. For those of you who wonder how your Kindle's screen works. I never realised the displays on those things are paper thin like this.

Inspiration: Makers

2011-09-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

People who build things inspire me. The things they build often inspire me too. Things like the Maker's Faire make me wish I had a workshop so I could join in the fun (unfortunately my current living conditions only allow for a small closet of tools, and the kitchen table is my best bet for a work surface which would eliminate all of the projects in the following video of Maker's Faire 2011).

If watching that puts you in a buying mood then check out these computer mods from datamancer.net.

Yes, those are all fully functioning PCs

Inspirational Mondays

2011-08-29T13:54:00.001-07:00

I've decided to institute several weekly columns on this blog. First off, every Monday I want to offer something which inspires me.

I often find photos inspiring me, but when I came across this photo essay of a decrepit Russian ekranoplane (an aircraft which achieves level flight near the surface of the earth, normally over water using the 'ground effect' to attain greater lift) I knew I had to share.

I love how strange it is. A type of vehicle most people have never even heard of, nevermind seen. The Russians had several different models of ekranoplanes flying during the cold war, but this is (at least to my knowledge) the biggest.

I love the textures of decay here. The rusted structures in the background, the decay on the wing which makes each rivet stand out. Just looking at this sort of thing makes me want to write a scene in this setting.

If you want to see the hi-rez versions and more pictures, the photos are from: http://igor113.livejournal.com/51213.html

Sailing

2011-08-12T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm back from a two week sailing trip.

The outbound route. I picked up my wife and kids in Lund

Our first stop after Lund. We spent the night in Squirrel Cove, which has a general store and small restaurant a half hour dinghy ride from the anchorage. The blue building is a floating bakery though, so we had fresh cinnamon buns the next morning.

Two stops later was Octopus Islands Marine Park. I took my wife and kids for a dinghy ride around one of the islands where we saw a starfish easily a metre across, huge kelp forests, seals, an otter and this bald eagle perched on the shore. We saw so many eagles on the trip that by the end we were pretty much bored of them. I even saw one of them catch a fish within a stone's throw.

From there we sailed on generally north and west. This bear on Hardwicke Island was turning rocks on the shore over and scooping up the crabs underneath for lunch.

Our ride, the Dragon Star.

This is Port Neville's old General Store and Post Office. Once a community of several hundred, Port Neville now only has a year-round population of one. Alex the caretaker who was hired by the descendants of Neville's founders to keep the historic store in good shape. They have a cabin on the property shared among various siblings, but only used in the summer months. There were only three other boats at the government wharf and I asked Alex how much traffic he sees in the winter. He told me that last winter a coast guard cutter and a large fishing boat had anchored overnight, but neither had sent crew ashore. Otherwise the only times he saw people was when he left Port Neville for supplies.

It is a beautiful spot. We had been making our way up the Johnstone Strait to Robson Bight to see Orcas (my wife, after nine years living here had yet to see one). The transition from the islands to the strait was harsh, water temperatures dropped ten degrees (or twenty if you count in Fahrenheit) and the wind chilled by the same and blew fiercely against us (both directions!). However, once we turned the corner into Neville, the temperature the winds turned warm and it became summer again.

Finally some whales. Just off Robson Bight we found Orca pod A24, we stayed with the whales for about an hour as they cruised east. Two zodiacs patrolled the waters around the bight to inform tourists about the whales and how we can safely approach them without hurting them. They told us the pod consists of an adolescent male, four adult females and a two-year-old.

We stayed the next night in Port Neville again, then travelled to Forward harbour the next day. Preparing to anchor that afternoon, my three-year-old daughter snuck on to the upper deck (the children had been warned to stay below decks during anchoring because there was too much going on and it could be dangerous). Just as I'd started to lower the anchor I heard her crying non-stop at the top of her lungs. I knew it was serious because she's a tough girl, very little makes her cry at all so I came running to find blood all over the place and my wife tightly clasping her foot. Blood ran out and over my wife's fingers and I dashed below for the first aid kit.

Fortunately my wife is a medical professional and I have fairly extensive first-aid training from my time in the Army. We saw that she had a deep cut in the side of her small toe so we bandaged it up and reviewed our options.

The nearest hospital was at least eight hours away, and it would have meant a long cruise to a small port, then a two-hour taxi ride. We called the Coast Guard to ask if they knew any better options and they immediately dispatched the Cape Palmerton, the newest boat in the fleet from Campbell River. We sailed out to meet them, but found the main channels rough, so we loitered in a small cove. About two hours later they came alongside, my wife and daughter transferred and they took off for Campbell River.

There was no other safe anchorage nearby so we returned to Forward Harbour for the night. Cell phone coverage was intermittent, but finally my wife got through to us late that night. My daughter would be fine, she got eight stitches and had a bad reaction to a drug which caused her to stop breathing for a while, but everything had worked out okay. The two of them would stay in the hospital overnight so they could keep my daughter for observation.

The next day we started out before six in the morning. We had huge luck with currents and winds so the trip to Campbell River only took us nine hours. The pick-up went smoothly and we sailed another two hours to Rebecca Spit.

The next morning we spent some time on the beach (pictured above) and returned to Squirrel Cove so my wife and kids could have an early start from Lund the next morning.

I sailed back to drop off the boat. Mostly it was a relaxing and pleasant break. We saw hundreds of seals, dozens of bald eagles and dolphins, otters, a bear, sea lions and of course, the orcas. Makes me wish I had a boat of my own.

Sfera con Sfera

2011-07-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

The image I used in my last post is from a series of sculptures done by the Italian artist, Arnaldo Pomodoro. I'd never heard of them before but I find something really appealing about them.

I'm off sailing for two weeks, so no updates for a while.

Worldbuilding

2011-07-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

I love exploring new worlds as I read. It's one of my favourite reading experiences. However I often find books which introduce me to an entirely original setting that fall completely flat because the constructed world is inherently unbelievable. Which is why I've created a few guidelines for use in my own writing to keep myself honest and my creations believable.

1) Things must have rules. I remember the first time I encountered a world where magic had rules, The Belgariad series by David Eddings. His system of magic obeys the first law of thermodynamics, you cannot create or destroy energy/matter. Before casting a spell, Garion had to learn to draw in energy from his surroundings. It was a simple rule, that had no real impact on the story, but it made the world feel far more alive to me. The rule that a sorcerer cannot destroy matter actually did have an impact on the plot of course.

2) Inventions must be more effective than the things they replace. Whether it's Science Fiction or Steampunk, I see it all the time. I suppose it's partly my military background, but when I watch a show like Star Wars or Star Trek (especially DS9) it bugs the hell out of me that their weapons are inferior to what we field today. Think about it, how often are they stuck in a corridor, shooting single shots back and forth >pew< >pew<, most of which serve only to throw some sparks from a wall. Haven't these people heard of automatic weapons? Or, better yet, hand grenades?

3) The world must have internal consistency. Obviously many things will not be 'realistic' in a made up world. Magic will always disobey fundamental laws of physics, that's the nature of magic. However, I believe it detracts from the world when the author tells, or shows the audience how magic works and then breaks those rules because they weren't paying attention, or because it was an easy way out of a plot-hole they'd written themselves into. Likewise, don't tell me one minute that an airship has static buoyancy so the weight on-board must be balanced perfectly and then later have it flying at 8,000 feet. The atmosphere is at 75% of its sea-level density at 8,000 feet, so on a static buoyancy craft you'd need an incredible amount of lift from engines or you'd have to drop 25% of your weight to fly that high. And don't get me started on how much impact 200 Kg of mass would impart on a vehicle much larger than the Hindenburg (which had a gross lift of 242 tons).

4) As much as possible, the society should reflect any changes you've made. If magic is freely available, and practitioners can cast spells with lasting effects then most households would probably have a few magical conveniences like refrigerators or fire-starters for instance. If your story is steampunkish, takes place in pre-civil-war America and you decide it's easy to build robotic constructs, then that would have a significant impact on slavery, which might mean the civil-war never happened, or the war might have been fought for entirely different reasons.

The more you apply rules and logical extrapolations upon your world the more of those satisfying worldbuilding details will come out in the end product. Even if all the details don't make it into your book, just having them in your head can't help but enrich your world. So get out there and build a cool new world that feels so real readers get lost in it. When you do, drop me a line, I'd love to read it.

First 200 words

2011-07-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

This is my first 200 words for Blogger extrordinaire Daena Barnhart. I only found out her page through this contest, but I'll certainly be visiting her often in the future.

Title: Aetherstorm
Genre: Steampunk, 80k words
Finished, and edited, and edited, and edited. Then edited some more.

Konrad Adler wormed his lanky frame up the steam conduit, and tried to ignore the burning in his shoulders. The duct had been shut down for maintenance moments earlier and the heat was enough to suck the air straight out of his lungs. In five minutes it would be cool enough for the cleaning crew; he had that much time to sneak into Otto Dragomir's laboratory, steal a couple of vials and escape.

Sweat ran in a steady stream down his face, heat and nerves drew moisture from him like a wrung sponge. Normally Konrad avoided anything that whiffed of criminal enterprise, he picked through refuse to sell, or ran errands for half-pennies to help his father out. That would not cover it this time though, they needed some serious coin, or he and his father would be finished.

He squirmed past the sixth access hatch. The brass wheel that opened the seventh hatch, the one leading to Dragomir's laboratory, was just a floor above. Another minute of squirming through the thick, oily air brought him abreast of his destination. Konrad reached out to turn the wheel, but the metal seared his hands. He choked back a gasp of pain and rolled his sleeves over his hands to try again.

Threads

2011-07-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

It's an old metaphor. A story is a tapestry of threads woven together. Useful to help visualise plot elements, but not completely accurate.

Threads in a novel come in many different shapes and sizes. Some are master threads, they begin at the start, and run through to the end, like the main character, an overarching theme, or the central conflict. These should run thick and strong through the entire manuscript, because they bear the bulk of the story's weight. If they fade in a portion of the book it normally means that section will be weaker, more likely to bore readers or cause them to lose interest entirely.

In fact, I would argue that any thread, once introduced, should not be ignored for too long. Either cut it and tie it off, or it must appear occasionally. For instance a character who is essential to the finale and is introduced early, cannot simply fade into the background for several chapters. Plot-threads and conflicts are the same.

All this seems obvious enough, but now that I think about it in these terms, I can see holes in my manuscript and in most of those I've read, even in many published novels. It's a surprisingly common problem. The next time you're reading a novel and you begin to lose interest part-way through, think about the threads. Most of the time they're the culprit.

YAtopia contest

2011-07-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

YAtopia is holding another contest for YA writers. Enter soon, it's almost full.

http://yatopia.blogspot.com/2011/07/agent-contest-with-vickie-motter.html?showComment=1311111599443#c6660765594333226920

History

2011-07-04T20:26:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about my personal history. What brought me here? I remember I wanted to be a writer in High School, but I don't remember why. I suppose it's because I was such an avid reader. Anyhow, I had no clue how to put a novel together. I wanted to write fantasy, and I'd spend all day drawing maps, and imagining places, but I never got so far as to create characters, never mind an actual story for my novel.

I did create stories and characters, just not in a way that I saw as a step towards writing at the time. I created RPG campaigns for my friends and at night, before I fell asleep I scripted stories in my head, one instalment a night in my ongoing adventures. In fact I still do that sort of pre-sleep daydreaming, but these days I try to focus it on whatever I'm writing at the time.

Anyhow, after High School I didn't know what to do. I had no clue how to step towards becoming a writer, all I knew was that most of the writers I read had fascinating backgrounds. They'd travelled, done a wide variety of work and just seemed like they'd been around.

So, with the naiveté of youth propelling me forward, I joined the Canadian Army. I wanted to sign up for the infantry but, after a battery of tests they thought I'd be better used as an electronics and optical technician. Anyhow, you've seen the movie, you know what training was like, more or less. One of the guys in my basic training platoon was an ex-US Marine. After five years in the Marines he said Canadian basic was the toughest thing he'd done.

Fast forward through three years of training, exercises, boredom on base, more training etc. By this time I'd entirely forgotten my dream of writing a novel, but I still wanted to DO something. I'd arrived with my regiment while they were all off peacekeeping in Cyprus and they weren't deployed again the entire time I was there. I knew the Army was not the right place for me, but I didn't want to give up the dream of actually getting involved in something bigger than firing blanks at an 'enemy force' who was firing blanks back at me. So I transferred to the reserves, and a year later the call came for volunteers to go peacekeeping in Croatia.

Here is where the history part comes in. During my tour there was a small, but significant engagement in a place called the Medak Pocket. At the time I had no idea it would be later deemed a historically significant event. I wasn't actually there, only a few dozen of the Second PPCLI can claim that, but I was in the radio room that night, I heard it all in short bursts. The Croats were moving in on the poorly armed Serb defenders (the opposite of the dynamic in most of the rest of the former Yugoslavia). A few platoons of our boys were sent in. They drove right up in their APCs, right in between the opposing forces and began to dig entrenchments. Our orders were not to fire, unless fired upon but, being in the middle meant that when the Croats started shooting at the Serbs, they fired right over the heads of the soldiers in the middle. Close enough!

Afterwards the officer reporting the engagement was audibly shaky on the radio. The Sergeant manning the radio had to guide him through the report. Officially the Croatian forces opened fire on Canadian peacekeepers. The Canadian troops returned fire with assault rifles and light machine guns. Sixteen Croatians died and none of our guys were injured. The Croatians left, tails firmly tucked behind, and they never came back.

Why was this historically significant? Because two years later the Serbs massacred 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in a nearly identical scenario. Only those peacekeepers stepped aside, and let the Serbian troops in. The Battle of the Medak Pocket became the big argument for peacemaking rather than peacekeeping.

So I was part of a historically significant event, if just as an observer on one end of the radio. Imagine that.

All these experiences and many more, in some way I can't really explain, brought me back, full circle, to the guy who dreamed about writing novels. Only this time I think I actually have a story to tell, and hopefully the maturity to do it well.

High Concept

2011-07-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

A couple of trailers I saw recently really brought home the message of a good, clear high concept. The first is for NBC's upcoming TV series Awake. Yes, after watching it, read that again, it's a network TV series. It looks absolutely fantastic and I guarantee I'll be there to watch, and I suspect once you've seen the trailer you'll be there too, the high concept is just that good.

The second is for the upcoming film Another Earth. The high concept here blows my mind as well. Both of these trailers have fantastic ideas with characters so deeply intertwined in the concept it seems almost impossible to separate them. Both concepts, when taken alone might seem a bit goofy and far-fetched, but with the character involvement they become a fantastic hook.

Curves

2011-06-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

Every kind of emotion in a novel can fit on a graph. There is the climactic curve, which should increase steadily to each climactic point in the novel, fall and then begin building again for the next climax, like the 1812 Overture. And the G/I curve, which Kurt Vonnegut introduces below (which, combined with some beta reading I've been doing got me thinking on the subject).

Those are macro-curves, which detail an entire story, but each character should have their own emotional curves within scenes. For instance, in the first draft of Aetherstorm, I had Konrad running in fear of his life. He accidentally stumbled into a party and ended up fighting a sort of swashbuckling duel with one of the guests, complete with witty repartee. It was a great scene, but it stood out like a sore thumb, because people who are fleeing in panic don't suddenly collect their wits, pass some urbane banter and finish their opponent with urbane wit.

Which made me think of how emotions, and character development intertwine in the greater picture. Some emotions, such as fear, play out in a curve within one sequence and then after a few minutes, hours or days, the emotion is forgotten. Other emotions get reinforced by ongoing experience. The writer becomes more and more frustrated over time as he continues to face rejection (not speaking from personal experience or anything :P ). The grieving father who turns to alcohol only drives himself further into depression. If there is nothing inciting the emotion to change it will carry-on in a fairly smooth and predictable manner, only jumping erratically when something significant to that emotion comes along. Grieving father finds out it was all a mistake and his son is alive after all, or the writer catches his big break.

I think it's these bigger emotional curves that define characters and character development and having predictable emotional curves is what defines a character we can all fall in love with.

Maybe that's all obvious to some people, and maybe it's been said before, but that's what I learned about writing this week.

Character Studies

2011-06-17T10:14:00.001-07:00

Characters are the motive force behind any good story. You can have the most amazing plot, world building, write the snappiest dialogue and create prose that makes editors shrug and say, "I have nothing to say", but if the characters are flat and lifeless the story will never succeed to any great degree.

Building good characters is essential to writing good fiction.

So, what makes a good character?

They are a living, thinking, autonomous person. One of the tests for me is that my characters don't always do as I say.

They have emotional consistency. This is one I figured out only after a pile of rejects unfortunately. I knew one of the scenes near the beginning of Aetherstorm was a little out of place, but I loved it, it was clever and witty and I couldn't really place my finger on what was wrong. Then I figured it out. On page five he has the crap scared out of him, then a scene later he's all suave and clever, it felt completely out of place.

They come across on the page. This has been the toughest one for me to learn. I thought I knew what was going on inside my character's heads before I really spent the time to focus on this. One whole edit of Aetherstorm was spent scene-by-scene putting myself inside their heads and thinking, "Okay, I'm Konrad. X just happened, how does that make me feel?"

As I went through and edited for character, I found that, with Konrad (the lead) especially, it gave me a ton of insight into who he is and he changed in nature from how I had envisioned him. In my early drafts he was essentially a nice guy, caught up in something bigger than himself.

Then I started to really think about who he was. All those Psych classes I took in college began to pay off. I thought about how he lived, and where he came from. His mother died when he was a baby, and his father raised him. His mother and father were stowaways when Himmelberg first launched so they aren't even legal citizens, which places them in a sort of permanent underclass. Add to that the fact that his father had been the product of some experimentation which made him much stronger and faster than a normal human, but he and Konrad cannot use their advantages, because non-humans are automatically labelled mortal enemies of humans and killed on sight. That makes for a mess of an adolescent. He feels he's better than everyone else, but lives as the lowest of the low. That's at the core of his personality. Obviously anger and arrogance are his biggest character flaws at the start.

Over the course of the book he does a lot of things to survive that haunt him. Guilt and the fear that he's turning into exactly the sort of monster humans believe he is keep him up at night. He turns to alcohol and starts to alienate his friends. Everything got a lot darker in the re-writes, and I think the manuscript is better for it. Konrad is certainly a lot less likeable at the end of the newer drafts than he was in the early ones, but he's also more sympathetic and more real, which I think plays well into the bittersweet ending which was inevitable once all the pieces were in motion.

[Mask picture modified from a picture found at http://bobbasset.com/, the background photo is by Charles Bodi (who has an amazing collection of beautiful abandoned factory pictures at ridemypony.com)]

Hey, What's the Big Idea?

2011-06-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

I think the big idea, or high concept, of a story is one of the most important things for an aspiring writer to consider before setting pen to paper.

I believe there are two main ways a book sells to a publisher.

1) The author is a known quantity so the editor knows they have a saleable product.

2) The concept for the book is so catchy the editor just has to read it for themselves.

That's opinion but it seems to hold true most of the time. I've seen lots of dreck by established authors on the shelves. Unfortunately if you are not an established author so you cannot take the easy route. On the other hand if you go and find just about any debut book from a new author published in the past 5-10 years you will find the idea is usually quite original and the first quarter of the book is very engaging. Often they tend to fall off after the first book, especially in a series. IMO Derek Landy, Joseph Delaney (who had published before The Spook's Apprentice, but nothing really successful), and Brandon Mull are all good examples of what I'm talking about. To be clear, I'm not saying their follow-up books are poor, they are all very good, but the first is the best and the first quarter of a first-time author's book is normally amazingly tight.

Derek Landy - Skullduggery Pleasant, a girl falls in with a noir-style detective who happens to be a wisecracking, fireball-throwing living skeleton.

Joseph Delaney - The Spook's Apprentice, A young man is apprenticed to a witch and monster hunter in medieval times.

Brandon Mull - Fablehaven, Two young siblings spend the summer on their grandparent's nature reserve only to find out its a preserve for all variety of mythical and magical creatures.

Maybe I haven't expressed them all as well as possible, but I think you get the idea, all were created around a highly original core idea. All these are YA fantasy because that's what I've been writing and reading myself lately, but if you look at the larger picture, what are the standout books across all genres in the past ten years or so? Think about it. And what do they all have in common? An amazingly clever premise that can be summarised in a few words.

Blindness - A pandemic disease renders people blind. Scientists cannot find a cure.
The Time Traveller's Wife - Title pretty much sums it up.
Harry Potter - A young boy goes to wizarding school.
The DaVinci Code - A man finds riddles within DaVinci works that hint Jesus lived a very different life from the story in the Bible.

Even Twilight, which I know many writers love to hate, has a really engaging and original concept behind it.

It's not a new phenomenon either if you go back to older titles it holds.

The Hobbit (may not seem amazingly original now that it's been emulated a million times, but groundbreaking when it first came out)
James Bond series (as with The Hobbit, it's been copied so many times it no longer seems as original as it once was), Lolita, The Name of the Rose.

So, whatever you're writing next, if you're working towards being published make it a grand idea. Something big, bold and original.

Update

2011-06-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am still alive and working on my manuscript. Through some tough edits, cutting many of the passages I loved dearly, but didn't quite fit the feel of those around them, adding new material where it was needed and creating a depth of character the story lacked in the early drafts, I feel I finally have something to be proud of. I think this may be *it* for me, the one that gets me published and on the road to successful authordom.

I thought all authors shared a certain sense of self-doubt. I certainly have it in abundance, maybe I'll feel different when I'm published, but I doubt it. So I was surprised to hear today that V.H. Naipaul (Nobel and Booker Prize winner) told an interviewer at The Guardian "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." and added "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too."

On the other hand perhaps that only speaks to how deep his own doubts lie. He doth protest too much.

Anyhow, enjoy the Kate Bush video, I was reminded of it today and thought I'd share. It was my favourite video at the time (I know, dating myself here). It's interesting as I look back how many times an affinity for steampunk shows up in my history that I was unaware of before I started writing.

Uncertainty

2011-05-10T21:07:00.001-07:00

There is something about the creative process that leads artists of all stripes to doubt themselves. I think that's especially true of writers. Most writers believe they are frauds some of the time.

I believe this is partly because writing is so personal. It's impossible to distance yourself from your work to the point where you can fairly judge its quality.

Which leads to the burning question. If you are an unpublished author, how can you tell if your feelings are a normal part of the process for any developing writer, or a legitimate and fair assessment of your own work?

Hooks

2011-04-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

Hooks, for those of you who don't write, are the bits at the beginning of a book designed to reel in a prospective reader, agent or editor. If you've ever picked up a book in the store, read the first page and decided on the spot that you had to buy that book you've experienced a well written hook.

The hook is arguably the most important part of a book. Certainly for an unpublished author seeking publication it's the most important part. If I can't get an agent or editor past the first few pages it's really irrelevant how good the rest of the book is.

Since I've been getting into the querying process I've been thinking a lot about hooks lately. Because Aetherstorm has a prologue I need to have two solid hooks, one for the prologue and one for chapter 1. The way I see it there are as many hooks as there are writers, but the ones that work well fall into a few categories.

1) Action: Think about any James Bond movie. I think action hooks work really well for movies but don't work so well in print. They are commonly used though, I'd have to say this is the most frequently used hook technique I've seen while critiquing manuscripts from other aspiring authors.

2) Character: Catch 22 starts with a great character/funny opening. Yossarian is just sitting in the hospital, censoring mail from the enlisted men, but because he's bored he plays games with the mail he censors. It really gets you inside his head and rooting for him before you're done the first few pages. You care about him and want to know where he's going.

3) Mystery/suspense: A woman wakes up to a creak from downstairs. Was it the cat? The house settling? Or an intruder? Very effective hook, as long as the reader is asking the right questions and it doesn't feel contrived.

4) Shock value: Many horror genre movies and TV shows like Criminal Minds use this hook. Two young boys are fishing on a public dock, one turns to stare, goggle-eyed at the water. The other follows his gaze and proceeds to vomit. Camera turns to show their POV and we see a bloated corpse rocking gently on the waves. Effective but risks turning some readers off.

5) Comedy: Get the audience laughing and they will flip pages. Comedy is tricky though, you need a deft touch or you risk falling flat on your face.

Of course the best hooks use multiple devices. My prologue starts with character/suspense, then moves on to character/shock value. Chapter 1 starts with suspense which builds with some shock value to heighten tension, then a major shock, the lead turns and flees and things transition into an action sequence with some comedic elements.

I am sure I have missed at least a few good devices for hooking an audience. What about your experience? What are some of your favourite hooks?

Contractions

2011-04-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

I wrote Ætherstorm almost completely without contractions, against my normal inclination and style, because I wanted to give it a bit of a feel of the Jules Verne and H.G. Wells stories I've been reading lately. Now I hear back from several readers that they don't like it, it makes the dialogue feel stilted and unnatural.

>sigh< Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Anyhow, enjoy this cute picture of a steampunk kitten while I go through and fix all the broken dialogue.

By the way, if you're ever looking for a picture to describe contractions, such as 'it's' or 'they're', don't do a google image search for 'contractions'. The bulk of the images returned have nothing to do with the shortened forms of words.

The Cast Part IV

2011-04-19T20:07:00.001-07:00

Lord Octavian (Otto) Dragomir

Dragomir is the villain. He is the most brilliant scientist of his generation, but like so many scientists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, he feels that the betterment of mankind is such a noble goal that individuals should, in fact must, be sacrificed. Today we think of the scientists who performed potentially lethal experiments on human beings as sick, twisted and evil, but not so long ago it was perfectly normal. Until the 1960s for instance, it was regular procedure at one American hospital for any woman having a gynaecological exam to be injected with a cell culture of cervical cancer, often causing that woman to develop cervical cancer herself. Dragomir is the product of that sort of thinking.

Normally Dragomir is so wrapped up in his own work that he is completely unaware of anything that happens outside of his own laboratory. As long as he receives a steady supply of 'subjects' for his experiments there is little else he wants or needs.

He was deeply involved in the experiment which released a steady flow of aether into the world nearly a hundred years ago, but from the beginning he always considered that experiment a failure. For most of the intervening time he has worked on developing an experiment that would produce a perfect rift to the aether, which would give him enough for his experiments without having to kill any more subjects for the small burst of aether he can use as they expire.

There is, of course, more to him than I can, or want to, express here. I could write a book. In fact, I have. ;)

How Much is too Much?

2011-04-17T12:48:00.001-07:00

I've been polishing away, snipping excess verbiage here, adding bits of plot there to smooth out the story. The other day I thought about adding an entirely new element to the world. It would add an some interesting world-building elements, but obviously it's not necessary to the plot. In the end I decided to let it go. If this book takes off maybe it will form the basis for a sequel.

All of which gets me thinking, at what point does editing start to make a manuscript worse instead of better? I'm never going to be 100% happy with everything, I know that. Even if it gets published I am sure there will be mistakes that make me slap my forehead, but at the same time I know that's okay.

I think it's ready. One more read-through and edit, and I'm moving on. I think I'll do a series of shorts next. I'll only come back to this one as comments trickle in to fix specific things.

Contest

2011-04-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

YAtopia has a pitch contest going on right now for all you writers out there. Any genre, winner gets a fast track submission to Natalie Fisher of Bradford Lit.

The Cast Part III

2011-04-12T15:14:00.001-07:00

Zylphia

Zylphia is one of my favourite characters in Ætherstorm. She is the flight leader for wing three and the best pilot aboard the zeppelin Kharkov. She is smart, tough and has no problem keeping up with the boys. She is the only woman in the crew of the Kharkov, but she doesn't pretend to be a man in an attempt to fit in (I for one am tired of that cliché). As I was writing the story I had a picture of a woman in my head, only as I was looking at pictures for this blog-post did I realise it was Amelia Earheart (pictured above).

As this is the nineteenth century she does not have an easy time fitting in to what most people see as a man's role. The term 'sexual harassment' has not been coined, and people in that era would not even understand what it means. Being the best pilot aboard and friends with the captain are all that keeps Zylphia's life from turning into a misogynistic nightmare. Even so she has to occasionally put a man in line, using extreme measures if necessary.

Since she was twelve, she has known nothing but living in the streets and living on the Kharkov. In spite of the downsides she much prefers the Kharkov and wouldn't know what to do with herself if she couldn't fly every day.

Zylphia is, of course, the love interest. She keeps Konrad on his toes, especially in the early stages of their relationship. If I were to write a prequel novel about any character in Ætherstorm it would be her, as she has the most interesting (and developed) back story.

Prescience

2011-03-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday's post was just slightly ahead of its time. About fifteen minutes after I made that blog post, whether through Karma for making light of the situation in Japan, or mere impudence, my drive finally gave up the ghost.

I spent a good chunk of time last night and again this morning trying to fix Windows or at least install it on a spare drive with no luck. Then I threw up my hands in disgust and decided I would just use Linux to recover everything and then switch back to windows. Under an hour later I have Linux installed nicely and I'm getting all the system settings where I want them. It has all the tools I need for writing and seems generally smoother and more user friendly than Windows. It even seems to be doing a good job of copying my old drive so I won't lose any data.

I'll keep Windows, just in case there's something I can't do in Linux, but so far I haven't found anything.

In a few days I hope to forget all about Windows. I'm sure there will be flashbacks, like a Vietnam veteran sleeping under a ceiling fan. But I'll get over it.

My Computer is a Fukishima

2011-03-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

I should have saved that last picture (the exploding blimp below) for today. I spent all morning struggling to get my computer to work. A bad boot sector on the hard drive stops the computer mid-boot about 95% of the time, the only approach I've found that works is to simply try over and over until it works.

It put me behind in my work and I ended up sending out a sub-standard synopsis today because I was frustrated and feeling pressured to get something out.

So far I've been unable to set up a drive image, but I made a boot disk which I hope will work (I am reluctant to test it for obvious reasons).

This is what happens when you are your own tech support.

The Progress Bar 6

2011-03-25T21:44:00.001-07:00

Well, it's done. Almost exactly on my targeted word count of 75,000 (74,688 is close enough), and nearly a week ahead of schedule. There will be more edits, I am a tinkerer at heart, but I am happy with the manuscript.

This novel began with the idea of a steampunk world with flying cities that sprang into my mind in the bathroom one night while I was looking at nasal spray. Yes... saline nasal spray, in English it said, "full stream" (the manufacturer sells three different power levels), but in Canada all labelling is bilingual. In French it read, "jet fort". I found it amusing that the French version said something entirely different to an Anglophone mind so it stuck. That is honestly where the first nugget of an idea came from.

The idea sat in the back of my mind for a long time. I was working on trying to get my previous novel published, but in moments of frustration I turned to my steampunk project called, Going Down (terrible name by the way, even setting the sexual connotations aside). I had a pretty good idea of how the story went, with a few major holes when I started work in earnest about four months ago. Another week of planning and plotting and I was ready to go. A month and a half of writing, followed by two months of editing and here I am. Ready for the next stage.

I hope it's ready for prime-time. I feel alternately like a father, proud of his new creation, and like a sergeant, ordering his man over the top, into no man's land to die horribly in a hail of machine-gun fire.

Writing Advice

2011-03-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

This has done the rounds, but I think it's a good list so I thought I'd share. Here is a list of writing advice from Gordon Silverstein.

1. Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
2. Never use no double negatives.
3. Use the semicolon properly, always where it is appropriate; and never where it is not.
4. Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it where it is not needed.
5. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
6. No sentence fragments.
7. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
8. Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
9. When you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
10. A writer must not shift your point of view.
11. Do not overuse exclamation marks!!! (In fact, avoid them whenever possible!!!)
12. And do not start a sentence with a conjunction.
13. Place pronouns as closely as possible, especially in long sentences, as of ten or more words, to their antecedents.
14. Hyphenate only between syllables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
15. Write all adverbial forms correct.
16. Don't use contractions.
17. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
18. It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms.
19. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
20. Steer clear of incorrect verb forms that have snuck into the language.
21. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors.
22. Avoid modernisms that sound flaky.
23. Avoid barbarisms: they impact too forcefully.
24. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
25. Everyone should be careful to use singular pronouns with singular nouns in their writing.
26. If we've told you once, we've told you a thousand times: avoid hyperbole.
27. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
28. Do not string a large number of prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
29. Always pick on the the correct idiom.
30. "Avoid overuse of 'quotation' 'marks.'"
31. Never use more words than are necessary to get your point across: be concise.
32. Awayz check you're spelling. (Your spellchecker would only pick up one of the two errors here.)
33. Always be avoided by the passive voice.
34. Every sentence a verb.
35. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague: seek viable alternatives.

Excerpt

2011-03-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm nearly there. Less than two weeks to go and I'll start sending out some queries. In the meantime I've prepared an excerpt to submit to The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy and a few other places.

Here is an excerpt (from the excerpt) describing Terra do Pao, a district to the south of the volcano on the island of Pico in the Azores.

Then it was Flight Three's turn to step into the elevator. The lift swung in the breeze on the way down. Konrad's nostrils began to sting from smoke, garbage and the smell of millions of humans pressed together in close proximity.
The view was spectacular though. The setting sun cast a reddish light on the volcano to the north. The streets were already in shadow and streetlights were flickering on, illuminating the teeming masses of people and machines below.
After waving good-bye to Tinibu, Konrad, Grover and Zylphia wound their way through the busy catwalks of Terra do Pao. All manner of bizarre contraptions zipped along the streets at breakneck speed. Velocipedes, like the one Konrad had ridden north from Paris were common, some had a small carriage behind for passengers and accepted a fare for transport. There were steam cars and trucks, even a few steam-powered velocipedes which wove in and out of traffic at speeds that made Konrad fear for the drivers' lives.
Most pedestrians kept to the network of bridges and catwalks suspended about six metres above the streets. Steam pipes passed through the entire district, providing heat for the caliphos lights. In some places small leaks in the network of pipes sent shimmering clouds of mist into the night. Shops at catwalk-level sold a dizzying array of merchandise; clothes caught Konrad's eye, especially some which he felt should not be displayed in public, let alone actually worn by a woman, there was all manner of food for sale, alongside jewelry, watches, firearms, knives, swords, artwork, and a hundred other things he could not identify.

Impatience

2011-03-08T17:05:00.001-08:00

I want to get my book out there. It is not perfect, but I am resigned to the fact that it will never be perfect.

Right now, my plan is to revise until the end of the month, then send out queries to a dozen good agents. If I don't get a very positive response (at least 2-3 full requests) I will revise further. I made the mistake last time of querying everybody before the manuscript was truly ready so I'll pull it if the response isn't good enough.

Maybe that's overly ambitious, but, if I can't attract an agent fairly quickly there must be something wrong with the book. I don't want to publish a book that sells a few thousand copies. I don't have to be the next Stephen King, but it would be nice to earn a solid living as a novelist. That's all I ask.

In the meantime I plug on, improving the manuscript a little at a time, impatiently waiting for the first round of query responses.

Maybe I'm just a rejection addict. I spent most of last year querying my previous novel, I haven't had a rejection in my inbox in a few months, it makes me antsy.

Prologue Comparison

2011-03-01T18:57:00.000-08:00

To follow up on what I was saying yesterday. Here is a before and after on one of my prologue fixes describing a riot.

For three days the rioting continued unabated. Elsa began to worry for her baby, even though it seemed like the Institute for Science and Technology was the most secure building in Berlin. A ring of guards protected it day and night, armed with steam-guns and rifles. When the army couldn't control the violence any longer they gassed the streets. Thousands of rioting synari died alongside hundreds of humans, including the Institute guards, who had received no warning.

Simply a quick summary of events. I thought it worked but a lot of readers found it confusing and/or too distant from the action to be interesting.

Take 2 (first draft so please excuse any typos etc.)

Utte ran from the police with a crowd of fellow synari. Moments before her best friend Heinrich had been shot while trying to storm a blockade. She helped him to his feet as he stumbled, clutching at the hole in his side. She led him through the swirling mass of grey synari, up to a door stoop, out of the crowd.
“We have to get you off the street.”
“I think it is too late for me Utte.” He pulled his hand away from the wound to show her. Blood came gushing out.
“If we can get you to a doctor, I am sure they can fix that.”
“Utte, the doctors will not see me. We are all criminals to them.” He smiled at her. “They think it is only fair we should be slaves, after all we are merely sub-humans to them.”
Utte hardened her lips. “They will see who is sub-human when we storm their seats of power. They are the inferior ones. We should make them the slaves.”
Heinrich smiled. “That would be equally wrong. We should work together. Remember the first tenant of the revolution. 'All men are equal.'”
The crowd of synari in the street began to reorganize. Someone was shouting instructions at them.
Heinrich put his hand to Utte's face. “Go with them. We nearly broke through in the last attack, this time you are sure to succeed.”
“But...”
“Just go, I will die a happy man, knowing that you are about to change the world.”
Utte nodded. She wiped a stream of tears from her cheek, turned and joined the crowd as they began to advance on the barricade for one last push. She picked up several bricks that were lying at the side of the road.
The crowd began to chant, “Equality for all.” As they rounded the final corner before the barricade. They gathered momentum, picking up speed until they were running faster than a human could go.
Utte realized something was wrong. The men on the barricade were not shooting.
A moment later she realized they had fled.
Others in the crowd saw the barricade was unmanned and a great cheer arose. The headlong charge turned into a celebration. The city's last line of defense was defeated, Berlin belonged to the synari, they controlled the streets in every district.
Synari men and women cheered and danced. Utte yelled herself hoarse. She hoped that Heinrich had lived long enough to hear the celebration. He might still be alive, she decided to go see, maybe he could be saved after all.
Overhead, above the noise of the crowd she could just make out the howl of aircraft engines. She looked up to see a large aeroplane, skimming the buildings above.
Moments later she felt a spatter of liquid across her exposed face and arms, as if a sudden rainstorm had arrived. She looked up, but saw no clouds in the sky. The air suddenly smelled like a bed of geraniums.
Utte's arms itched where the liquid had hit them. She scratched and tore a strip of skin off. Her arm was blistering, the itch turned to a burning sensation as though each droplet of the liquid was on fire.
Utte coughed, she sneezed, spraying blood. She realized everyone in the crowd around her was coughing and sneezing too. A spasm of coughing wracked her body, it was so intense she fell to the ground. Blood and other things came up with each cough. All around her people fell to the ground, gasping for air. Utte choked and tried to inhale, but could not draw another breath.

To Prologue or not to Prologue

2011-02-26T13:57:00.000-08:00

I have a three page prologue at the beginning of my current manuscript which covers approximately twenty years of family history for the lead character. It gives a bit of a world setting and sets up for some of the conflict to come.

Some beta readers love it, others hate it, so I have decided it should not stand as it is. I think the problem many readers have is that I kept it intentionally short because I didn't want to put readers off with an expansive prologue. Now I am finding that nearly all the spots in my manuscript where I breeze over things because I think the audience won't be interested in the finer details are the biggest stumbling blocks. When I go back and flesh them out into fully realized scenes the readers enjoy them much more. In my attempt to shorten things, to keep from boring my readers I have created parts that bore the readers...

So, back to the prologue. I need to figure out if it's having the same problem, perhaps instead of three pages it should be ten, or twelve. The only way to find out is to write it. Then I'll cross my fingers and hope people like it so I don't have to cut it entirely.

Anyhow, that's where I am. I hate this stage of writing, it's all second guessing myself, hoping that the changes I make are for the better. It's frustrating, because I feel sometimes like I am making less improvement to the manuscript each day that passes, but occasionally I will have a big breakthrough, or a beta reader will point to a problem I hadn't noticed before. Then I'm thankful I'm taking my time and going through it all thoroughly.

Writing Versus Editing

2011-02-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

I have been editing lately, which I suppose is why I haven't been on here as much.

To me writing is enervating, exciting and new. I get to create and worry about polishing at a later date. I can focus exclusively on what is good in my own writing and just enjoy, knowing that any bad parts can be excised later.

Well, now it is later. Editing is when I take a cold hard look at everything I've written and I have to focus on the bad parts. After a few days it is hard to keep confidence that the book is even worth an agent or a publisher's time. Harder still, to imagine that it will actually be published one day. Fortunately the feedback I've received so far has all been extremely positive. My readers all have points they would like me to fix but every one so far has said that, overlooking some blemishes which can easily be fixed, it is something they would expect to see on the shelf of a book store. I need to hear that from time to time, as I am sure you other writers out there know all too well, writing is a lonely business.

That Which Was Dead Lives Again

2011-02-10T19:32:00.000-08:00

Melodramatic title, I know. A friend I met online who has signed recently with a good literary agency offered to read my older novel Valkia's Gift. I had essentially trunked the thing, thinking it was something to re-visit later when I had a better understanding of my craft.

He got back to me today and said, essentially the first quarter is shaky, the second quarter is good and the second half is of a quality he would expect from a book in a major bookstore.

Which brings me to a dilemma. Do I focus my energy on Valkia, leaving Aetherstorm on the back burner for a while while I give it one last hurrah, or do I let the dead lie for a little longer, work on getting Aetherstorm published and use the experience and connections I develop through that process to sell Valkia?

It is problematic. Aetherstorm, like Valkia has a beginning I am not quite happy with, but I can't quite place my finger on what is wrong, but I think is otherwise a very good book. Editing has bogged down, and you can see my blogging has slowed, always a sign I'm less than 100% happy with my work at the moment.

I think for now I'll send Aetherstorm off to some beta readers and wait for their responses before continuing to beat my head against a wall with it. Meanwhile I can hopefully beat Valkia into shape and get it back out there. As I've said before it was this ][ close before.

The Progress Bar 5

2011-02-08T10:15:00.000-08:00

As I said earlier this week, I am finished the first draft. All the loose ends are mostly wrapped up, although there is certainly room for a sequel. The manuscript is 66,283 words long now. A little on the lighter side than I was hoping for. Recommended length for young adult titles is 45-80k, but I was aiming for around 75k. It seems to be expanding slightly as I progress through the second draft so I expect the final to be in the vicinity of 70k.

The second draft is going smoothly, occasionally I find places where I need to expand the descriptions or add a few details. One short section needed a complete re-write, but on the whole I am very happy, looking back on what I've written. I expect the second draft will be ready for beta readers by the end of next week, well ahead of schedule.

Hopefully it will be ready to query in another month or so. Time to gird myself for battle, prepare for the slings and arrows of the query process and let slip the queries of war!

Weekend Steampunk Videos

2011-02-06T10:13:00.000-08:00

First up, a collection of projects in a steampunk workshop.

Internet memes translated into Victorian times.

Finally, the best corkscrew ever invented.

Finished!

2011-02-03T18:11:00.000-08:00

The first draft is finished. Sort of. It has been written to the end, let's put it that way. The climax and the follow-up, even a short epilogue. All done.

Now I am editing and filling in. As an author I tend to be very direct and to the point. Nearly every scene I have written to this point is directly relevant to the plot. But I have created a world that I hope will entice readers to stop and smell the roses now and again, which means I need to go back and plant a few. Here is a sample, I hope it smells sweet.

Konrad helped Tinibu and Grover out while they worked on the fourth aircraft in their wing of fighters. Tinibu dangled over the side of the biplane's turbine access hatch, held up by a thin hemp rope and a mesh of canvas straps he wore like a vest. Beneath the aeroplane, flapping in the wind, was what the mechanics on Kharkov called a diaper, a large sheet of netting, designed to catch anything the mechanic might drop by accident. Grover and Konrad stood above, lowering tools and parts on long cords to Tinibu whenever he called for them. The sun had just passed over the horizon, so Tinibu was closing up for the day.
Konrad glanced up and saw a glittering jewel in the distance, set against the dusky sky. He pointed it out to Grover.
“What is that?”
Grover looked up and smiled. “Paname. The most beautiful sky-city. I have only visited her once and I fell in love. One day I will go back. I save a bit of my pay so I can live there when I retire, find a nice French girl, settle down and raise a family.”
“That is a worthy ambition.”
The city drifted closer, Konrad could make out individual lights glowing in the sky. It had towers and what looked like bridges on the upper surface. Whereas Himmelberg was lumpy and misshapen, every line of Paname seemed planned. Konrad had never considered before that something so large could appear graceful. The entire city sparkled, like a sky full of stars, compressed to the size of a city.
The little man sighed. “It is a pipe-dream Konrad. I would need to work a hundred years to save enough, but, a man has to have dreams. Mine is La Ville-Lumière.”
Tinibu cleared his throat below them. “If you two lovebirds are just about done admiring the view, I am ready to be hoisted up.”

Ætherstorm Query

2011-02-02T19:12:00.001-08:00

I have decided my novel will be named Aetherstorm, at least until I find something I like more. While finishing the final chapters this week I have also been refining my query letter. For those who don't know a query is an essential part of the process to getting published, the body should look something like the back cover of a published novel. Here is the body of the query for Aetherstorm.

Eighteen-year-old Konrad Adler has never set foot on Earth. On most of the planet, aether-warped animals and a dangerous sub-species of human called synari reign. Ordinary men live in the skies, safe from the dangers below, destroying the aether-warped branches of humanity at every opportunity. Konrad appears to be an ordinary human, but in truth he is like the synari, aether-warped, faster and stronger than humans.

When Lord Dragomir discovers his secret, Konrad flees by stowing away on his father's salvage gyrocopter. But the salvage operation goes wrong. The gyro crashes, killing his father and leaving Konrad stranded, hunted by both Dragomir and the synari. He will need to survive on a planet no longer fit for human life, make his way back to his home in the skies and confront Dragomir before he can truly be free.

But Dragomir has bigger plans. The flow of aether on Earth is too weak for him. He would rip a hole in the fabric of space, threatening every life on or above Earth, to create an aetherstorm.

Let me know what you think!

The Progress Bar 4

2011-01-28T20:26:00.000-08:00

Four weeks I have been keeping track here. The manuscript has gone from a measly 9,840 words to 56,265, long enough to fit the guidelines for young-adult literature. Another 10-15k and the first draft will be almost done, I plan to backfill a little in some areas that need it, which will likely bring the total to 75,000 or so.

This week Konrad and Zylphia were doing their best to blend in with high society, thus the masquerade mask. The mask symbolizes the turning point to the final conflict, where every moment in the book starts to get more intense than the last. It is not looking good for our heroes at the moment, the shit just hit the fan and things are getting messy.

One of our heroic friends will die the next time I write, others may soon follow.

Close Calls

2011-01-26T20:43:00.001-08:00

Both today and yesterday I have been struggling to make my 2,000 words. Yesterday I had 2,003 and today I just 2,240 at 9pm. I am transitioning between acts two and three and realizing how many loose ends I have to tie in. It all has to be woven together to run smoothly and each of the threads must come to a satisfying end.

I am also wrestling with the idea of killing off some of the lead characters. I think at least one has got to go, to drive it home that this is serious business. Unfortunately it will have to be one of my favourite characters, I keep thinking that if I have a sequel I'd love to have that person around, because I really enjoy the element that they bring. Even the villain has grown on me, I feel like I want to explore his character more, perhaps I will have to go back and backfill a few more chapters from his POV.

I am well past 50,000 words, and it looks, right now, as if the total manuscript will weigh in around the 70-75k range. Which should work pretty well for a Young Adult novel. Recommended length for YA is 40-80k. For those of you who do not write and need a frame of reference, a normal paperback has about 250 words per page, or 400 pages to a 100k manuscript.

With any luck I can have copies with beta-readers before the end of next month.

Some Things I have Learned While Writing this Book

2011-01-25T19:00:00.000-08:00

- Franz II of the Holy Roman Empire is the only man in history to be Emperor of two different states. He was the last Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and he founded the Austrian Empire as Franz I several years before the HRE's armies were crushed by Napoleon's forces crushed the HRE's armies thus ending the HRE. In German he is called the Doppelkaiser.

- Velocipedes, were the earliest form of bicycle with pedals, they became a popular means of transport in the late 1860's. They were similar to the modern-day tricycle in that the pedal was solidly affixed to the front wheel, but had two wheels of similar size. Later, to take advantage of the higher mechanical ratio of a large front wheel, penny farthings were invented.

- The Besler Steam Aeroplane flew twice on April 12, 1933. It performed as well as a gasoline driven equivalent. Boeing bought the patents and spent three years working on a steam aeroplane project but it was never shown to be more practical than an internal combustion engine. The steam engine was much quieter than a conventional aeroplane engine, so much so that observers on the ground could hear the pilot calling to them on low-flying passes.

The Cast, Part II

2011-01-24T18:28:00.000-08:00

Doctor Carson

Doctor Carson is Konrad's mentor for a while. He was a member of the Brotherhood of Aether during the Great Rift. Like a hundred or so fellow brothers, Doctor Carson was caught between Paris and London during the aetherstorm which followed the rift. Unlike other people and animals caught in the aetherstorm the brothers knew how to sense and manipulate the force of aether, so naturally they tried to take advantage of the sudden surge, but for them it was like trying to wrestle a hurricane, the forces were beyond their control and warped them into hideous, malformed giants.

Doctor Carson is three metres (nine and a half feet) tall. The picture above is as close a representation to the picture I have in my head as I could find.

For nearly a hundred years he has lived as a hermit. His only pleasures in life are collecting books and hoping, one day, to have the chance to teach an eager young pupil again. The Doctor is kind, pedantic and very long winded once he starts into a scholarly lecture. He has amassed the largest library currently in existence, when humanity took to the skies they could only take a fraction of their books with them.

If he could have one wish, it would not be to fix his warped body, he has grown accustomed to the way he looks over the years, it would be to have a school full of bright young students.

Weekend Videos

2011-01-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

Here are a few steampunk animated films I enjoy. I have been an animator for over ten years so naturally I have a soft spot.

First up, The Invention of Love, amazing visual style, steampunk silhouette animation.

Next, an ad for Terry Gilliam's, 1884's Yesterday's Future.

And finally, the first reminded me of Michel Ocelot, an amazing French animator. This is one of his first works, which just happens to have a steampunk vibe.

The Progress Bar 3

2011-01-21T20:39:00.000-08:00

The end is in sight! It's almost scary, 44,203 words in and I am ready to begin the transition to act three. Just one more major conflict to get out of the way and I begin to ratchet things up, a step at a time to the climactic ending. With luck and a lot more hard work I can switch to my editing hat in three more weeks.

I had a surprise while writing this week. I'd planned out how a character would react in a situation which I knew was coming, but when I was actually writing in the moment, they exhibited a will of their own and refused to follow directions. If I hadn't heard from several sources that this kind of independent spirit was common, and in fact sought out by many authors in their characters I would be concerned. As it is I am happy, they have minds of their own and will behave in character, even when I try to push them in another direction.

The nice thing is, it doesn't even hurt the plot, if anything it makes things more interesting.

I had a major plot meltdown this week. Thinking back over what I'd written I began to feel that the manuscript had gone off the rails. It wasn't that it was bad per se, just the events were not relevant in the larger scheme of things. As always seems to happen with me I got frustrated, thought I would have to make cuts to bring things back on track, sat down and had a good long think over things and realized there was a simple and elegant answer which brought the larger plot back into focus during these sub-plots and introduced a new element to the larger plot which helped me setting up the transition to act 3.

I am burned out on writing though, I struggled to get 2,000 words today. I'm glad it's the weekend.

Oh, I almost forgot, one more bit of book news. I have decided to trim and edit an excerpt from the novel to make it an effective short-story for submission. We'll see how that goes, I have never tried to get a short published before.

And...the lady riding the ostrich? All will be revealed...or not.

Steampunk Fashion

2011-01-20T12:34:00.000-08:00

One of the things that makes steampunk different from other genres of fiction is the diversity of arts people use to explore steampunk. Yes, some people dress as Gandalf or Darth Vader, but those are not the norm and they are merely copying images which have been given to them. In fact, steampunk is not really a genre, in a sense it is an art movement that crosses boundaries, unlike anything I can think of which came before.

Steampunk fashion is all about finding your own path. The variety of styles is as varied as the people who enjoy steampunk.

There is the punk-rock steampunk look.

To the more demure and traditional Victorian era garb.

To the decidedly more, "out there" retro-science fiction looks.

There is a look to suit anyone. And, unlike your Darth Vader helmet, much of it can be worn outside of a convention setting without attracting undue attention. Well, undue negative attention anyhow, it's hard to imagine anyone failing to notice that first one.

I have added a link to the links bar where you can find all the above pictures and more, take a trip over to steampunk fashion and have a look for yourself!

Working

2011-01-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

"People just don't think of writing seriously. If I had been going off to teach all day, it would have been different. They wouldn't interrupt your work if you were employed at a grocery store. That's considered serious business. It's because you work at home. People think they can interrupt writing." -Jessamyn West

I have been working up a storm lately. Today I wrote over 3,300 words, breezing through what I thought would be one of the toughest parts of the book from an artistic standpoint without difficulty in the process. I feel that I am in the groove, so to speak.

But that comes at a price. There is a psychological term, 'flow', which is what they use to describe a state where the participant is completely absorbed in their work. Outside stimuli dim and the worker develops a kind of tunnel vision. I get that a lot these days and it's great from a writing standpoint, but I'm completely useless at the end of the day. My brain is on a different plane of existence.

The upshot of which is, I forgot my son's after-school class today. I was fully aware and conscious that it was happening, I made plans, and I was ready. I even looked at the clock to be sure I wasn't late but somehow the numbers didn't register properly. By the time I realized my mistake it was far too late.

Hopefully the book sells well and makes up for my absent-mindedness.

Oh, and the quote that I led in with. I'm going to have that inscribed on a brass plaque to place on my writing room door. When I have the money for brass plaques and doors and a writing room. In the meantime I'll just think it really hard at anyone who interrupts me.

The Cast, Part I

2011-01-17T13:43:00.000-08:00

Each Monday I'd like to share a few of the characters I have created for my book. I will work my way from the more peripheral characters to the protagonist and antagonist, starting with, Grover and Tinibu:

Grover is the first friend Konrad makes on the airship Noviy Kharkov. He is a pilot, assistant mechanic, fabricator and scrounger for Wing Three.
Short in stature, but long on mouth, Grover is friendly, outgoing and quick with a joke. He has a near total disrespect for all authority except for Zylphia's. Grover has the face of a weasel and the heart of a lion. Always the first to jump into (or instigate) a brawl, he is what we might call an adrenalin junkie in modern parlance.

Tinibu and Grover are best friends, in spite of the fact that they seemingly have nothing in common. Tinibu is a dedicated family man, carefully hoarding his pay to bring home to his wife and kids in the Azores. He is African, and one of the biggest and brawniest men on the Kharkov.
Where Grover is talkative, Tinibu rarely says anything unless it is necessary. He has a calm and steady presence which soothes the irrepressible Grover.
Tinibu is the Wing mechanic, and when Konrad joins the team the second best pilot (after Zylphia).

Both men think of themselves as Zylphia's older brothers and wouldn't hesitate to protect her, if she ever needed protecting.

The Progress Bar 2

2011-01-14T22:06:00.000-08:00

Total word count 31,744

Two weeks in and I am still holding. I have not had a single day below 2,000 words and I even hit 3,300 on Thursday. It seems counter-intuitive but I find that the days where I have the greatest output are also the days where the writing works the best. Perhaps the output is high because the writing is going so well.

I feel like I've hit my stride. I think my first 10,000 words will need a re-draft before I edit, I didn't have the proper feel for the voice and the characters, not like I do now at any rate.

This week:

Konrad acquired the beginnings of an education, thanks to the tutelage of Doctor Carson.

He realized that running away would not solve his problems, and has decided to be proactive, if only for purely selfish reasons (he is a bit of a reluctant hero).

Konrad's love interest, Zylphia, has been introduced. I love her name, I found it while searching through nineteenth century English names. She is super pissed off at Konrad at the moment (for no fault of his) but she'll come around in time.

He also has regular friends and a proper set of clothes for the first time in his life.

Konrad has learned to fly, and he's discovered he has a true talent for it. It seems that he has found his niche, a place in the world where he can be truly happy. If he can ever get Zylphia to stop hating him life would be perfect as far as he's concerned. Alas, I'm a cruel author and will soon have to crush his dreams.

I am contemplating titles. "Going Down", aside from being a sexual term that I do not especially want this book to be associated with, is not a terribly inspiring title. The others I have come up with are unsatisfactory so far. "Ather Earth" does not roll off the tongue and really says nothing. "City in the Sky" is equally vague. I need something catchy, I think I'd like to work 'aether' in there somewhere.... I'll be sure to mention it here if I come up with anything good.

Time, Space and Aether

2011-01-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

When I started writing my current book I hadn't planned on mentioning aether. When I started to get into the physics of how things work, or, wouldn't work work, for my story without some bending of the rules of physics, I realized I needed a pseudo-scientific explanation. Naturally aether fit the bill.

Rather than explain it twice I will simply steal some of Doctor Carson's lecture on the subject of aether from my book. Please keep in mind this is first draft material.

"Aether is...it is the stuff between time. That is to say, the Universe travels through time. It is constantly moving through time, like a fish in the ocean. In front, and behind the fish is water, but in front and behind the Universe is aether. The ancient Greeks were the first to hypothesize the existence of aether but the first proof of its existence was only given in the mid fifteenth century. It took so long to find because, naturally we can only observe things in our own time, and aether is every time and everywhere but where we can observe. A group of alchemists in 1456 found that when a person died there was a creative force unleashed into our world. The hypothesis was that, as the soul left our sphere of existence it slipped through to the aether all around us, as it did there was a small rift which allowed a burst of aether into our time. At first all these alchemists could do with the energy was create a small burst of light and heat, which lasted for less than a second, but over time as understanding grew properly trained people began to channel that creative force more effectively.
"The most popular theory around the turn of the nineteenth century was that aether was the tool by which God created the universe. We had learned to use it to create grand machines, harder metals, doctors could use aether to heal the sick and some were even using it to create new breeds of animals and plants."

Steam Guns

2011-01-11T14:06:00.000-08:00

I have invented steam guns in my head, which I translated to paper but due to safety and practical reasons I have no intention of building in the real world. In the world I have created they are effective weapons but the man-portable variety, with a backpack boiler are only good for short range pummelling attacks. They can break bone but rarely penetrate the skin.

Today I thought I would look to see if anyone else had built a steam powered gun, to nobody's surprise, Adam and Jamie of Mythbusters beat me to it.

They use a different method than I had planned out but the result is about the same, a quick-firing inaccurate semi-lethal weapon.

The video below shows a steam cannon with a barrel being fired, despite the fact that it's a simple garage-built gun it obviously has some power.

If the two could be combined then you might really have something, I think the confederate system they copied on Mythbusters was highly flawed in the way it flung the balls out. A system with a barrel is necessary for any kind of power or accuracy, but I do like the gravity feed system they used. Having watched these two videos I have to say I think my design would be feasible and it overcomes the shortcomings of each design (Mythbusters lack of reliability and massive size, the Archimedes style cannon's unpredictable timing and slow firing rate). I almost wish I had a workshop big enough to build one.

Just for fun, here are Adam and Jamie again, this is a short video of a household water heater with all the safeties disabled.

Steam rocket! That's one of my favourite bits of video from all the Mythbusters episodes I've seen.

Project Gutenberg

2011-01-10T21:23:00.000-08:00

Project Gutenberg is one of those sites that keeps turning up in my research. They have gathered over 33,000 books with expired copyrights, and offer them all as free downloads. This means that they, or anyone else, is free to distribute those works however they want, nobody owns the rights.

If you have an e-book reader or you read on your computer I highly recommend checking the site out. They have authors like Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and many others in e-reader compatible formats, and in some cases audio book as well.

Many of the technical drawings I've used in creating the backdrop and the headers for this blog also came from Project Gutenberg.

Steam Mech Duel

2011-01-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

This is a great steampunk animation. It's a few years old but still holds up really well. I would love to see a feature film set in this world. If you haven't seen it before it's well worth watching.

The Progress Bar

2011-01-07T15:32:00.000-08:00

I plan to make a status update on my writing progress every week. I believe, given how much plot I have completed and how much is left to go that the final manuscript will weigh-in at approximately 75,000 - 100,000 words, which should translate to 250-300 pages in paperback.

This was the first week I've had without Christmas or family obligations to interfere so I am hoping I can set this as my benchmark. As I started work on Tuesday I was at the 9,840 word mark, my daughter was home sick on Tuesday so I had a bit of a rough start but nonetheless managed well over my 2,000 words a day pledge. I've picked up an extra thousand words or so to end the week at 18,455. Seven or eight more weeks like this one and I will be done the first draft.

Events of note thus far.

Approximately a million people have died, although most of them in the prologue.

Konrad has been outcast from two societies, and at age 18 is currently learning how to read and write. He has been in three fights, burned twice, shot once with an arrow, lost his mother to a quirk of the first society that cast him out and his father to the violence of the second society to cast him out.

The real meat of the story has been revealed, the quest which our hero must complete. Although I must admit, at this point he's more reluctant than I'd expected. He's flat out refusing to contemplate taking on the mantle of hero at this point, but hopefully with some education he'll come around.

That's it for this week. I probably won't provide many details about the book as it goes on, there will be more twists and turns and I'd hate to give anything away. Thanks for reading.

Oh, and by the way, the hideously ugly picture I used as a header for this post is from the book Konrad is using to learn his ABCs. If you're curious what an alphabet looked like in 1861 have a peek at the wikipedia page.

The Power of Steam

2011-01-05T19:45:00.000-08:00

Despite all the technological advancements over the past hundred years our world is still powered by steam. Most electricity is steam generated, the nuclear reactors on advanced subs and aircraft carriers generate power using steam. The only reason we use internal combustion engines at all is that oil is so cheap and readily available. If we had no fossil fuels we would likely be driving steam powered cars and flying in steam powered aircraft today.

I have read book critiques which called steampunk novels childish because they expected the reader to believe that advanced war-machines could be steam-powered. I think the problem is that the critic is so ignorant that he really does not know how effective steam power is.

If there was a source of heat which was cheap and plentiful but ineffective for internal combustion engines we would switch to it over the next few decades and internal combustion engines would soon be museum pieces.