The Power of Steam

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.

Steam Punk and Other Fun Steam Projects

Happy New Year, here's a few steam power videos, first, real Steam Punk.



A very cool remote controlled steam tank.



And last, some historic footage of the first piloted steam powered aeroplane.

Querying

For those who do not write novels, querying is sort of like applying for a job, it is the process by which you sell a novel (at least the first one). The normal process is, you submit a specially formatted letter which explains in general terms the content of the book, often it is accompanied by a few pages of the manuscript. That is sent to agents and publishers. If any of them are interested they will normally request a 'partial' which can be anything from 10 - 50 pages. If they like that they will request the 'full'. Then they decide. With any given agent or publisher the process can take several weeks to half a year.

Querying is hard. It's soul crushing and lonely. Weeks and months can go by with nothing but a stream of form-letter rejections. Some places do offer comfort though, absolutewrite has a great thread in the Rejection and Dejection forum called "The Daily Rejection" where people go to share their rejections and lack of responses. It's quite comforting to know you're not the only one.

My last novel ended with a prominent agent loving the partial, requesting the full with high hopes (she said she'd "love to read the full manuscript"). Then, ultimately she gave it a pass, saying the writing was of the calibre she'd expect in a client but the book wasn't unique enough to stand out in the marketplace.

The whole experience, from first query to last took about eight months. I revised the book twice with massive overhauls and ultimately it fell a bit short. But...in the end, someone told me my writing, my voice and all were not only good they were great! In spite of the fact it was all a failure I managed to pull a positive out of it. My next book will not get lost on a shelf of similar titles. It may have the opposite problem of being too out there but I doubt it. Far from being a downer I found the final rejection on my previous novel all the more reason to kick things into another gear.