Fixing Science Fiction

In a Slate Magazine article, Lee Konstantinou argued that “Something is Broken in Our Science Fiction.” Is that true? If so, what can SciFi writers do about it?

Fixing some broken SciFi

Konstantinou’s thought-provoking piece declares that SciFi remains stuck in the cyberpunk era of the 1980s, seemingly unable to break free. He contends that cyberpunk and its many offshoot ‘-punks’ were products of the Reagan-Thatcher era.

To Kontantinou, the various punks share common attributes, such as (1) a setting not too different from our own, (2) an individual struggling alone against a flaw-ridden society, and (3) an absence of collective action by a group or groups. Even recent trends like dystopian SciFi and its positive counterpart (hope-punk?) typified by Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future are just cyberpunk derivatives.

Is he right? Is Science Fiction broken? Are the punks to blame?

As a writer of steampunk and clockpunk, I experienced an initially sour reaction to Konstantinou’s article before I thought more deeply about it. I agree with him that something seems wrong.

Whatever you say about the punks, give them due credit; they’ve had a good, long run. Konstantinou’s common attributes of punks are general enough to cover a lot of territory and appeal to a broad range of tastes. Moreover, the various ‘time period’ punks such as steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk, etc. cater to readers’ nostalgic longings.

Still, I get a sense that SciFi is in a transition period, waiting for the next movement to explode on the scene. Likely the seeds of that next era are already here in some form, just starting to sprout into public awareness.

Maybe the next big thing in SciFi will spring from one or a combination of the current observable trends:

  • LBGTQ main characters, and explorations of alternate sexualities
  • Climate change extrapolations; humanity as a spoiler of environments
  • Artificial intelligence, the entire spectrum from the weak (narrow) kind, through the strong kind, to the super-intelligent kind
  • 3D Printing and nanotechnology implications
  • Cross-genre mashups
  • Biological and genetic science
  • Extended human lifespans, Trans-human possibilities, cyborgs
  • Mundane SciFi

More likely, the next SciFi movement will grow from something I haven’t anticipated or noted yet.

To paraphrase P!nk in her song “Just Give Me a Reason,” Science Fiction is not broken, just bent, and SciFi writers can learn to entertain readers again. One author who will make the effort is—

                                  Poseidon’s Scribe

8 Science Fiction Predictions for 2019

You’ve been wondering where the genre of Science Fiction will be going in 2019, haven’t you? I knew it. You’ve landed at the right blog post.

Author with CRISTAL Ball

How do I know the future, you ask? Do I have a crystal ball? No. That would be irrational and silly. I have a CRISTAL ball, a Computerized Recursive and Iterative Stabilizing Trend ALgorithm, which I packaged in a spherical shape for optimized computing speed.

Diagnostic checks are complete and the presets are accurate, so I’ll set parameters for 2019 and access the graphical interface. Let me gaze into my CRISTAL ball…

  • In 2019, you’ll see more science fiction books written by authors from previously underrepresented groups (women, people of color, LGBTQ, etc.) and these books will explore concepts of belonging and isolation, as well as bending our current notions of gender and race.
  • The superhero theme in movies will peak and begin a gradual decline. It’s been an amazing ride, but I believe the market has saturated and audiences are getting tired.
  • Very few, if any, best-selling scifi books will feature faster-than-light drive. Most authors have accepted Einstein’s speed of light limit. FTL now seems hokey to readers.
  • Having already peaked, the steampunk and alternate history genres will continue to wane in books and movies, though they may retain strength in the video gaming world. This genre trend in books is troubling to me, since I enjoy writing steampunk and other alternative history.
  • We’ll see more Solarpunk, and the Punk Family will grow by a few more. I think there’s a great deal of uncharted territory in the solarpunk genre and a general hunger for it among readers. Most new ‘punks’ added in 2019 will be future-based, rather than alternative histories.
  • There will be fewer dystopian young adult books, and there will be an upsurge in YA depicting a positive (though not utopian) future. I think dystopias have run their course for the time being, and readers are ready for less bleak outlooks.
  • Overall, as a genre, science fiction will do well in the visual media of movies, video games, and graphic novels, but not in traditional book form. Plenty of authors enjoy writing scifi, but readers will turn away from this genre in greater numbers. This is another prediction I find personally disappointing.
  • The trend toward series novels will remain strong. Once modern readers make an emotional investment in a set of characters and their fictional world, they want to know what happens after the first novel, and after the next.

At the end of 2019, I intend to run a blog post confirming the accuracy of my CRISTAL ball. In the meantime, you can tell everyone you’ve glimpsed the future, as predicted by —

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 30, 2018Permalink

Your Own Steam Elephant

The Gallery of Curiosities, issue #3, Summer 2018

I’m delighted The Gallery of Curiosities has chosen to reprint my story, “The Steam Elephant” in their Summer 2018 Issue (#3). It gave me a chance to re-read the story, and recall the fun I had writing it.

Verne’s steam elephant on its way through India

“The Steam Elephant” is my sequel to Jules Verne’s novel The Steam House. In Verne’s tale,  a British inventor constructed a steam-powered mechanical elephant (and two wheeled carriages towed behind it) on commission from an Indian rajah. This rajah died before taking possession, so ownership remained with the inventor. He took a group of British friends, a Frenchman, and several servants, on a series of adventures in the wilds of India.

My steampunk sequel picks up eleven years later. Although the original steam elephant met its end in Verne’s novel, the engineer constructed a second one in my tale. He modeled this new elephant after the African species. The group of friends gathered again, this time to go lion hunting in Africa, but found themselves drawn into the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.

Verne’s story predated automobiles and appeared long before Recreational Vehicle motorhomes, when people only knew about steam locomotives on rails. I’m sure it fascinated his readers to imagine taking their home with them while travelling. Today, millions of people do just that…but they’re restricted to travelling on roads. Verne’s elephant walked anywhere, even through shallow rivers.

Star Wars’ All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT)

As an engineer, I loved the idea of a quadrapod, animatronic, bio-inspired walking vehicle powered by steam. This lay well beyond the technology of the Nineteenth Century, and we’re only at the early stages of such mechanisms today. That’s why the AT-AT ground assault combat vehicles of Star Wars seem so cool. By the way, the AT-AT designers also drew inspiration from a pachyderm.

Verne described the elephant as being a ‘traction engine,’ a steam engine that pulls loads on roads or smooth ground. This term doesn’t find much use today, since internal combustion gasoline engines supplanted steam for tractors and other off-road vehicles.

Still, imagine owning such an elephant. Within its iron flanks, there’d be the water reservoir, fuel storage, firebox, boiler, and cylinders common to locomotives. Also, you’d find the massive gears and linkages necessary to move the four giant legs in a stable pattern.

Seated in your well insulated howdah on top, you’d rotate the trunk down to pump in water from a river. Then you’d swivel the trunk up, start the engine, sound a blast from its trumpeting whistle, and watch steam and smoke belch from the trunk. When you pushed a lever, your elephant would plod forward on its ponderous legs over any type of flat ground or shallow water. Roads? Where we’re clomping, we don’t need roads.

Perhaps after ten minutes of sweating through that, you’d retreat to one of the towed carriages and let someone else drive the elephant while you sipped wine and played whist.

I’ll take two of those, please. In a way, I did. I wrote about one in another story, Rallying Cry.”

Too bad you can’t buy your own steam-powered, mechanical elephant vehicle. You could try to build one for several thousand dollars. Or, the next best thing, you could lay down just $3.00 and get a copy of The Gallery of Curiosities magazine, issue #3, and read “The Steam Elephant” by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

What’s Silkpunk?

You thought this blog-post was the last word on the various ‘punk’ subgenres? Wrong. Meet the new member of the punk family: Silkpunk.

Author Ken Liu invented the term Silkpunk to describe the genre of his latest novel, The Grace of Kings. In this post, he defined silkpunk as “…a blend of science fiction and fantasy…[drawing] inspiration from classical East Asian antiquity. My novel is filled with technologies like soaring battle kites that lift duelists into the air, bamboo-and-silk airships propelled by giant feathered oars, underwater boats that swim like whales driven by primitive steam engines, and tunnel-digging machines enhanced with herbal lore.”

This newest member of the Punk Family is unlike the others in that it’s not represented by a power source or engine type. Perhaps, though, in a metaphorical way, it is. The Silk Road was a trade network from China to Europe that empowered China.

Congratulations to Mr. Liu for coming up with the term Silkpunk. However, with all due modesty, I must say, stories of that type are not new. My own story, “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai” belongs in that genre as well.

In my tale, it’s 206 B.C. and China is torn by warring dynasties. A young warrior, Lau, receives orders to verify the legend of a magic wagon that can cross rivers while remaining unseen. He encounters Ning, the wagon-maker in the seaside village of Yantai. Ning has constructed an unusual wagon that can submerge, travel along the bottom of the Bay of Bohai, and surface in safety—the world’s first practical submarine. Ning enjoys the peace and beauty of his undersea excursions; he won’t allow the military to seize his wagon or learn its secrets. Lau must bring the valuable weapon back to his superior. In the hands of these two men rest the future of the submarine, as an instrument of war or exploration.

My story was inspired by vague references I’d read about someone inventing a submarine in China around 200 B.C. A second inspiration for my story was Ray Bradbury’s tale, “The Flying Machine.” One of his lesser-known works, it’s a wonderful short story, and would certainly qualify as silkpunk, with its kite-like bamboo flying machine with paper wings.

Another silkpunk story that predates the invention of the subgenre’s name is “On the Path,” by fellow author Kelly A. Harmon. Within it, Tan is a farmer, following the path, when the seal on his soul-powered plow bursts, releasing all ghosts from its reincarnation engine. The ghosts flee to Tan’s tangerine groves, reveling in their freedom. One of the souls is Tan’s deceased uncle, Lau Weng, and Tan must offer hospitality. Souls laboring in the reincarnation engines grow more solid as they work off their past lives’ debts and prepare to be born again. Freed from the engine, Lau Weng and his ghostly compatriots rely on Tan and his wife Heng to support them. Caught between death and re-birth, Lau Weng will do anything to remain alive. Tan is honor-bound to provide hospitality, but must feed his family, too, and he can do nothing to stop Lau Weng. Everything changes once Lau Weng takes over Heng’s body.

Thanks to Ken Liu (and others), silkpunk may well catch on in popularity in North America and Europe. Here are four reasons why:

  1. Like steampunk, silkpunk comes ready made with its own aesthetic, with fascinating clothing for costumes, and a characteristic look for gadgets, etc.
  2. Silkpunk is a completely new world, ripe and wide open for writers and readers to explore.
  3. To Western readers, silkpunk will seem exotic and enthralling.
  4. For Western readers, silkpunk represents a chance to learn about new cultures and different philosophies.

Will Silkpunk someday rival Steampunk in popularity? I don’t know. I’m a writer. If you want a psychic, don’t call—

Poseidon’s Scribe

Author Interview—N.O.A. Rawle

The fun continues today as I interview another author with a story appearing in the anthology Hides the Dark Tower. To obtain this interview, I had to travel all the way to Greece…well, virtually.

NaomiRawleN.A.O. Rawle is a British writer, teacher and translator living and working in mythical Thessalian Plain in Greece. She graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University with a degree in Creative Writing and Philosophy. After many years of procrastinating, she took the plunge and has started publishing short sci-fi/horror/fantasy stories. She’s had over a dozen short stories and poems published. She’s been published in the anthology Once Bitten, and The Girl at the End of the World, Book II  and the anthology Denizens of Steam.

Here’s the interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: How did you get started writing? What prompted you?

N.A.O. Rawle: First, thank you for having me on your blog, it’s great to talk to you. I grew up with books as my dad was a librarian. He had a study stuffed floor to ceiling with books, mostly about fly fishing and theology, but that’s where I got the bug. The actual writing started with fan fiction when I was in Secondary school and progressed into photocopied comic books in my late teens. Published work came a lot later.

P.S.: What other authors influenced your writing? What are a few of your favorite books?

N.R.: Harder to answer than I imagined. I can’t say who has influenced my writing style as I don’t think I’ve really found my own. (At the moment I’m going through a phase of stories in rhyming prose and that comes straight from Dr Seuss and ‘The Night Before Christmas’!) Once I had finished James Herbert’s The Magic Cottage, I remember thinking “I should like to do that.” I love Clive Barker, Anne Rice, Iain M. Banks, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Bret Easton Ellis, Harlan Ellison and Bruce Sterling…

P.S.: In your blog, you’ve mentioned having thirty writing projects going at once, in various stages. Have you accepted that as a normal state of affairs for you, or would you prefer to be more focused?

N.R.: That’s normal. I live by flitting from one thing to the other and half finished projects everywhere, and I don’t mean just writing. I can focus and do occasionally, to the point of obsessive! That’s when work gets done fast.

P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of writing for you?

N.R.: Being asked to do edits is the hardest. Not because I’m too proud and don’t want to change what I’ve written but because I find incorporating another’s perspective bewildering. Will it look right to the reader? Have I clarified and tidied up the waffle? The easiest is writing. I can sit and type for hours and hours.

P.S.: Your bio mentions your British nationality, your current work location in Greece, your teaching and translation work, and your education in creative writing and philosophy. In ‘Core Craving’ and ‘Those Who Can, Do,’ you touch on two of those aspects. In what other ways do your varied background and education inspire your stories?

N.R.: I’ve done (counts on fingers and gives up) many jobs since the age of fifteen so there’s always a bit of those experiences in my writing but it’s not necessarily what I know about them. In ‘Those Who Can, Do’ I was more interested in the fact that so many teachers appear to have forgotten the purpose of their jobs and get into some sort of power place ‘us’ and ‘them’. I also had some hideous teachers at school who really didn’t understand that the colour of my shirt was not a factor in the learning process. Greece crops up in my work frequently, I’ve spent almost half my life here now and it would be weird for it not to feature. A character might come from someone I’ve met or the atmosphere of a place might inspire a scene, I’m always trying to paint a picture so that my reader can see what I do.

P.S.: It appears you’re participating in NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month) for the first time this year. How is that going?

N.R.: It’s going…I did it in the hope that I could complete one of those projects I’ve been composting for about a decade as there is outside interest in it after a short story grew from some of the remnants that I had cut from the original work. (‘Synchronysi’ due to be published in the New Year). If I can get the plot down then I know I’ll get it sorted.

P.S.: Lately, you’ve been writing some steampunk stories. Why does that genre appeal to you?

N.R.: It’s what Goths do when they discover brown, or so a friend of mine tells me. No, I like that I can mix up fancy frocks with feminism and mechanical monsters! Oh and rhyming prose, ‘A Walk in the Park’ is the first story I’ve self-published that is Steampunk in Denizens of Steam, an anthology that I helped ‘curate’ to promote the Scribbler’s Den writing forum on the Steampunk Empire.

P.S.: You’ve guest-blogged for Rie Sheridan Rose about your story ‘Core Craving’ in Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000039_00001]Hides the Dark Tower and mentioned the research you did on the castle. Had that story idea been kicking around in your mind before the anthology’s call for submissions, or did it all click together afterward?

N.R.: The story was fully formed but had not found a home. Vonnie and Kelly [editors Vonnie Winslow Crist and Kelly A. Harmon] made it welcome in Hides the Dark Tower, an anthology, which is a real treat to read and an honour to be included in! ‘Core Craving’ is such a small story but one that took a long time to build and the first one published which is set in my home town (I have several others) so I’m pleased it’s found its niche amongst so many respected authors.

P.S.: Among your many current Works in Progress (or, as you have quipped, Works in Procrastination), would you mind telling us a little about one of them?

N.R.: I have a story called ‘Touched’ which has been simmering for a long time (read years). It’s a fantasy/horror mishmash involving fae folk who live in the beautiful Greek mountain forests. (I am told, in all seriousness, that fairies do reside there.) I have so much written but on an ancient word processor whose disks I have been unable to print up anywhere since the WP died on me. I’ve been trying to remember the story but there are big gaps in the plot and I am so sad. I’m patching it up but it’s beginning to resemble Frankenstein’s monster not the glorious creation I envisaged. In my heart I know I can make it good but I need determination.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?

N.O.A. Rawle: Jim Morrison wrote “Words dissemble, words be quick, words resemble walking sticks, plant them and they will grow…”

Sow the seeds of stories and see what becomes of them. Some will become roses and others prickly thistles that you’ll need to weed out. Like plants, some tales are therapeutic and others poisonous. Some will charm you with their beauty and there will be down-right ugly ones; they will all teach you something about writing but only if you keep tending them.

 

Thanks, Naomi! I know readers of my blog will want to find out more about you, and, luckily, I have that information handy. You have a blog and you’re on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. You also appear on Google+, Pinterest, and Amazon as N.O.A. Rawle, and on Steampunk Empire as Lady Naomi.

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 15, 2015Permalink

Author Interview — Stephen Blake

You may have noticed I have not yet interviewed all the authors who have stories in the newly famous anthology Avast, Ye Airships! Today I’m pleased to bring you one more; I’m interviewing Stephen Blake.

Stephen BlakeOn his website, Stephen describes himself as just an ordinary bloke (he’s English), and a fantasy and science fiction loving geek.  His Twitter page describes him as “Writer & exaggerator. Cat, Dog & Guinea Pig Wrangler. Tai Chi Enthusiast. Cornish and Proud.”

Now, the interview (British spelling and all!):

Poseidon’s Scribe: When and why did you begin writing fiction?

Stephen Blake: I’d always spoken about writing, always dreamed that I might be able to do something. It took a redundancy, illness and a lot of encouragement from my wife to actually go for it. I should say that a trip to a convention (BristolCon 2012) also made a difference. I’d always had ideas for stories but never did anything about it. Finally meeting authors who were real people, who sometimes held down jobs and seeing that they were not that different from me – it got me thinking. I realised the only difference between us were my own excuses – so I got rid of them (the excuses that is; all the authors I met are fine and did not meet their demise).

P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of writing for you?

S.B.: Ideas seem the easiest. In fact I probably have too many. Having free flowing ideas is great until you can’t decide which one to work on next.

The most difficult aspect for me is that of personal discipline. I’ll procrastinate and dance around getting on with a job but once I start I am usually very productive. It’s just the getting going part.

I should say I also struggle with the reading in public. Unless you write so well as to not need to promote your work, it seems that giving a reading is an important part of being an author. I get nervous but I read in public at least once a month now and I’m dealing with it better all the time.

P.S.: How did you become interested in writing steampunk?

S.B.: I find the whole idea fascinating. I grew up watching things like “Island at the Top of the World,” “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “Warlords of Atlantis.” Steampunk, for me, encapsulates adventure and excitement. The possibilities are huge. You can go fantasy and discover lost races, you can go sci-fi and have clockwork automatons. The setting, usually the Victorian age, is so interesting. Remember how interested they were in the supernatural, the thing to do back then was to have a séance. Someone will say you can do all these things in any setting or time period. All I’ll say is ‘steampunk’ lets you do it with style.

P.S.: What other authors influenced your writing?

S.B.: I’ve always been a voracious reader. Childhood favourites stay with me now, such as Enid Blyton, C.S.Lewis, and Roald Dahl.

At school I always had one book out of the library over and over and that was a collection of Greek myths. Even now, I enjoy reading them.

More recently I’ve enjoyed R. A. Salvatore, Gareth Powell, Kim Lakin-Smith, and Joanne Hall. I read all kinds of things. I’ve not long finished some Agatha Christie and Robert Louis Stevenson. I like reading all sorts, I even believe Stan Lee has had an influence on me, hence my characters always seem to have a disability of some sort or they are a social outcast. I think as writers we can learn from one another. I’m like a sponge trying to take in every lesson I can.

AvastYeAirships (4)P.S.: You wrote “Beneath the Brass” for Avast, Ye Airships!  Can you tell us a bit about the story?

S.B.: It’s a journal, kept by a young woman who has been put into an asylum. There’s nothing wrong with her but she accused her brother of attacking her and he’s made it seem like she is mad. Pirates rescue her and it is her account of all that befalls her during that time. It’s love, peril, airships and automatons but not necessarily in that order.

P.S.: In your website, you mentioned having joined a critique group. How has that group affected your writing?

S.B.: Well hopefully I’m reducing the vast amount of commas I apparently use. Mostly it is just very supportive, knowing that people are going to be honest with you and give you constructive criticism. I struggle sometimes with confidence – believing myself to be more lucky than talented. I know that these people (Victoria and Inez) will be brutally honest, so that when they say “it’s good”, it really means a lot.

Airship300P.S.: Your story “Lord Craddock: Ascension” appears in the anthology Airship Shape and Bristol Fashion. What is that story about?

S.B.: It’s about fighting slavery, fighting stereotypes and preconceptions and using those preconceptions to your advantage when trying to take down slave traders. It also involves automatic carriages and jumping automatons.

Bristol has history of being part of the ‘triangular’ slave trade route and I liked the idea of someone fighting racism and slavery in a steampunk vigilante kind of way.

P.S.: Before writing your stories, do you imagine a scene, a character, or a plot outline?

S.B.: I get an idea. Usually it’s a ‘what if?’ scenario. After that I just think about it and see how it plays out. It’s usually no more than the beginning and end. I normally take a while to figure out what happens in the middle. I can just think and scribble notes for months before I actually start typing a story.

Recently I had a story accepted for an anthology typed out and submitted within ninety minutes. I don’t see that happening often though, if ever again.

For “Beneath the Brass,” my first thought was, what if Stephen Hawkins was alive in that time period? What if he became a pirate? In the end the story is not about the pirates but about Miss Alice Reynolds, the lady stuck in an asylum. Until you start typing away on your keyboard you can never be entirely sure how it will unfold.

P.S.: What is your current work in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about it?

S.B.: I’ve a few things on the go. My big work in progress is tentatively called “Blood Key” and is a YA fantasy with elements of steampunk. It’s the tale of a young girl who ends up in a world not seen by us since the days when the Celtic druids travelled there. It’s the story of her trying to get home and those who want to use her to get the magic flowing again and seize power.

I’m also working on a really interesting project called “The Adventures of Dayton Barnes.” It’s an anthology of children’s stories designed to encourage young boys to read. It’s very fascinating because each story will actually be chapters. I’ve written three stories for it but that is not the end. I now have to work with the other authors to make all our stories fit seamlessly together as if it were a single book. I’ve got to say this has tested my imagination no end. I can dream up tales of Victorian steampunk, demons and zombies quite easily – trying to put myself in the shoes of a mid west American twelve year old has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever written.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?

Stephen Blake: Go for it – that is the best advice. You’ve got to give it a go. The more you write the better you’ll get. Lord Craddock was my first attempt and it got published (after an awful lot of editing mind you). For some time I believed that was a fluke and yet here I am with a story in Avast, Ye Airships!, and soon I’ll have another three stories in a children’s anthology, “The Adventures of Dayton Barnes.” All because I just stopped talking about how I’d like to write and did it.

One other thing I realised early on is that writing is like music. One person hears a song and it evokes an intense feeling of dislike within them. Another hears the same tune and they feel it touches their very soul and fills them with happiness. Write the stories you want to write and they’ll find an audience, even if it’s only you (but that is highly unlikely!).

I could go on and on. Join a local group of writers. Read lots. If possible meet authors and compare notes. Keep trying for anthologies because you’ll meet great editors who will take your writing by the scruff and knock it into shape.

Thanks, Steve! All my readers will soon be regular followers of you on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads, and will become avid readers of your blog.

Poseidon’s Scribe

Video Trailer for Avast, Ye Airships!

Here’s a marvelous video trailer for the anthology Avast, Ye Airships! 

 

The trailer was made by d chang, and the original music composed and performed by Dan Bernardo.

The music and video have a nice, ethereal quality. I love the sounds of—well, it sounds like rope tightening, or planks creaking—interspersed with the rush of wind. You really feel like you’re aboard a steampunk pirate airship. You may even be overcome by an urge to drop everything and buy the book.

I hope you do, and that you enjoy one story in particular, “A Clouded Affair,” by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

Facebook Launch Party

Attention, Poseidon’s Scribe fans, and Steampunk party hounds: there will be a Facebook launch party for the anthology AvastYeAirshipsAvast, Ye Airships! It will happen Saturday, February 28th, from 7:00 to 11:00 PM EST. That’s 6 PM to 10 PM CST, 5 PM to 9 PM MST, and 4 PM to 8 PM PST. You’ll have to calculate it yourself for all other time zones.

My tentative timeslot for this party is 8:30 to 8:45 EST, and I’ll put out a new post or update this one if that changes or is confirmed.

I’ve never participated in a Facebook party before, but my understanding is that it’s like a chat, where you can ask me questions. As a service to my fans, I thought I’d give you some tidbits about the story I wrote for the anthology. These may prompt some questions you can ask:

  • Story title: “A Clouded Affair”
  • Backstory and Setting: It’s an alternate 1920, where large, dirigible airships in Europe have been preyed upon by sky pirates for decades. They’ve developed strong defenses, which forced the pirates to become crafty, hiding in the clouds as a tactic. In the New World, air piracy is a more recent thing, so the big cargo airships fly without escorts, nets, or defensive weapons.
  • Main Characters: William Starling leads an aging gang of English pirates flying a steam ornithopter. They’ve abandoned Europe for the greater promise of American aerial loot. Last to join his gang was young Nell Remige, a female adventure-seeker who worked hard to become William’s first mate. If William isn’t careful, he’ll encounter Crank Deco and his Chicago-based gang who fly a modern, diesel-engine biplane. That could bring on a steampunk vs. dieselpunk contest in the air, the last thing William needs. As for Nell, if she and William somehow make it out of this alive, what does she really want?

Remember, this Saturday night is your big chance, if you’ve ever wanted to party with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 22, 2015Permalink

Author Interview — Diana Parparita

Poseidon’s Scribe has done it again and now presents another interview with a captivating author whose story appears in the anthology Avast, Ye Airships! Today I welcome Diana ParparitaDiana Parparita, a Romanian author living in Bucharest who writes fantasy and steampunk.

Read on for the interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: When and why did you begin writing fiction?

Diana Parparita: I started writing fiction when I was four or five years old. I hadn’t learned to write yet, back then, so I dictated my stories to my grandmother, but the intent to write speculative fiction was there, even at that age. The reason why I began writing, or, rather, dictating, was that I kept making stories in my head to entertain myself, and I liked them enough that I wanted to share them with others. And I kept forgetting them, so a big incentive for writing was to have a way to remember the best stories that I’d come up with.

P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of writing for you?

D.P.: The easiest part of writing for me is writing dialogues. My characters feel very much alive to me, and tend to act as if they had a mind of their own, so they talk naturally and I can always picture what they’d say and how they’d say it. The most difficult part for me is writing action scenes. I still haven’t been able to figure out a good pacing for writing action. When I read, I tend to skip through most of the fight scenes because I just want to know how it ends, and I haven’t been able to find a way to keep the reader’s attention on the action itself, at least not my attention.

P.S.: What is your favorite genre to write in?

D.P.: My favorite genre is fantasy, because it offers me complete freedom to create any type of world and society I choose. But I’m also fond of sci-fi, for the same reason, although I find it colder than fantasy.

P.S.: You live in Romania, right? Have you used Romania as a setting in any of your stories? If not, are there other ways that living in that country has influenced your fiction?

D.P.: Yes, I live in Romania. I haven’t used Romania per se as a setting, but the setting for the stories in my Huntsfee series is loosely based on Romania. There are, however, other ways I which living in Romania and being Romanian has influenced my writing. Romania is at the border between several cultures, and has seen a good number of invaders over the centuries, and as a result, Romanian writers tend to incorporate elements from different cultures into their writing. In that respect, my writing stories set in a fictional version of the Victorian age, as well as mixing that with elements from other cultures, is in perfect agreement with my Romanian heritage. To give an example, the story I wrote for Avast, Ye Airships! is influenced by the steampunk stories I’ve read and by Victorian England, but also by Jules Verne and an Italian 19th century writer of adventure novels, whose pirates have played an important part in my adolescence. This mixture of elements from three different cultures is all very natural to a Romanian writer and to Romanian culture.

P.S.: Your story “Miss Warlyss Meets the Black Buzzard” will appear in the anthology Avast, AvastYeAirshipsYe Airships! Please tell us a little about Miss Warlyss.

D.P.: Miss Warlyss is the daughter of a governor, who grew up in a pensionnat, and she’s now being sent home to become the bride of one of her father’s political allies. Which, of course, is something she doesn’t quite fancy doing in the near future. But you’ll have to read the story to see just how she manages to avoid getting married.

P.S.: In your website and in social media, your sense of humor is evident. Do you include humor in all your stories, or are there some purely serious ones?

D.P.: I’ve written some stories that are meant to be purely serious, but I’m afraid my sense of humor does show even in those, though to a lesser degree. I tend to make fun of the worst parts of life, as a form of self-preservation, so the darker the story, the harder it is not to add a touch of humor to it.

P.S.: From your Facebook page, I gather that a cat figures prominently in your home life. Does the cat inspire any characteristics or features of any of the animals in your stories?

D.P.: Actually, the cat in question is a rather new addition to the household. We’ve only had her for a few months. I used to have a cat before her, but she never inspired any characters either. But whenever I write animals, they are indeed based on nature. I always pay close attention to animals when I have a chance, and I try to study them before I use any animals as characters. Except for the horse in the first story I’ve ever published, “Sir Joseph’s Choice,” which was heavily anthropomorphized from a psychological point of view.

P.S.: One of your published books is Doctor Edmund HuntseeHuntsfee’s Perilous Expedition into the Heart of the Flood Plains. It appears this has inspired a series, with a second story published and a third being written. What do you find fascinating about the world or characters in this series?

D.P.: What I find most fascinating about the series is the continuous study of new and original species. Dr. Huntsfee is a sort of natural historian who specializes in the study of fantasy creatures, so each story enables me to create and present in detail a new personal species. But there’s one more thing that fascinates me about this series, and that’s the relationship between two of the characters in it, Miss Ophelia Dalton and Captain Joseph Marlin. They were both created to serve very specific roles within the story: Miss Ophelia is the chaperon of Dr. Huntsfee’s friend and love interest, while the captain was meant to be in charge of the boat the expedition is sailing on. They were never meant to be a couple, and that shows even in the age difference between them, with him being about ten years younger than her, but from their first scene together, they’ve developed a special chemistry that I hadn’t planned for them to have. So now I’m very curious to see where that’s going and I want to explore that budding relationship through many other stories.

P.S.: What is your current work in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about it?

D.P.: I’m always working on several things at the same time, so right now I’m working on the third installment in the Huntsfee series, a steampunk retelling of The Little Mermaid, and a young adult novel about a girl who finds out she’s part dryad and gathers an army to free her country of an evil dictator and the dragons under his command.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?

Diana Parparita: I think the best advice I can offer is to read the best stories and novels in the genre they want to specialize in, as well as the very best that other genres have to offer. I’ve noticed that quality is something that tends to rub off, so the more good books you read the better. Also, there’s one piece of advice that I haven’t heard enough: live! Get as much life experience as you possibly can. I have a bad record of never staying in a job for longer than a year and a half, but, apart from it looking dreadful on my résumé, this has helped me meet all sorts of people and has placed me in all sorts of environments. The pirates in “Miss Warlyss Meets the Black Buzzard,” for instance, are based on some of my co-workers from a male-dominated workplace I landed in a couple of years ago. Having lived my entire life in a female-dominated environment, it was just as much of a shock to me as it was to Miss Warlyss, and that provided me both with an understanding of her experience and with a good reference for my pirates and for male-dominated environments in general. My pirates would have never seemed authentic if I’d found a comfortable job and stayed in it all my life. So I definitely advise experiencing things outside of your comfort zone.

 

Thank you, Diana! My many readers are urged to learn more about Diana Parparita on Facebook, on DeviantArt, and at her website.

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 12, 2015Permalink

Author Interview — K.C. Shaw

The piratical fun continues! Today I’m interviewing Kate Shaw, who writes as K.C. Shaw, another fascinating author with a story in the anthology Avast, Ye Airships!

Kate writes fantasy and likes to swashbuckle occasionally. I love this quote from her website: “Weredeer, liches, and fairies vs. unicorns. All in a day’s work.”

Here’s the interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: When and why did you begin writing fiction?
K.C. Shaw: I’ve been writing fiction as long as I can remember, but I didn’t get serious about it until 2007. I was working in a sales office at the time and was impressed at how persistent the salespeople were. I started treating my writing the same way: writing almost every day, submitting stories to magazines until they sold, striving hard to improve my writing.

P.S.: What are the easiest, and the most difficult, aspects of writing for you?

K.C.S.: The hardest part for me is getting pacing correct. It’s difficult to see a novel as a whole and know where tension needs to be increased, where the main character needs to stop for a moment of reflection, where plot points need to be worked in earlier. The easiest part is writing dialogue!

P.S.: How did you become interested in writing fantasy?

K.C.S.: Most of my favorite books were fantasy and SF when I was a kid, and that’s still the case. I loved Diane Wynne Jones, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, Joan Aiken, Jane Louise Curry, and a thousand other writers. It was natural that I wrote what I loved to read.

P.S.: You write both novels and short stories. How do you decide whether an idea is big enough for a novel?

K.C.S.: A lot of times I think I’ve got a short story idea, and it turns into a novel! I actually prefer writing novels so I often find it difficult to write short.

AvastYeAirshipsP.S.: In Avast, Ye Airships! your story is “And a Bottle of Rum…” Please tell us a little about it.

K.C.S.: In the story, main character Jo has just acquired a new airship and wants to see what it can do. She and her friend and colleague Lizzy move in to take what they think is a helpless blimp only to discover it’s got a heavily armed escort.

P.S.: You’ve written several short stories about your steampunk air pirates, Lizzy and Jo, and they even have their own website. Any plans for a novel with those two?

K.C.S.: Yes! In fact, “And a Bottle of Rum…” is an excerpt from a Lizzy and Jo book. It’s not under contract yet so the title, Skytown, is only tentative, but I hope it will be released some time next year.

WharfRat_ByKateShaw_200x300__18221.1420220732.1280.1280P.S.: Your latest novel is Wharf Rat. Please introduce us to Rone, the protagonist.

K.C.S.: Rone is an elf, but not the kind Peter Jackson would want to film. He’s a dock whore, a small-time thief, and he can’t even read. I had fun writing about someone so different from the usual elf, while still making him sympathetic.

P.S.: What is your current work in progress? Would you mind telling us a little about it?

K.C.S.: I’ve got two projects going right now. The first I can’t really talk about yet except to say it’s the text of a game that’s going to be fantastic! The latest release date I’ve heard is early 2016. I’ve just started world-building for my other project, a novel where all the characters are dragons and humans don’t even exist. It should be a lot of fun.

Poseidon’s Scribe: What advice can you offer aspiring writers?

K.C. Shaw: When you finish a project, especially a longer one like a novel or series of short stories, don’t be afraid to give yourself some time off. Writing every day is important, but your brain needs downtime to recharge too. Schedule a few weeks to read other people’s books instead of writing. Before you know it you’ll be getting new ideas and will want to start a new project

Thank you, Kate! Readers of my blog can find out more about Kate on her websites here and here, and on Twitter and Goodreads.

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 3, 2015Permalink