Overbury Ink

What is This Thing Called Steampunk Anyway? is the question Matthew Delman asks in his blog: Free the Princess. It’s a question that is shared in this forum as well, as we explore the aesthetic in its myriad of faces.


Matthew answers his own question: “Steampunk, in its most simple definition, is a type of fiction that places contemporary technology in the Victorian Era with Coal (and thus Steam) as the primary power source instead of Gas or Electricity.” With this definition in mind, Matthew deepened the scope of his blog and shares with us the insights he has gained.


“Free the Princess was never meant to be a resource for Steampunk background. The first post — on July 17, 2009 — set out the mission statement of the first 9 months for the blog to be an avenue where I’d share my research and thoughts about writing. I’d seen a few writers use their blogs as vehicles to educate people on the subject matter they used to write their books — Gary Corby’s “A dead man fell from the sky …” is all about Classical Athens, for example — and I loved the idea of doing that so much that I decided to do the same with Steampunk technology.

I had to start with technology because, well, I’m a techno-nut for lack of a better descriptor. Of course, when you grow up as the youngest child of a Mechanical Engineer, you learn how to build things and all sorts of fun technological tricks fairly early. I blame my love of educating people on having a Teacher for a mother, by the way (my mother will tell you she had nothing to do with it, of course).

So there I am, writing more and more about Steampunk and the associated technology. I realized, after a comment from one of my blog readers, that writing the posts about writing were actually becoming harder to do on a regular basis. The tipping point came when one reader suggested I write a non-fiction primer on the background information needed to write a Steampunk story. I’d already done a bunch of research, and I could see how codifying everything would make writers’ and creators’ lives a whole lot easier.

Thus Free the Princess was reborn as a “practical literary guide to Steampunk.” My original focus on Steampunk tech has now expanded to include, well, pretty much every darn scrap of information I can find about the Victorian Age. The whole point of the blog now is to share as much of that with my readers as possible.

I call it a “practical literary guide” because I don’t discuss what does and does not constitute a Steampunk novel. My aim is merely to share what I think you might maybe, sort of, kind of possibly need to know in order to write a historically viable Steampunk story set between 1800 and 1920. If you’re writing a fantasy-world Steampunk tale, then by all means feel free to crib from my notes to flavor your world. That’s what the blog is there for after all.

As to other projects, well there’s also the speaking engagement I have at Upstate Steampunk in Greenville, South Carolina this fall, and Doctor Fantastique’s Show of Wonders, my brand-spanking-new Steampunk literary magazine. Oh yes, and don’t forget the half-dozen Steampunk novels I have kicking around in my skull.

But feel free to give me a shout if you want something covered on Free the Princess; I am always, and I do mean always, looking for ideas of areas to cover.
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Links:

http://www.matthewdelman.com

Free the Princess: http://freetheprincess.blogspot.com

Doctor Fantastique’s Show of Wonders: http://www.doctorfantastiques.com

Are you a Steampunk Artist? Writer? Designer? I want to feature you on SteamTuesday! Leave a comment for me to get back to you.
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This weeks blog tour:
OM Grey’s Caught in the Cogs feature:
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It’s still Canuk Steampunk month at the Steampunk Scholar’s blog. Read up on: Gaslight Dogs
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Mary Sew, from Germany, runs her own Steampunk Sunday blog feature, but we are pleased to include it on SteamTuesday: http://www.mistyillusions.org
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I you told me I’d be reading a book about a badass rifle toting action heroine, I’d be game to look into it – but add the fact that she’s a 35year old single mom in 1879 Seattle distorted by a poisonous gas, throw in zombies, airships, gasmasks and goggles – and I’m all over it.



Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker has a simple premise: Briar Wilkes tries to find her teenaged son, Zeke, who entered the walled, zombie-ridden city of Seattle searching for proof to clear his father’s name. It’s a great hook: the steampunk/zombie mash-up has instant appeal. Boneshaker simply pulls you in and doesn’t let go.


The story stems from the North-Western quest for gold during the American Civil War. Seattle inventor Leviticus Blue creates a machine named the Boneshaker, that will drill for gold through Alaskan ice. During testing, the machine fails and Seattle is destroyed as the Boneshaker carves out the ground beneath the city. The digging unleashes a heavy gas that begins to turn people into zombies. A wall is built around the catastophy, keeping the gas and the walking dead contained.


Briar Wilkes is the inventor’s widow, and her son, Zeke, live ostracized on the outskirts of the remaining community. Teenaged Zeke is determined to clear his father’s name, deciding that a secret trip back into the forbidden city will produce the information he needs.


The underlying story of Boneshaker is this mother/son relationship. Events unfold in alternating points of view between Zeke and his mother with each learning their own truths with each encounter. Boneshaker is also at heart an adventure novel with strong supporting characters both generous and villainous. It has the feel of a western opera in a darker America where the War Between the States is a protracted and ongoing, where the weather is brooding and dreary and the hoards of rotters are never far from thought.


The journey through the infected city is filled with danger and suspense as the characters fight their way through zombies, criminal overlords, mercenaries, airship pirates. The underlying steampunk theme is felt through the story without feeling overdone, and keeps the mood by being printed in sepia ink – giving it a semblance of an old Daguerreotype photograph. The pacing is excellent with a gratifying ending that sheds a whole new light on the entire story.


Boneshaker has been nominated for a Hugo Award. You can find Cherie Priest at her BLOG,
website
Twitter @cmpriest



Cherie Priest is the author of seven novels, including Boneshaker — which won a PNBA award, and was nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula award. Her other books include Four and Twenty Blackbirds, plus Fathom, Wings to the Kingdom, and the Endeavour-nominated book Not Flesh Nor Feathers from Tor. Her short novels Dreadful Skin and Those Who Went Remain There Still are published by Subterranean Press. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and a fat black cat.


Are you enjoying our SteamTuesday features? Leave a comment! Are you a Steampunk artist / designer / writer / creative who would like to be featured? Let me know!

New words from Ian LeWinter – the writer behind Blank Must Die

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.  ~Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith said, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”, is what E.L. Doctorow thought. And last, but not least, Isaac Asimov said, “If my doctor told me I only had six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”

Those expressions in their sum total, yet not completely, speak volumes to this gift, curse, burden that you and I share in the written word. Sometimes writing feels like bleeding. Sometimes you can’t type fast enough, you can’t make your brain and your fingers work in perfect harmony getting the thoughts and ideas in your head down in real-time. And sometimes the realness of the world in your head easily competes with your perceptions of the one you live in.s

Often when reading the words of others on our human history, writers become filled with a fire for comment, for their own pronouncement on the ills of mankind. And in these observations and reflections they are oft to regale a specific ill with a torrent of thunderous consternation in sentence, paragraph, and page. Combine a desire to regale with a need to admonish, defend, protect, and remember. Stir in healthy portions of a number of psychopathies. Grind up and add slow, uncontrollable burning desire (when asked why he wrote horror, the writer said, “What makes you think I have a choice.”). Let it all simmer for about 50 years and when you take off the lid you’ll have a look at the mind of a writer. Let me apologize for all of us in advance.

I once made a t-shirt that said, “Writing. The healthy alternative to killing.” I made that t-shirt because I like that statement. I like that the shirt offers my tongue-in-cheek introspection into an exaggerated true feeling. And it is a true feeling, albeit hyperbolic, for me. It brings to fine point a truth in this matter; that in the spectrum of “things that can be done”, while a word and a gun might have the same effect, locution is a stave against incarceration. The fact that I’m a pacifist also makes the gun part rather iffy.

So how does this happen?

For me, the beginning is always observation and interpretation. I see (hear, smell, taste, feel) things, and I think about those things, and I develop opinions (projections) about the things I think about. Some of those judgments and beliefs are all tied up into my ideals, the ones I’m most passionate about, and I feel compelled to put them out there, like I have no choice. (to be continued).

WJ Howard is having a virtual blog tour on her blog: W.J. Howard

All About Writers

• Writer Wednesday over at Nicole Hadaway Vampire Blogspot

All About Writing

• Breathe the Surface, Getting to the words that are just below the surface, by Mary Rajotte
• And don’t forget to drop by the Wicked Writer’s Blog, where they’re blogging about query letters this week.

All About Books

For the books category, there is our own interview with Ian LeWinter and Don Richmond from Blank Must Die and our recent review of The Awakening written by Nick Tapalansky.

W. J. Howard is the author of the twitter novel @TheCourierNovel, a CO-WINNER in the 2009 Textnovel Online Fiction Contest.
Read The Courier on Textnovel or at thecouriernovel.com