#steampunk author

[gailcarriger]

Discover the Captivating World of Gail Carriger | The Ultimate Steampunk...

[scifrey]

COVER REVEAL DAY!

Strap on your goggles and buckle up your jetpack, the cover for THE SKYLARK’S SONG is finally here!

Look at how goshdarned pretty this cover is!

About the book:

A Saskwyan flight mechanic with uncanny luck, seventeen-year-old Robin Arianhod grew up in the shadow of a decade-long war. But the skies are stalked by the Coyote—a ruthless Klonn pilot who picks off crippled airships and retreating soldiers. And as the only person to have survived an aerial dance with Saskwya’s greatest scourge, Robin has earned his attention.

As a Pilot, Robin is good. But the Coyote is better. When he shoots her down and takes her prisoner, Robin finds herself locked into a new kind of dance. The possibility of genuine affection from a man who should be her enemy has left her with a choice: accept the Coyote’s offer of freedom and romance in exchange for repairing a strange rocket pack that could spell Saskwya’s defeat, but become a traitor to her county. Or betray her own heart and escape. If she takes the rocket pack and flees, she could end the war from the inside.

All she has to do is fly.

Filled with intrigue, forbidden romance, and a touch of steampunk, The Skylark’s Song soars in this new duology from the award-winning author of The Accidental Turn Series.

You can pick up your copy of The Skylark’s Song in eBook and Paperback on September 4th 2018.

The Skylark’s journey from concept to published page has been a harrowing one. The third full novel I ever completed, and the first one I ever wrote specifically with the intention of showing to my agent for publication, this novel has left me crying on a street corner in New York City, laughing and dancing in a white wig at a steampunk festival, filled with me with hope for my career, and filled me with despair. There are about seventy labeled drafts of this book on my hard drive. In the time that I’ve been working on this novel, steampunk has seen a resurgence, and an ebbing away again. The novel inspired a beautiful song of the same name by french band Victor Sierra, which ended up coming out years before the novel. So, needless to say, this piece of work has been a real . . . piece of work.

Maybe I should have given up.

Maybe I should have trunked it and moved on to the next thing. (I half-did, many times). But then we wouldn’t be here, would we, in a time when discussions around religious freedom are so important in the real world, and the themes and aims of this novel have finally crystalized for me.

This novel was conceived at the first—and though we didn’t know it then, only—Canadian National Steampunk Exhibition, which was, to date, one of the most fun cons I’ve ever been to. Two wonderful things came out of that weekend for me. (Well, three, if you count Professor Elemental taking a nap on my shoulder in the Green Room, which was pretty cool, in and of itself).

First, I was put on a panel with Dr. Mike “The Steampunk Scholar” Perschon, where we sassed and snipped and laughed together as if we’d known each other for years, when we’d actually known each other mere moments. Mike’s friendship has lasted beyond that weekend, and I treasure it daily.

Secondly, I accepted a drunken dare.

The thing you have to understand about a bunch of theatre majors getting together to put on costumes and drink for a weekend is that, eventually, somebody’s gonna start making up stories. Or dare someone else to do it. And somebody is gonna be stupid enough to accept.

Steampunk costumes come in stereotypes, and what we had sitting in the circle that night was this: a biomechanical assassin, a devious airship piratess, an aviator in a white wig (me), and a wily spy-mistress-cum-madam and her secretly clever mountain of a bodyguard-slash-lover.

The first incarnation of The Skylark’s Song was born that night, as I pointed to each character in turn and declared how our backstories were connected, conjuring the Saskwyan-Klonnish war out of wine fumes.

Through edits and revisions, the biomechanical assassin eventually became an enemy aeroship ace. The piratess became a devious friend of the cause. And everyone swapped skin tones because, even if all of us were (mostly) white, there was no inherent reason why the protagonists of a book set in a pseudofantasy land had to be.

The Skylark’s Song was the first (and only) complete novel I presented to my first agent, and the one that taught me that there is such a thing as the right fit in this industry. It was the first novel I presented to my current agent, as well, but we put it to the side because by then, it had been so worked over that we had to take it back about twenty-five drafts and figure out where it had all gone wrong. In the meantime, I wrote The Untold Tale, which ended up ballooning (in a good way) into a series. And in that time, the Skylark circled in my brain, coasting on the updraft,  waiting her turn.

What followed after was five years of realigning, recasting, changing the motivations, the appearance, the beliefs, and the core traits of the characters. One character was removed entirely, only to return as the love interest when my first agent demanded that there be one—a love interest who has switched sides so many times that I don’t think even he remembers who he’s loyal to, and has switched names so often that I barely remember what it was to begin with.

But here it is.

Finally.

From drunken dare to the book you now hold, it’s been a heck of a journey.

And it’s only half done.

[seanpatricklittlewriter]

A January Update

I had hoped to have a cover for LONG EMPTY ROADS to show you by now, but Paige has run into issues with her Photoshop program. --When you absolutely need something screwed up, use a computer. They will find a way to let you down every time.

The hard copy version of LONG EMPTY ROADS won't be ready by Feb. 2, sadly--but as long as I can get a simple flat done, the eBook version should still be on time. Given that hardly anyone bought a hard copy of the book, this should not set many people back.

Speaking of hard copies--My friend Maddy Hunter's new book SAY NO MOOR is out now. She will be doing an event on Sunday at Mystery to Me in Madison around 1:00pm, I believe. If you're in the area, please consider stopping in to say hello and grab a copy. Maddy is a heckuva writer and her books are very funny.

In other book news, Alex Bledsoe announced that his forthcoming Tufa novel, THE FAIRIES OF SADIEVILLE, will be the final in the series. This is a happy and a sad announcement. It's always nice to have completion, and to have an author be able to finish a series on his terms is always a good thing. It's better to finish something before it jumps the shark, so to speak. However, the Tufa novels are easily in my top five favorite book series. The characters are alive and breathing. The prose is crisp. The stories are wonderful. We need more books like the Tufa novels. I will be sad to see them end. Alex will keep writing other books, though. I will be very interested to see what he churns out next.

If you haven't seen the commercial Jack Quincey did for LORD BOBBINS AND THE ROMANIAN RUCKUS, you should give it a play. Jack's got too much talent to be kept down for too long. I've known the guy for 14 years now. (Sheesh, time flies...) He makes commercials and does some seriously good marketing for Everything Hobby in Rochester, MN. Follow their Instagram account for Jack's puppetry. He puts out a new video almost daily. He's doing marketing right.

After a brief thaw here in Southern Wisconsin, we are back into the teens. January typically gives a brief respite from the cold, but February is traditionally the coldest month. We had two weeks and change of subzero temps in December and early January, so getting back up to 45 was delightful. I hate the cold. I keep wanting to move to a warmer climate. I've been applying for jobs in the south, but I don't foresee myself ever leaving Wisconsin. As much as I loathe the cold, the rest of the year is pretty nice here.

I'll keep you posted on the new book. In the meantime, I think I'll be at Mystery to Me on Feb. 2 to promote LORD BOBBINS AND THE ROMANIAN RUCKUS. If we can get a bunch of people there in Steampunk gear, all the better.

-S

[seanpatricklittlewriter]

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https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Bobbins-Romanian-Ruckus-TeslaCon-ebook/dp/B077948WFL

[seanpatricklittlewriter]

The Shine is off the Apple

Well, the shine has definitely fallen off the apple of the past week.

It was exciting to launch a new book at TeslaCon. It sold well at TeslaCon and people seemed really excited to read it. It was exciting to finish another book and really start getting to brass tacks on that one. It was exciting to put the TeslaCon book out on Kindle, and for the first day, that book jumped into the top 50 Steampunk books for a whole glorious day. When it started out, it was somewhere around #350 in Steampunk. On Kindle, it climbed all the way to #47. Sadly, it's fallen again and is now dwindling somewhere around #180.

Alas.

Book sales are long, tedious enduro-marathons, though. Not sprints. It takes a long time to build sales on a new product or a new series. We can't just leap into first place.

I met with Eric Jon Larson on Friday morning to talk about the future of the book series. LORD BOBBINS AND THE DOME OF LIGHT is already done. I'm about to start work on a third LORD BOBBINS book. He also has some other, smaller novella-length projects in mind that I hope to get off the ground sooner than later. There could be a long and interesting future for these books if the audience can find it.

I just hate the waiting process. Waiting is why I don't have hair any more.

It also reinforces how important it is for people to post reviews, tell friends, and use social media to really push books they like or books they want to succeed. Without everyone's help, these things are dead in the water.

I'll keep writing. I keep trying to quit, but I just can't. I will keep putting out books, even if I can only release them as Kindle ebooks and nobody reads them--I'll still do it. It's the same sickness that makes standup comics do their set in empty bars or makes struggling actors monologue in their living rooms. We can't stop. We have to do what makes us happy.

It's just better when others come along for the ride.

Perhaps I should do some live-streaming or something like that. Read a chapter or two, or something. I know I've talked to Randall Stewart of Juggernaut Productions LLC about possibly doing some YouTube videos of chapters, or maybe some audiobook stuff. We'll have to see how that goes. And I hope to gem up some new promotional material in the near future.

If you're not following writers on Twitter, you should. I'm on there. Most of the rest of the writers I know are, as well. You kind of have to be nowadays, although it is not my favorite social media.

Fingers crossed, all.

Let's hope the good luck keeps rolling.

--Sean

[booksteacoffee]

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