steampunk

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Marcon Report (at last)

June 2, 2011 in Grab bag | 2 comments

This one is more personal. The more professional one is at Southern Indiana Writers, where I at least attempt to pretend I’m a responsible adult. Go there for a rundown of our panels on Blogging 4 Writers and Smashwords, Kindle, POD and Other Dirty Words (self-publishing), including downloads of our handouts.

Okay, we drove up to Marcon uneventfully (Thanks, GPS lady!), taking a trunk full of food — I mean books. After last year, we did not stay in the convention hotel. There’s only so much money in the world, and we don’t have that much of it. We stayed in The Red Roof Inn down the street. Loved it.

During the short walk to the convention hotel, we came upon this sign, which was apparently produced by one of my spommenters (spam commenters). We were like, “Woah! Never knew Columbus was such a wide-open town! Better a happy one than a grumpy one, fo’ shizzle.” We thought the MF was uncalled for, though, so we didn’t go meet her. I hope that didn’t make her sad. Four to seven ain’t bad odds, though.

Wonderful costumes! The emphasis this year was on Steampunk, which delighted us. Personally, I never was too crazy about zombies, and I prefer my vampires to be more “two small puncture marks” than streaming with gore, so gears and airships make me do the happy dance. ~waves at Amanda Borenstadt~ I’ve never written Steampunk, but I’ve read some lately (Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell [reviewed here] and The Burning Sky by Joseph Robert Lewis [currently reading]) and, of course, I’ve read many of the precursors (Jules Verne et al). I love the concepts, I love the clothes, I totally love the jewelry.

The costumes ranged from formal to less formal, airship pilot, scientist, inventor, upper-class, lower-class, totally alternative Victorian, straight Victorian, male and female and a lot of stick-a-gear-on-it-and-call-it-Steampunk. The variety was delightful, and the absence of ick was refreshing and wonderful. Poor MomGoth (me) didn’t have to up her dosage or anything.

It wasn’t all Steampunk. There was a large contingent of Whovians (fans of Doctor Who), with various incarnations of the Doctor and his various companions in all shapes and sizes. There was even a wonderful costume, which I missed snapping, of a dalek. A woman had on a crinolined skirt covered in those dalek bumps, carrying a silver plunger. :D The Doctor’s transportation device — disguised as a police call box — had pride of place in The Green Room, where us panelists were allowed to hang out. We never saw him come or go, though, we we suspect it might have been a prop and not the real thing at all. ;)

There were also costumes unrelated to Steampunk and Doctor Who, like this one, which I thought was totally gorgeous. She was a fae of the Winter Court. I kept meeting her in the ladies’ rooms, reapplying the silver to her hands.

I felt like a scrub, what with just being dressed in my regular clothes, but being on panels and stuff inhibits me. If I were to wear a costume, though, I would totally want it to be Steampunk. With trousers or a shortish plainish skirt, though. I love the long skirts, but I wouldn’t want to have to keep track of all those layers and all that length.

We arrived home after the convention without incident (Thanks again, GPS lady!) with fewer books, little food, less money and some good stuff. T got a new walking stick, I got a new bracelet, not sure what Samantha scored, but it was probably good.

WRITING PROMPT: What kind of sf/fantasy costume would you wear, if you HAD to wear one?

MA

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Fun With Gasbags

March 1, 2011 in Guest Posters, Writing | 13 comments

Er… Perhaps I should retitle that. What I have today is a guest post by JOSEPH ROBERT LEWIS! Yes, THAT Joseph Robert Lewis! The one I’m all “Read this! and this!” about.

HE isn’t a gasbag and I’m not… never mind. What I mean to say is, I’m talking about the airships in his Halcyon series. So here he is:

I love stories. All types of stories. Drama and tragedy and comedy. Science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, paranormal, romance, western, and probably an epic poem or two. I love reading them and I love writing them. But writing can be a lot of work.

Especially in the various flavors of fantasy (which include most of the genres I listed above), a lot of a writer’s time can be spent building the world in which the story will be told. What does the world look like, sound like, smell like? What about the people, food, religion, clothing, holidays, breakfast cereals, and adorable fluffy pets? What are the rules of the world, or its societies and cultures?

Sometimes writers can turn to research and sometimes writers can turn to their imaginations to build their worlds. But in the end, world-building is a lot of work, because the world itself has to work. It has to make sense, at least within itself.

What’s worse is that, most of the time, different genres and styles of story-telling require different worlds. Science fiction is “supposed” to look and feel futuristic, and fantasy is “supposed” to look and feel like medieval Europe, and westerns are “supposed” to look and feel like Texas, and so on. There are expectations. Assumptions. Stereotypes.

And if you are a writer like me who wants to tell lots of different stories, you’re confronted with the daunting task of creating lots of different worlds, the task of doing a lot of work before you ever get to start telling your stories. And that’s no fun.

So I cheated.

Instead of planning to write lots of separate novels or trilogies in different genres in different worlds, I wove them all together. I created one world, which I very creatively named the Other Earth, in which I can tell all my stories in one place.

I cheated on a lot of other things too. I got my fantasy map from an atlas, and I got most of my historical back-stories from “history” and I even stole some characters from “reality.” And now you’re asking, what’s so fantastical about that? Well, I made a few tweaks.

First, I plunged our lovely blue world into an Ice Age, or more specifically, I never let us emerge from the last one. So the northern hemisphere is mostly snow and ice, and the unpleasantly warm places like the Sahara desert are now green and fertile and lovely to visit or to build an empire. This was a simple change that completely altered the entire planet.

Second, I re-arranged the levels of technology all around the world, partly based on things like trade routes and natural resources. I also tweaked this so I would get all the toys I wanted, like Industrial Age trains and airships and steamships, western-style revolvers, Age of Sail galleons and swordplay, and ancient stone temples, mega-cities, and necropolises. Necropoli? Necropolum?

Third, I made up some new rules regarding death, the soul, and the existence and role of ghosts in day to day life. I won’t tell you those rules now, but suffice it to say that these rules make life more interesting for everyone, particularly the people who choose to pay attention to the revenants wandering among us.

Lastly, it was important to me to create and showcase some less stereotypical heroes, particularly for my daughter to read one day (she’s still a little bit on the toddler side right now). I wanted alpha males who weren’t jerks, and beta males who didn’t morph into alphas, and women who kicked butt without morphing into alpha males, and women who were feminine without being weak.

(This is not to say there are no stereotypes or cookie-cutters in my books. I might even have a “dark and gritty brooding anti-hero” in there somewhere. But for my core characters, I was aiming much higher.)

So what is the result of all this? A genre-bending muddle? It could lead that way, I admit, but I didn’t build this playground so I could play with all my toys at once. I did it so I could play with all my toys in the same place.

For example, my in-progress Halcyon trilogy (set in Morocco and Spain) is a swashbuckling, steampunky, western adventure series. It’s mostly about good guys chasing bad guys, sword fights and gun fights, and action. It’s a fun cocktail of The Three Musketeers, The Princess Bride, Firefly, Farscape, and Jules Verne.

Meanwhile, my in-progress Asha series (set in India) is a long, quiet journey punctuated by paranormal mysteries and strange encounters. It’s about tragedy and other-worldliness, about death and perseverence and exploration of the bizarre and hidden wonders in this world. (Have you seen Mushi-shi? Yeah, it’s like that.)

Also, my future Yslander trilogy will be a dark heroic fantasy about big brawny people with swords fighting big brawny monsters, also possibly with swords. (Think Conan the Barbarian mixed with Eastern European folklore, spiced with a little Hellboy.)

This is all in the same world, playing by the same rules. Now, I didn’t create this complex world just to save time on world-building. I also did it so I could create a series-of-series books. My standalone books, short stories, and trilogies can each be read in a vacuum by the people who like one or another brand of fantasy. But for those of you who have broader tastes (think Stephen King’s Dark Tower series), you’ll have at least seven books that all tie together into one uber-story.

Like me the author, you the reader only have to invest in one fantasy world to enjoy lots of stories about lots of characters. And the payoff at the end is much greater.

So if this sounds at all like your cup of tea, I invite you to check out the samples of the first Halcyon novel (The Burning Sky) and the first Asha short story collection (Death).

The second Halcyon book, The Broken Sword, will be released later this spring.

So there you have him: the awesomely awesome Joseph Robert Lewis. I’m reading Burning Sky now, and I can tell you that the world feels, looks, tastes, smells and… ~MA counts senses~ oh, yeah, sounds real.

WRITING PROMPT: Take a scene from a children’s story (Three Little Pigs, for example) and rewrite it, including all (counting again) five senses.

MA
p.s. I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies on the subject of The Man Who Did Not Read.

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Steampunk Is in the Eye of the Beholder

August 27, 2010 in Grab bag, Sparks o' Joy | 2 comments

I did one of my favorite things the other day–went with my husband to a home supply store. He was buying paint and fluorescent light bulbs, since you ask. I just love looking at the paint samples and the little booklets that put different paints together for a “look”. It reminds me of coloring, and you know how I love to color. I also love wandering around, looking at the fancy doors and light fixtures and cabinets and toilets and kitchen counters and doorknobs and stuff. There was this one light that looked like a headless fish with its intestines dangling down. I snapped a picture, but the light wasn’t good for that, so it didn’t come out. There was another one that looked like Madonna. Well, part of Madonna. You know what I mean. She probably gets royalties every time they sell one.

But this was the payoff for this particular trip. I came around a corner, and there were all these brass-tone fixtures, and I was like, “OMG! Steampunk!” Again, the lighting wasn’t great for photography, so I’ve futzed with it a little and that’s why it maybe looks kind of overheated. My husband was like, “What are you taking a picture of bathroom fixtures for?” I said, “Steampunk!” He gave me an odd look, but he let it pass. Upon reflection, I wonder if he thought I was saying, “Steam, punk!” in reference to hot running water or something. This is, after all, the man who thought the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the Teenage Mute and Injured Turtles for over a year.

And speaking of Steampunk, last summer, when we went to the concert on the river in Jeffersonville, this fake steam fake paddlewheeler came by and I snapped a picture of it.

Well, I’m setting this up to post tomorrow. By the time you read it, I may be on my way, or I may still be running around in circles going, “Where’s my pills? Where’s my books? Where’s my car? –No, thanks, I know where my Chianti is….”

Have fun. I intend to.

WRITING PROMPT: Go to a home supply store or section of a department store and think about what kind of character would use this or that.

MA

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