I write Steampunk fiction. My newest is a trilogy, a three-part series called The Saga of the Steampunk Witches. I try to incorporate as many funky steampunk gadgets as I can in this new trilogy. The first book was Flight of the Zeppelin, followed by Flight of the Crow and Flight of the Phoenix.
My first steampunk novel was City of the Dead. The hero is a civil war veteran who lost his arm in a famous battle. He invents powerful prosthetics using steampower. The bad guy is part of the mystery. The book takes place in New Orleans which adds a dark and mysterious element to the world of the adventure. There is voodoo, a mental sanitarium, where the hero’s mother is incarcerated, and zombies.
Steampunk covers a broad range of fun and inventive scenarios that can run from nineteenth century fiction, to dystopian fiction to modern fiction featuring alternative worlds in which steam-powered technology rules. When I write, I freely invent any kind of mechanical device I want or need and make it steam powered.
Steampunk offers a fantastic arena to invent fun worlds, great characters and fanciful plots. My heroines, yes there are two, are witches living in a steampunk world. When they flee the bad guy, they use air ships powered by steam, undersea vessels, aircraft, motorcycles and cars. All of these vehicles are steam-powered. You can literally take any piece of equipment or machinery and make it steam powered. It’s your world. You get to do what you want.
My characters travel all over the globe. They are free to do this because even though it’s the nineteenth century, in their steampunk world, there are so many travel options.
The precursors of modern Steampunk are Jules Verne, Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells. Verne went undersea and into space, Shelley had Frankenstein and crazy machinery designed to reanimate the dead. Wells invented a time machine. All fun and all crazy steampunk.
Clothing in the nineteenth century steampunk world is also fun and can be as crazy as you want. The fashions of the day prevail; bustles, frills, corsets for the women. Men wear herringbone or plaid suits with huge watches and bowler hats. You have to have scientists and inventors. They can be men or women, clothe themselves in leather aprons, massive goggles and gauntlets filled with all kinds of fantastic tools and devices.
I try to keep the language in my steampunk novels true to the time period. This is one of the hardest things to do. It’s so easy to drop into modern terminology and syntax.
If you want a modern movie to help you get the picture or get in the mood, look to Wild, Wild West, the Sherlock Holmes series of movies starring Robert Downey Jr., The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters and Van Helsing.
Check out my newest release, Flight of the Phoenix from Torrid Books.
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