A lot has happened since the last post here---yeah I almost need to have a bugler play the Last Post over it...but do not fear there is a lot going on or pending and this is the only blog that I have for the new fantasy publications. I must tell you what plans I have for Rast (that didn't win the Global E-book award for anything.) Big changes for the past and the future, that I will post in a week or so. But this post is to inform you what has happened for the novellas mentioned in the December 23rd 2011 post---now two novels. This post comes from my other writing blog at http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com/ which will be the site for Updates on the two novels planned for what used to be Steaming to Romance, and all my Steampunk happenings. Well, I have some news, for one. This blog was started to keep readers up to date with my Iskander series novels. The last title of the series was published last year and I don't plan more--- But I have a brand new novel that is the start of something new---Steampunk! "Steam and Strategem" will be released in the middle of November by Tyche Books at the Pure Speculation Festival in Edmonton, Alberta. The Festival is a known magnet for Gear-heads...Steampunk fans...and my publisher tells me she has ordered a Steampunk costume---and asked what I will be dressed as. I guess I can't go reading my Steampunk novel dressed as me---I have to conform. I am already collecting finery to dress Captain Benchmark, my new Steampunk alter ego. I'll tell more about that in the next post. Here, I want to reproduce the blurb on my publisher's site http://tychebooks.com/book/steam-strategem/ so you won't have to go to find it. (But the cover image will be on the page soon---and you just have to see it. Fabulous.) Welcome to the Steampunk World of Regency… …where the power of steam has already passed from the age of unsatisfactory experiments to the first country-spanning railways and ships that no longer sail at the whims of weather. Roberta Stephenson is the daughter of the ‘Father of Railways’…a girl almost raised in the engine works and through her experience, and education in the most advanced halls of Miss Mather’s Academy for Girls, is fit to become manager and designer at her father’s steamship yard on the Clyde. And Britain needs Roberta’s expertise, for fate in this world has dealt more kindly with Napoleon, allowing him to extricate most of his army from Moscow in 1812, and granting him at least a draw at Leipzig in 1813. With developments of the steamships begun in France in 1783 he is ready to take one more gamble to rid himself of the interference of Perfidious Albion, and the island’s safety may depend on the steam powered rams Roberta is offering to their lordships of the Admiralty. Complicating Roberta’s professional life are her romantic suitors: Lord Julian Bond, man about town and Admiralty spy; the enigmatic Symington Holmes with a mathematical tripos at Cambridge; and Engineer Lieutenant Alfred Worthington RN. It seems that Roberta is destined to choose one of these gentlemen, but will she choose wisely? So, in addition to having updates about Rast's adventure as four self-published novellas I will post reminders about the Steampunk writing on the Wordpress site. Be seeing you here.

Apologies---but read the review

It has been over a month since I last posted here. Post frequency will pick up soon---another two reviews due and progress (and teasers) for my latest project to report.

Sold nine POD copies of Rast this past month, as well as nine PODs of my Iskander series novels. Eighteen copies of books in less than a month is a record around here, so I have to admit being pleased.

Read the new review of Rast---second post after this one. I received word from one of my reviewers that she has received the copy I sent, so I'm hoping I will have a new review for Christmas.

The two novellas of my Regency romance/steampunk crossover are progressing. I want to submit them this month along with a rough synopsis of the third novella. There has to be a fourth, but apart from the fact I have to settle the romance between my protagonist and one of her three new admirers, I haven't decided what has to happen.

I'm still posting the excerpts of Regency Bagatelle on my other blog http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com I started Bagatelle to practice writing that sounded authentic Regency and the exercise has passed 12000 words and is still going. Maybe it would make a novella, but it has already been published electronically, on the blog. Perhaps I'll add it to my website as a new give-away.

That's about it for now...but scroll down and read the review. Bye.

Wot's Noo?

Not much to report at the moment.

My POD copies of Rast have not yet arrived, so the planning of more promotion is stalled. I may have mentioned I entered Rast in the EPIC Awards this year and am waiting to learn whether it sinks or swims.

I'm following Rast with a Regency work. I'd call it a romance if it didn't have as much action ...it has a great deal of steam train and ship travel but it's not fantastical enough to call steampunk. It takes place in a somewhat alternate Regency because I shifted the 19th century rapid progress of steam to begin earler, with the start England's South Eastern Railway moved to 1802---and gave Napoleon a boost with a new plan to invade England in 1815. Oh...and the female protagonist is the proprietor of a steamship yard on the Clyde---as well as being pursued by interested gentlemen.

Other than those twists I'm writing in a style as near to Regency as I dare, with all the formality and convoluted social graces that one might enjoy in a novel of Jane Austen. I have a Regency practice ongoing, with posts on my other blog http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com to work myself into the groove of thinking Regency.

Two Bits of News

Whoops. I see a month has gone by without me updating this blog. (I have been updating my other blog at http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com ).

Until now I have had little to add to the progress of my fantasy novel Rast, but it looks as if my publisher is going to pass on a deal from LSI that will reduce the cost of POD print books of Rast, so I will have them to sell in July. Whoopee?? That means I will have to go out and start peddling books again. That’s what I get for wanting to be an author.

On the electronic front, I have entered Rast in the 2012 EPIC E-Book Awards in the Fantasy category. I hope I will have news to post here in due course. While I’m sceptical about the value of awards, the EPPIEs (as they used to be known) do have real human judges evaluating the entries and are not just a popularity contest for authors. If Rast gets anywhere in the contest, I would hope it would impress potential readers that the novel is worth looking at.

I’m supposed to be starting a sequel to Rast, but except for some cogitating nothing concrete has been produced. I’m working on a new venture for Muse, which is my Rast publisher. Since most of the authors and readers are romance fans, (and erotic romance) I’ve decided to dip my foot in the pool. Nothing so straightforward as a mere romance novel—I’m looking at writing Regency Steampunk (with romance) to combine killing a whole batch of ‘birds’ with one blast. It will be a series of three novellas—the first is complete in first draft.

Yes...steampunk is usually Victorian and filled with machines impossible to engineer with steam technology, but I’ve already produced some of those in Rast, so “Regency Bagatelle” (the series title) must have viable machines, even if I take liberties with their birthdays. My 1814 has Napoleon still at large and preparing to invade England again, and my two romancers are an aristocratic spy and the engineer daughter of George Stephenson. Will provide progress updates as I proceed.