Plans for two novels

I currently have several novels that were started and not completed, or completed but are presently resting in limbo.  One is my novel that was published as the fantasy "Rast" that I removed from a publisher where it was---presumably--- invisible. It is worth reviving as a number of readers have raved over it, and the submissions editor at the publisher says, "it deserved better".

I am trying to decide whether to self publish it as a series of four novellas (it would make more as $1.99 times four that as a single at $4.99---e-book readers are really cheap these days.) or else look for a new publisher for it. Some of the decision will hinge on the success of my two Steampunk novels at Tyche http://tychebooks.com/book/steam-strategem/ because I would play up its steam connection to 'brand' it.

It dawned on me a couple of months back that even before my Steampunks were accepted, four out of six of my published novels have a significant steam connection. "Rast", for example has the imperialist invaders riding in multi-legged steam powered walking land transporters. From an engineering standpoint they would need computer controlled hydraulic leg mechanisms to work, but hey...this is a fantasy. It would not require a large change of emphasis in the text to make the novel a Steampunk fantasy.

The other novel has been sitting in the same slush pile for about a year. I'm quite certain the publisher doesn't want it, but I have been too busy with the Steampunks to do anything about removing it. This one is my SF offering "Mindstream" that has the abbot of a Zetetic Monastery who can mentally visit other worlds in the universe by entering the Nth dimension 'Mind' through a sort of meditation technique. The Abbot is a retired lecturer in cybernetics...which makes his experience more 'scientific'.

I have been thinking about posting it in one of those reader/writer reviewed forums (fora) run by publishers looking for a cheap way to find new voices. I was participating in one a few years back...slightly... to see if it was worth keeping. I’m not convinced, and don’t remember what it was called..but I will be able to find it somewhere amid the clutter in my Internet world.

I’m somewhat of a cynic when it comes to trusting writers to promote someone else’s work. I was following a young lady’s novel for awhile that I thought had promise, but she seemed offended if I suggested improvements. To get a really good following it looks like an immense amount of reading, that would almost ensure your own writing would go off the rails. But if the gophers at XXX Publishing recommended one’s work to the submissions editors one might find a painless way into a professional publishing house.

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.

 Labels: regency, Roberta Stephenson, romance, spying, steampunk, steamships

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.

Rast has been nominated for the Global e-Book Awards

Hi All:

I was notified this evening that my high fantasy novel, Rast, has been nominated for the Fantasy genre of the Global e-Book Awards. I have a number of promotional plans to work on in company with the judging, so I expect I will be posting more often here while the Awards process is going.

Sources for Anywhere and Nowhere

Discussion on finding research sources for military history, history of technology, castles, ruins, and ships. While the Internet has become a valuable research resource, there’s nothing like being there and touching the bones.

1. Living in the history

2. Books and used bookstores

3. Who’s online?

4. Museums, Re-enactments and battlefields

5. Techniques, sharing sites, and questions

2. Books and used bookstores

I found a couple of prize military research books in a used bookstore in Exeter, Devon. The older is “Manual of Field Engineering” 1911, the other is “Field Service Pocket Book” 1914. Both published by the British Army of that era for their officers in the field.

In “The Wildcat’s Victory”, Gisel needed to get two of her squadrons of light cavalry across an unfordable river, The answer was in the field engineering manual, item 81. Tackle for Swimming Horses. An officer and 35 men are sent across the river by commandeered small boats. There they help deploy a continuous rope over pulleys on two posts they plant solidly in the ground, while the main party constructs the same on their side. Horses take their turn, tied to the rope at intervals of about ten yards with head collars and head ropes. When the continuous rope is pulled around the posts (by manpower) the animals are driven singly into the water, which obliges them to swim across. When they reach the other side, men are waiting release them from the rope and lead them away. I figured at a rate of one horse a minute, Gisel’s squadrons could get all their animals across in a little over four hours.

Once I even used the handbook’s calculations for constructing timber bridges in the field to determine if an old logging bridge was safe to carry three tracked drills weighing 15 tons each across a river. It was; nobody fell in the river. The Field Service book is invaluable for determining times of march, ration scales, camp cooking and fuel and forage for my characters on journeys or campaigns—although I often supplement it with a book on “The Imperial Roman Army” I’ve owned for years.

It took me visits to a number of used bookstores to finish my collection of “Weapons and Warfare” a set of 24 encyclopaedias, out of print since 1980, that cover almost everything a writer wants to know about the ships, tanks, planes, rifles, guns and what have you from the 20th century. I bought a book called “The Medieval Fortress” from the Military History Book Club ( a good source if you have shelf space for all the tempting books) but a couple of used books, library discards, “The Palaces of Medieval England” and “Castles from the Air” filled in some of the blanks in the coverage.
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What about non-warlike research? When I ran steam plant I had to take qualifying exams, and I still keep the course material to hand to fill in the inevitable memory blanks. A visit to a liquidation store supplied me with a copy of “Jane Austen; A Family History” that is well thumbed now I’m venturing into writing about Regency times. Of course having the collection of contemporary classic novel reprints that my Mother collected (another book club) are also a valuable resource. When we had a good choice of smaller bookstore chains a few years ago I often visited one to pick up their used university textbooks, and still refer often to an old copy of “European Economic History” to check on credible figures to use for coinage, rates of exchange at different periods, the growth of cities, etc for my alternate history novels. Then there are the two physics texts, the chemistry, biology and economics books I use for reference...not to earn an academic qualification I must point out, but to be able to write fiction with credible backgrounds.

I’m sure your interests have governed the kind of material you have collected. While the topics you want to collect will be different than mine, the principle holds true. Your life experience and books you have collected will inevitably channel your writing into certain genres. Look out for the regular library discard sales and snap up anything that seems remotely connected to something you may write; visit used bookstores regularly to see what they’ve recently acquired—talk to the owners and let them know your interests. While I’ve never gone to estate auctions, my Mother used to haunt them and I still have copies of books from earlier years that she picked up for a few pence. How about “Memoirs of the Crusades”, including the Villehardouin translation from the thirteenth century and the de Joinville one of the fourteenth? I’ve also got a copy of “Conquest of Peru”, a mid 19th century reprint by Prescott.

What prizes have you found in bookstores? What other sources of research books would you recommend? So, don’t hang back, start collecting the books that will give you a more solid grounding in the kinds of fiction you want to write. Note that I said fiction—for non-fiction you must be completely up to date and that requires more academic expertise than most fiction writers want to jump into. For that level of research you need to have a friend or two in the academic field, and guess what—I have one of those too, as long as I don’t waste too much of her time. That suggests another source of research that I’ll mention next time.

Steaming to Romance

Hi All:

Interrupting my posts of the Muse Conference workshop to let you know that the first two novellas of my Regency Romance\Steampunk crossover were sent to the submissions team yesterday. Since my editor for "Rast", the fantasy novel published there last March, is one of the submissions editors I am hopeful they will find a place to fit them into the catalogue.

After much deliberation and mind changing I'm calling the series of four novellas "Steaming to Romance" since it is both a very drawn out Regency romantic adventure and a steam powered spying and sea-fight tale. The first novella, "Spinster of Steam" introduces Roberta, the fictional daughter of George Stephenson and her steam ram "Spiteful" and two of the male leads. The second, "Romance and Steam" introduces two more male leads (on the premise that the more suitors the better) and the action in Roberta's shipyard to begin fulfilling the orders for the navy as well as readying some agents to spy on Napoleon's shipyards.

Meant to offer best wishes for the Holidays and New Year, so will tag it on here. Will post more workshop until I have more info to update the novella story submission.

More Sources for Writers.

Continuing the repost of a Workshop I gave at the Muse Online Writers’ Conference http://themuseonlinewritersconference.com/ this year I will post the rest of the first day’s workshop 1. Being There: Living in the History. (The first part is the next post below.)

Now to a somewhat later history. In my Iskander series story The Wildcat’s Victory I wanted Gisel to command a scouting force that has to slow down the advance of a much larger formation. The historical time in the alternate world is around 1700 but Gisel’s people are from a modern age and they could equip her with a few newer weapons to even the odds. I decided to have her demand a battery of 1900 vintage field guns to increase her striking power (the Iskanders had been improving on the local weaponry for a few years). Seen any early field guns lately? Luckily, I have a nearby example outside a Canadian Legion branch at Lethbridge—a WWI Krupp 77mm weapon, developed from the Erhardt fifteen pounder (that I had picked as Gisel’s model; the British Army bought some to even the odds in the Boer War). I already knew how to crew a field gun and calculate the aiming, from my basic training in the Royal Artillery, on WWII twenty-five pounders back in 1959, so I was able to ‘teach’ Gisel how to act as her own forward observer (FO) and enable her guns to use their seven kilometre range to defeat the enemy cannons and a whole brigade of cavalry in her final desperate action.

Now, is that writing what you know or knowing what you want to write? Probably a bit of both. My writing sometimes ventures into deserts (as in my fantasy Rast) and I spent more than four years working in the Libyan Desert; if I need to write a scene in the Arctic I can use my two years’ experience surveying in the Arctic Islands. If Gisel needs to fly in their spaceplane freighter I put her in my memory of the Hercs we used to haul our equipment and fuel to our prospects in the Arctic so I can describe riding in the aircraft hold or on the bunk behind the pilots in the cockpit.

What about ships? The feel of my galleons and ships of the line are all modelled on HMS Victory that I’ve visited several times. If I need a more modern battlewagon I recall my impressions of the USS Texas of 1913, waiting to welcome visitors beside the San Jacinto monument outside Houston; or the battleships and carriers the Royal Navy used to put on display at Navy Days when I was a kid. Aircraft I can remember in their hundreds, I studied some aeronautical engineering at Farnborough. Steam engines, that figure in both Rast and some of the Iskander novels are easy—I’m familiar with stationary steam plant and operated boilers and both turbine and reciprocating engines.

I’d like to hear about your experiences of visiting places that have featured later in your writing—what did touching the bones add to your writing of the scenes? I have more examples to show you—if you want to see them I have three scenes from my Iskander series novels where I use my background info for the scenes using castle, dungeon, and artillery handling. The file is in the Presenters forum on the Conference Forum page. I you can’t find it, I have to admit that neither can I, but we’ll sort that out Monday morning.

Well, I suspect you’re getting the point of the sermon, but what if you’ve not managed to do all that preparation? The rest of this presentation had better cover some of that. Next time I will tell you what useful texts I’ve found in used bookstores as well as some well chosen book clubs.