Spent some time helping a family member with a craft project (needed two cutting mats and pairs of hands instead of one of each.)
- 73 words adjusting earlier scenes in the WIP
- 1027 words moving forward on the WIP.
- a tidy 1100 words total.
Category: Steampunk
Writing Vacay, Day 3
Slept in dramatically, felt much better, got some stuff done around the house. Still got a late start on anything writing adjacent:
- Some brainstorming
- a lot of research on the less feudal bits (Switzerland, Frisia, etc) of medieval Europe, vaguely connected with one of the plot bunnies
- 100-200 words adjusting earlier scenes in the WIP
- 972 words moving forward on the WIP
- lower word target met! yay?
Writing Vacay, Day 2
So, here’s what happened on day 2 of the writing vacation:
- Couldn’t focus on writing due to AC issues, now hopefully fixed. I have no patience with people who diss the Industrial Revolution and even less with the air conditioning haters who were fashionable a year or two ago
- Cut 170 words I wrote yesterday on main WIP
- Tweaked some other bits of the WIP for continuity issues; mostly related to the structure and layout of the airship in the WIP
- wrote 116 new words
- Target word count not achieved
Weird Wednesday: Doctor Who and the 7 Golden Vampires
To those who are not familiar with the movies and tv show being referenced, no explanation is possible. To those who are, no explanation is necessary. To those who whine about how awful the source movies are: I have so little respect for your opinions that I am not even doing you the courtesy of putting these beneath the fold.
Spring Book Sale
Happy (Upcoming) Easter!
This year, I’m participating in AetherCzar’s Based Spring Book Sale.
Steampunk author Hans G. Schantz (aka AetherCzar) has graciously included Shadow Captain in his sale. As usual Hans pulls together dozens of indie and small-press titles, which emphasize fun and escapism over Serious Messages and the grinding concerns of the real world, all on sale or for free. I hope you can find something you like here.
Wolf’s Trail is Free Until Friday!
The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. I left my father’s ranch on the plains to come to the Old World: a place of airships, steampower, and monsters nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife, and the hunters crazy enough to go after them. The most dangerous of these doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a tired face….
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. The leader of this pack of werewolves has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. As far as I am concerned, that makes her my ally. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. We must keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use….
Wolf’s Trail, the first book in Hunter Healer King, my gothic gaslamp fantasy series, is free for all readers until Friday, March 22, 2024!
You may know me from my clean romantic fantasy novels in the Jaiya series and the Ancestors of Jaiya series, or my space operas, the Star Master duology. Wolf’s Trail still combines adventure, mysticism, romance and fun characters, while avoiding harsh language and the more graphic forms of violence and sexuality. This new series is written for fans of steampunk, gaslamp fantasy, lost civilizations, and monster hunters like Van Helsing (the more action hero version of the character, as portrayed by Peter Cushing and Hugh Jackman).
Where Did That Come From? The Posh Guy in Wolf’s Trail
We’ve discussed the origins of the feisty girl/posh guy idea before, and the evolution of the feisty girl in my head into Chloe Fortabat of Wolf’s Trail. The evolution of the posh guy was less dramatic, because for a long time I thought primarily of him as a foil to the heroine. Here are the different phases, numbered to match the entries under Feisty Girl:
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? The Posh Guy in Wolf’s Trail”Where Did That Come From? The Feisty Girl in Wolf’s Trail
(Note to pedants: I use “girl” here in a colloquial sense, as the counterpart to “guy.” All the female character concepts mentioned below were college age or older when I stopped to think about how old the character ought to be.)
As previously stated, the basics of the feisty girl/posh guy teamup came to me while watching Agatha Christie’s Criminal Games. It was a long road from there to Wolf’s Trail.
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? The Feisty Girl in Wolf’s Trail”Where Did That Come From? The Feisty Girl/Posh Guy Dynamic in Wolf’s Trail
The short version is that I started noodling around with this character dynamic (the Reylo fans would perhaps call it a dyad) when I was first watching Agatha Christie’s Criminal Games. Eventually it would grow into the lead characters from Wolf’s Trail.
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From? The Feisty Girl/Posh Guy Dynamic in Wolf’s Trail”Where Did That Come From: The Hunter Healer King Setting Used in Wolf’s Trail
I fell in love with steampunk machinery the same way a lot of people did:
Continue reading “Where Did That Come From: The Hunter Healer King Setting Used in Wolf’s Trail”
Jaglion Press 