Category: Steampunk

Weird Wednesday: State of the Author, April 2023

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Here’s where I am at these days:

–Spider Star, aka Star Master Book 2: this has been released and is free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers right now. It will leave KU on June 3, so if you are a KU subscriber, I would advise you to download it before then and read at your leisure. When it leaves KU, I will be raising the price on Shadow Captain (the first book in the series), so keep that in mind as well. Later in June, I will work on putting Spider Star up on the other ebook vendors and setting up an AI-voiced audiobook at Google Play.

-Hunter Healer King, Book 1: Currently a shade under 10K words of a projected 70K, so I think it’s safe to call this an actual work in progress. If you frequent some of the other places I visit online, you may have seen me call this one “the Gothic Dunedain project” or “the Steampunk Dunedain project.” Basically this is a monster-hunting gothic fantasy with a steampunk angle and some Tolkienian tropes thrown in, like an ancient line of kingly monster-hunters who come from a lost civilization. No Elves or Dwarves so far. The plan is to serialize it on Vella, once completed, and then use any feedback to help in turning it into a conventional ebook.

-Regency Sleuth: At 4K of a projected 70K, this is still in the exploratory stages. Call it an “almost-WIP.” It’s not set in the actual Regency, just in a vaguely British Regency like place with minor fantasy elements (so far consisting of a single empath, whose abilities are not so far very useful in solving mysteries). I’m finding that writing a mystery calls for a very different approach so I’m kind of feeling my way through the process. I do like new challenges though, which is why I switch up genres when I finish with a particular setting. If completed, this one will possibly cycle through Vella as well.

-Ancestors of Jaiya: I may get some help stomping typos for these, and if so, I will set up AI-voiced audiobooks for them on Google Play.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at in the writing process. Feel free to share your opinions below.

Crossdomain “Transmedium” Threats

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https://www.defensenews.com/battlefield-tech/space/2022/07/20/pentagon-renames-ufo-office-expands-mission-to-include-transmedium-objects/

The Pentagon would have you believe that the truth is out there, although I am not entirely clear on when we started taking the Pentagon’s word for this stuff. I don’t know whether the truth is out there or not, but some days I suspect Robur the Conqueror is.

(Please Note: the film version of Master of the World features Robur’s much more generic airship from the prequel, Clipper of the Clouds. If you watch the film, you will get to see both Vincent Price and Charles Bronson doing their thing, but you won’t get to see any Steampunk Triple Changer that can function as an aircraft, automobile, and submarine.)

Real Estate Website That Lists Castles For Sale

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I suspect I am the last one to find out about this site, but it’s still cool. Great place to research castles for your fantasy novel, or just daydream about how to spend your hypothetical lottery winnings.

Welcome to https://castleist.com

Also, here’s an interesting study from 2018 of how Lake Powell in Colorado suffers from water management rules that favor keeping Lake Mead (downstream of Lake Powell) filled, and by extension favors the lawns, swimming pools and delta smelt of California, the most populous area supplied by Lake Mead.

Saving a Queen Now Available!

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Journey to the country of Jaiya, in a world not quite like ours. Here the humans wield magical powers and fight against an Empire which seeks to enslave them, but they share their world with insect people and trollfolk, and stranger things lurk in the shadows…

Queen Prasa escapes from her city as it falls to the Empire. Her only hope of survival lies in traveling with Nirav, a smuggler who pilots a type of balloon called a skyboat. Caught between her sense of duty and her attraction to the smuggler, Prasa must listen to her heart in order to find the best way to save her people. But what is the secret cargo that Nirav carries…and why is a flying monster out of the old stories hunting his skyboat?

Hope everyone is having a great November!

I just published the Ancestors of Jaiya series, the prequel series to my Jaiya series of urban fantasy/paranormal romance novels. The Ancestors of Jaiya series starts out nearly two hundred years before the events of Marrying a Monster and the other books in the Jaiya series, and ends about 35-40 years before the Jaiya series starts. Book 2 in the series, Saving a Queen, is now available on all the major ebook stores, including Amazon, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, and Google Play.

More Books On Sale, Hosted by Dean Wilson!

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Dean had the clever of idea of doing a followup sale to last week’s Science Fiction/Fantasy giveaway on Instafreebie. A number of authors, myself included, have taken the books associated with last week’s giveaway, and set them to 0.99 on Amazon. The sale runs through tomorrow (October 22), so click here for the full list!

Meanwhile, back on Instafreebie, Oliver Cohen has organized an interesting giveaway for clean romances, which you can check out here.

Light Urban Fantasies On Sale! Plus An Instafreebie Giveaway!

Posted on Posted in Cheap Books, Fantasy, Jaiya, Marketing, Mel Dunay, Oldblood Series, Paranormal Romance, Steampunk, WritingLeave a comment

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Do you like your urban fantasies on the lighter side? Less grimdark, less harsh language? Maybe with a bit of romance, maybe without? Regina Welling, author of twelve books across three series, has put together a promotion showcasing a number of books in that “vein,” all on sale for $0.99 on Amazon. My latest novel, Loving a Deathseer, is part of the promotion, but there are quite a few other books available as well. Just click here if you feel like checking out the sale!

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Steampunk writer Dean F. Wilson has also put together an Instafreebie giveaways of free novels, short stories and sample chapters in the science fiction and fantasy genres, running until tomorrow (October 15). You can click here to check out the giveaway page.

Free SF&F Books on Instafreebie

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Happy Holidays! Steampunk writer Dean Wilson has hitched up his eight tiny reindeer, and loaded up his sleigh with a bonanza of  Science Fiction/Fantasy books of every length, from sneak previews and short stories, to full-length books.

All free, all available on Instafreebie! He was gracious enough to include my short story, “Lost in a Dream,” in his bag of goodies, but there’s lots more to choose from-just click here or on the picture to see the complete list.

The Shape of Things To Come

Posted on Posted in Editing, Fantasy, Gladiator, Jaiya, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, MMA Fighter, NaNoWriMo, Paranormal Romance, Steampunk, Writing2 Comments

Now that you’ve “met” Marrying A Monster, maybe it’s time for me to share a little more about the rest of the Jaiya series.

The main Jaiya series is currently three books long, and is set in “present day” Jaiya, or at least a timeframe where the technology and social developments are similar to our present day. I have some ideas for short stories or novellas about these characters, and if I come up with any more 50K-length stories in this setting, that grab me, I will write them.

Marrying A Monster is of course the first book in the series. The second book is currently titled Waking the Dreamlost, which was my Summer 2017 writing project. Monster‘s hero, Vipin, has an older brother named Marish, who is the hero of Dreamlost. I will probably spend the rest of October revising Dreamlost, along with some time in November if I finish with NaNoWriMo2016 early, and however much time it takes after that. The hope is to have it ready to go by before December 15.

Loving A Deathseer is the third book in the series in internal chronology, but the first one written. (How that happened is a story for another time.) The heroine is a relative of Vipin’s and Marish’s. This one is going to need a lot more reworking than Dreamlost, so there isn’t a timeframe for release yet.

There is also a Jaiya prequel series in the works. At this point, the only thing written is last year’s NaNoWriMo project, a fantasy romance with a gladiator/MMA fighter angle set 200+ years before Marrying A Monster. I am currently outlining a book about Vipin’s parents, which I hope to do for NaNoWriMo this year.

I also have a very rough idea for a book about Vipin’s grandparents, which I will try to write in the first quarter of next year. And there’s an even sketchier concept for a steampunk-y paranormal romance set about 75 years after the gladiator romance, and about 150 yrs before Marrying A Monster. The steampunk romance and the gladiator romance would both deal with Vipin’s ancestors. The series would start releasing sometime in 2017, barring complications.