Category: Steampunk

Hunter Healer King, Book 2 is Here!

Posted on Posted in Cool Books, Fantasy, history, Mel Dunay, Myth, Paranormal Romance, Publishing Plans, Steampunk, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , , , Leave a comment

The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I am in trouble. First I helped Maxim kill a werewolf, then I kissed him, and then I insulted him when I found out that he was roughly twice as old as he looked. Now Maxim is about to be crowned King of the Stormcrows aboard a luxury airship, and he has invited me to attend. But this ship feels more like a cage with each passing hour: a passenger’s horse has turned up missing, a crewman has turned up dead, and before it all started, I heard noises in the cargo hold. But Maxim has a mind as sharp as my banishing dagger, and between us, we aim to put an end to whatever monster lurks aboard the ship, no matter how awkward we feel around each other right now…

My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night. With my coronation mere hours away, something stalks the shadows of this vessel: a monster that answers to a human being..but who? And for what purpose? Despite our recent…complications, Chloe’s courage and loyalty make her my strongest ally as I pursue our enemies, and brace for the dreadful pomp and circumstance of my own coronation. The crown of the Stormcrows may await me, but first, we have a mystery to solve – together.

State of the Author, 4Q2024

Posted on Posted in Art, Cool Books, Fantasy, Gladiator, Jaiya, Jane Austen, LLMs, Mel Dunay, Myth, Oldblood Series, Paranormal Romance, Publishing Plans, Space Opera, Steampunk, Weird Science, World Building, WritingTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

-First off, I think my books are all in Kindle Unlimited now, free to anyone with a subscription to KU. If you see any sign that they are not in KU, please let me know in the comments.

–Undead Flight (Hunter Healer King Book 2) is now in the hands of my proofreaders. Barring complications, should be ready to publish by Christmas time. Ebook cover is done; blurb is done with AI help (stay tuned, my post on the blurbing process will be out tomorrow. Print cover is dependent on my final cleanup of the manuscript to determine page length.

-Also started Hunter Healer King Book 3 by writing a fairly dark and distressing scene from the last third of the book. This is kind of suboptimal, because stitching together scenes written out of order tends to add (wo)manhours to the first draft process, but I hadn’t figured out the opening scene at that point. I don’t know when it will be released but I know that I am aiming for Christmas of 2025.

-I have had a sci-fi Pride and Prejudice retelling in development for a long time; finally got the first scene down. No projected completion date at this time. My main inspiration for this concept was, weirdly enough, Star Wars: A New Hope. If you dig deep enough into the filmographies of the supporting cast, you will find one with a Pride and Prejudice connection in his earlier career. Regrettably, the catchy working title explicitly references Star Wars, so the official title will probably be something rather sedate of the “Pride and…” format.

-New ebook covers using AI art for Shadow Captain and Spider Star are done; still need to do new paperback covers for them, and ebook/hardcover for the 2 in 1 volume for the duology. Projected release date for the 2 in 1 is first/second quarter of 2025.

-Early stages of AI art covers for the Jaiya Series and Ancestors of Jaiya series. No text layout yet. A four in one of Ancestors might come out in third quarter of 2025; a seven in one of the full metaseries might be sometime in 2026 but a lot could go sideways between now and then.

Sequel to Wolf’s Trail Is Done!

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A hair over 56K words, so a bit longer than Wolf’s Trail itself. What’s next? Well, I’m going to take a break from this universe for a week or so, try to work on getting my older stuff into Kindle Unlimited, and other “administrative” writing related work, and then try to get back to work on the novel in maybe second week of November, – cleanup, breaking into chapters, submission to the people who early-read and edit for me. I hope to have it out by the end of the year, but no guarantees.

Let’s throw in a somewhat triumphant sounding Bollywood video while we’re at it:

Writer PSA

Posted on Posted in history, Paranormal Romance, Scrivener, Steampunk, World Building, WritingTagged , 1 Comment

Always try to collect all your notes on a particular story in one place somewhere. I was reading some books about writing mysteries, remembered a failed mystery idea(1) I had done a lot of world building for, went to look up the Scrivener file I had for it, and discovered that a). it took me an embarrassingly long time to find it because I’d named the file after a relatively trivial story element I wasn’t interested in using anymore and b). although I had successfully corralled the setting notes om scriv(2) and some general ideas on the two detectives, I did not have notes on my plot ideas.

And okay, when I did a deep dive into the notebooks I was using around the time I was brainstorming this, I found that my plot ideas were mostly pretty lame, and that was why I hadn’t taken them seriously enough to put them into Scrivener, but I would have saved myself a certain amount of trouble if I had.

(1) it was one of the iterations of the Feisty Girl/Posh Guy concept that eventually led to Wolf’s Trail, would have been maybe 3a or 4a on this list or this list.

(2) Incredibly important because I had zeroed in on, and even mapped, a tiny bit of Slovenia in an alternate post-WWI, with history on why it was previously its own principality going back several generations and including an alternate wife for a guy who saved Emperor Franz-Josef from an assassination attempt and an additional daughter for Queen Victoria.

State of the Author, Late 2024

Posted on Posted in Editing, Fantasy, Mel Dunay, Steampunk, Weird Science, WritingTagged , , Leave a comment

The sequel to Wolf’s Trail is in the late stages of drafting – about 48K with maybe a couple thousand more words to go. Just moving very slowly because I’ve been sick with some respiratory thing for over a month and a half at this point. Starting to do better, which means the creative brain(1) is starting to come back online. With some luck, I should be done by the end of September, take some time off to work on other stuff in October, polish it in November, release by the end of December (around the same time the first book did last year).

(1) as opposed to the critical brain, which you’ve seen a lot of lately with the Jane Austen adaptation posts and the Rings of Power posts

Happy Summer! Have a Free Novel!

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Free Novel!

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….

Continue reading “Happy Summer! Have a Free Novel!” →

Weird Wednesday: Worldbuilding the Empire of Noricum

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My main model for Noricum, where Wolf’s Trail takes place, was the Hapsburg Empire, especially the later, more decentralized version at the end of the nineteenth century. But the more I dug into it, the more I discovered that the Hapsburg Emperor had a much more hands-on role, even in that era, than I really wanted the fictional counterparts to have. So here’s the situation with the Emperor of Noricum in the books…

Continue reading “Weird Wednesday: Worldbuilding the Empire of Noricum” →

Writing Vacay, Day 3

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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?