Where Should I Start?

Okay, I lied. THIS is the question I get the most: "If I wanted to start picking up your books, which one should I start with?"

For any of you who've been reading since the beginning, I am sorry. I am sorry for OH SO MANY THINGS, but not the least of which is putting out so many books that it has become complicated to sort out where to start.

So. Let me help.

If you've read NONE of my books so far, I recommend starting with "Steel & Sky: Tales of the Dead Man, book one." It's a fine intro to the world, to the characters, and to the drama and adventures found in all the books I've done so far. It's a tale of airship pirates, zombies and giant robots, and it deals with the social struggles found within prejudice and fear of the unknown or different. It's about two women trying to sort out what they want to be, and a man who's never been very good at accepting conventions of any kind, and all the chaos which ensues around them as they go. It's a little bit science fiction, a little bit fantasy, a sprinkle of speculative fictions and a dash of steampunk. And there's a bit about a red panda named Trill who's absolutely adorable. There's a gentle cliff hanger, but I hope you won't hold it against me.

Book 2 is on its way, so you won't have a long wait, and there aren't really any spoilers to be found. Oh, sure, you may have a few questions here and there, but that's kind of the point, so it's all delightful. Now, THAT BEING SAID, the Tales of the Dead Man books do take place chronologically AFTER my first series, but please allow me to elaborate in the next paragraph.

The Chronicles of Aesirium is a six book (plus collection) series which tells a smaller scale story of Rom and her friends, who happen upon a thing called a Morrow Stone whose nature reveals the history of their town and the powers which want to destroy it (the town, not the stone). It is a coming of age series about three young people - Rom, who, yes, dies in chapter one, but this is whole series is about her so I don't think that should dissuade you; Kari, a genius with a monkey wrench with an ear for magic; and Cousins, the young man who knows just about everyone who can get anything for any occasion. This series is as much about discovering the truth about yourself as it is the truth about the world you live in; about learning that some of the things we get told aren't actually how they happened, and how learning these truths can be hard but necessary. It's got monsters, dancing robots, and an angel of death with a lovely black dress.

You can start with the Chronicles, but rest assured whichever place you start won't spoil you in either direction. They take place in different lands at different times, and even though there is some crossover, I was very careful to keep the stories effectively independent of one another.

So, bottom line, if you want my suggestion - start with Steel & Sky - - if, for no other reason than that it makes my publisher happy. And if they're happy, I'm happy. And if I'm happy, I get to put more books out. And more books makes you happy too! So, see? It's all terribly self-indulgent and better for all of us.

And while we're all waiting for that.... I have MORE books to write!

So thank you, and thank you, and thank you for your support! Have a wonderful journey!

Why Steampunk?

Okay, okay. Fine. There's like three or four questions I get the most - not counting "where did you get those awesome shoes?" - most of which kind of roll together into a great glistening sphere of Steampunk-related inquiries. And I know I've KIND of SORT of SOMEWHAT answered this in the past, but I feel like my past explanations require a bit of an updating.

Aside from the overall sense of "what is" Steampunk - a question I'm not entirely certain I'm qualified to definitively answer - I think the more relevant question is why I decided to nest much of my story in the Aesirium/Dead Man books in an archaic world of steam engines, clockwork and rusted retrotechnology.

Generally speaking, straightforward Steampunk novels tend to be structured into a repurposed Victorian era, depending on that era's tech seedlings to generate the potentiality of a more broad-based technical expansion. You know, HG Wells, Jules Verne, that sort of thing. And yes, that is a DRAMATICALLY OVERSIMPLIFIED description. There are entire books written just about the nature of Steampunk, so if you want to travel down that rabbit hole, yes. I fully support said rabbit hole. Spelunk away.

For me, however, writing "a steampunk novel" had never been the intention. In my first series, "The Chronicles of Aesirium", the point was to draw a line between two cultures - one who embraced magic and the other who embraced technology. How would these two cultures develop, even side by side, if they had little to no interaction?  And so, for the people of Oldtown-Against-the-Wall, their technological path was stopped cold at the moment of their division, remaining in an only mildly enhanced steam-powered civilization. And it wasn't even until the first draft of the first book that one of my editors pointed out the strong steampunk vibe my book had.

The division of tech versus esoteric - facts versus faith - is perhaps accidentally a running subtext in my books, and its something that deeply fascinates me. There is so much that connects the two, even while so much seems to divide them; how we develop apart from that which seems to oppose us is as important, I feel, in how we also reach out to the "other side" of this wall we allow to rise up between us. Of the two - division versus alliance - I think is as much a question for who were all are individually as much as who were are as Peoples, and I hope this sort of conversation springs up from readings of my books. I mean, okay, they're also adventures, with magic and giant robots and zombies and monsters and angels of death, but.... it's a story about us, really.

And that brings me back to "why steampunk?" See, there's just something so organic about steampunk - both in its expression among the fans and subculture members of their love of it as well as in the genre's materials themselves. It's a "okay, let's do this" mindset which I find refreshing and world-saving. It's "find a need, fill a need"; it's a "get off your ass"edness that we've kind of steered away from in many ways. In our culture of "instant gratification" and "internet anonymity", getting back to a hands on, side by side constructiveness is often missing, of late.

And since I can't just wave my magic wand (I've got a Sirius Black wand from Universal Studios and I'm not afraid to use it!) and make the world different - and, really, I don't think anyone should be able to do that - what I can do is write about it.

What do you think? What do you love about Steampunk? Or do you not even know if you DO like Steampunk and want to know if it's something for you? Let me know in the comments!

The Captain of the Lamprey: Sjora Kahn'dyr

"...most people are either powerless, ignorant or misguided. But the powerless are aware, the ignorant are able, and the misguided are nevertheless willing. Between the three of them, they could accomplish what was needed, but only if they worked together." - Sjora Kahn'dyr

Her name is Sjora Kahn'dyr, captain of the former fishing vessel Lamprey, an airship now more acquainted with trading and the occasional act of piracy. Named Sjora by her parents, the surname Kahn'dyr came from the oldspeak meaning Sky-charmer, so named for her tendency to charge straight into an oncoming stormfront only to find naught but blue skies at their horizon.

From an early age, Sjora left her home among the Sky People of Jaaris B'kaan, preferring instead to ride the winds in a vessel of her own choosing. Having stolen her very own ship at the age of eleven and rechristening it the Lamprey, she became a silent terror of the Steel City tradewinds, able to pilfer the gold teeth from a Warmerchant or capture the loot from a frigate caravan right out from their noses.

But all recklessness must come to an end, one way or another. For Sjora, her choice to move towards a more legally sound career came in the arrival of Daris Faol, the young Sheharid Pa'amul (potential shepherd) with whose safety she was charged. This young ward reminded Sjora far more of herself than she was content, and as a result Sjora moved more into conventional messaging services, trade and transportation. The rising threat of familial responsibility hounded her, though. Would she eventually have to trade in the freedom of the sky for the inherited role she knew she would not be able to outrun forever?

It's a question I think all of us must face at one point, yes? Do we grow up? Will we set aside the dreams and adventures of our youth in order to accept the mantle which awaits us? And how does caring for the protection of another rush us towards that end?

Or will it, as it does for Sjora, only heighten the risk of such adventures? Especially as the Song-Mistress of the Sky People summons Sjora to perform one, important task for them - the acquisition of a Isaad Morquith - the prophesied Dead Man, whose presence either secures or threatens all their lives?

It's just one mission, Sjora concedes. One more task to buy herself a few more years of liberty among the clouds.... or so she hopes.

Read more about Sjora, Daris and more in book one of the Tales of the Dead Man: Steel & Sky, and, coming soon, book two: Sun & Stone!

Time and Time Again

It's a new year! 2018! Parades! Confetti! Champagne! Bad puns about "hey, I haven't seen you since last year!" You know, all that.

Seems a bit fitting that I should say something here about the passage of time. Like, why do we celebrate tonight as the new year? What makes any one spot on the earth's orbit of the sun any more spectacular than another? Wouldn't it make more sense to have that new year's day fall on a spot when the earth is closest or furthest from the sun? Or when the moon has completed a proportional number of orbits around the earth or is in a certain phase in relation to the sun's position?

Well, it wasn't always so - in fact, the first January 1st didn't even happen until year 45. Talk about a retcon!

Before that, the first of the year was celebrated at what is now the vernal equinox (or autumnal equinox for my fellow travelers south of the equator) to coincide with the halfway point between the solstices.

Calendars are weird things, really - focusing as much on celestial events as they do with terrestrial ones. Monarchs and religion play equal parts in their design, but most of us have forgotten their origins. Like, November and December were originally named as the 9th and 10th months, until Julius and Augustus decided to get squeezed into the summer. Or how about the days of the week being tributes to the Norse gods?

Yeah, it's all a whole thing, really. And effectively useless for time traveling. You can't just tell your time machine to go back to last thursday or set the dials so you can travel back to November 15, 1955. It's more than just flipping back the pages of a calendar - because we're talking about more than just a blink back against pages in a book.

The earth spins (at the equator) at a speed of nearly 1000 miles per hour; not even taking into account the shift in our rotation, it orbits the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour. Our solar system rotates around the star-flecked spirally arms of the Milky Way at about 490,000 mph, as we all move towards the Great Attractor at a relative speed of 1,000 kilometers per SECOND.

So, yeah. We're moving along at a brisk little jog, there. But if numbers are just too much math for a New Year's weekend, then how about if we slap a groovy little drum riff atop a bunch of monks singing and watch the way the worlds move?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucLYUYDhgos

Okay - I'm going to just leave that here while I go contemplate calculating the requirements for the specificity of time travel. Future projects and all that.

OH! I was going to ask. What are you doing this year? Let me know, please, if you so choose.

Back Into the Timestream

Whew! I'll bet you thought I got captured by pirates, huh? Well, I did, but as it turns out these were friendly pirates, so all it left me with were some great stories, a few things to remember them by, and a bit of a hangover. Things have otherwise been.... well, oddly apocalyptic. Hurricanes, ash falling from the skies, riots in the streets. Perhaps you've heard of them. Well, so what's a friendly neighborhood time traveler to do but...well, write about it.

Getting close, at long last, to putting a pin in "Automata" - exploring the origin of the soul is a bit trickier than you might expect! - as well as getting ready to jump back into the Tales of the Dead Man, book 2 - Sun & Stone. With a bit of luck, we might get that one crawling into the light of near-day round about the first parts of 2018. Then, we might see Automata, and there are two other novels I will be starting on as well - - to be honest, I'm not entirely sure which one I'll be doing first. "Tales of the Dead Man 3: Sea & Shadow" or this new one, "The Probability Machine". Oh, the places we will go! Excited? I know I am!

And speaking of "Places we will go", check this out!

Many thanks to Barnes & Noble, who really seem to enjoy my company! Which is great, because I enjoy theirs as well!

So, I've been getting lots of questions about how to pick up a copy of "Steel & Sky", to which I must repress the inclination to chastise and instead turn my judgy gaze inward. So, there are a couple methods - you can go to Barnes & Noble online, Amazon, or you can to directly to Doce Blant - - but you can also ring up your local Barnes & Noble store and have them order a copy (assuming they don't already have them in stock). You can also ask your local library to order a copy too, in case your bookshelves look anything like mine.

Also, if you're one of the millions who just found out that I was, in a former life, a musician - - you can also find the "Obsidian Bridges" album on iTunes , Spotify or SoundCloud.

Whew! That's a lot of stuff.

Okay, so I'm gonna go back to working - thank you for your heroic endeavors, my friends. You are doing good work, and it's making a difference! I hope to see you soon - - but if I'm not already coming to a city near you, please let me know where I should add to my list, and I'll get my internet pandas on it!

More to come - watch this space!