Can you write STEAMPUNK without STEAM?

What is STEAMPUNK?

I ask that question because three of my former customers say that my last two novels are STEAMPUNK

http://www.amazon.com/THE-STARS-BLEED-AT-MIDNIGHT-ebook/dp/B00N758R96

http://www.amazon.com/DEATH-HOUSE-LIFE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B00HIU5O38/

Really?

One set of definitions include:

Steampunk perhaps most recognizably features anachronistic technologies or retro-futuristic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them, 

and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art. 

 Steampunk may also incorporate additional elements from the genres of

fantasy, horror, historical fiction, alternate history, or other branches of speculative fiction, making it often a hybrid genre. 

Sean Fagan wrote a fascinating post on the basic necessities  of STEAMPUNK:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mccarricksean/steampunk-without-steam-whats-left-fjmu#5bgu83

1.) ADVENTURE

Think Doc Savage, The War of the Worlds, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  That kind of adventure.

In THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT, two undead empires are at each other's throats and a plague worse than the Black Death threatens the world.

2.) EXOTIC LOCALES

From the bloody madness of the Devil's Wind in 1857 India

to the tinder box that was Egypt in 1895,

the heroes of THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT manage to stay one step ahead of death.

3.) SHIPS

In both HOUSE OF LIFE and STARS, excavated Egyptian temple sites are in actuality sentient alien star craft,

filled with deadly booby traps ... and aliens awakening to exact revenge.

Nikola Tesla has his "Flying Carpet", molded in the form of Horus and his sheltering wings.  It is actually a hybrid airboat and hover craft.

4.) A GENIUS AHEAD OF HIS TIME

Albert Einstein was once asked how it felt to be thesmartest man alive, and he said, "I do not know. Ask Nikola Tesla."

Again and again in THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT, the inventions of Nikola Tesla save the lives of Samuel McCord, his wife, and his companions. 

Most of those presented in that book and in DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE Nikola actually invented!

5.) STRONG, CAPABLE WOMEN

McCord's wife, Meilori Shinseen, is actually Sekhmet!

McCord wins the friendship of the alien Bast

His erstwhile companion is Ada Byron, inventor of the first computer language 100 years before the creation of the computer.

His three enemies in THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT are the undead Abigail Adams and the revenant Empress Theodora

And the mummy child, Princess Shert Nebti, carrier of a dread plague that could wipe out Mankind

6.) A RELATABLE EVERYMAN



Samuel McCord, reflective though cursed Texas Ranger, provides the sounding board for all the readers

who can see and feel the adventures and mysteries and riddles of these two tales.


Trying to explain the wonders to himself, he explains them to the readers as they turn the pages.



7.) A BAND OF MISFITS

Mark Twain, seeking fame, fortune, and adventure in a mid-life crisis.

Oscar Wilde, freshly broken out of Reading Goal by Twain and McCord, searches for the inner peace and self-respect he has lost.

Lt. Winston Churchill on the road to glory finds an even greater treasure.

Nikola Tesla, yearns for a like mind who will understand his misunderstood genius.

{Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain}

Come read THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT and DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE to see just how STEAMPUNK I can be!  Or not be -- depending on your definition!!

HIBBS ON THE RUN FROM ASGARD!

http://www.amazon.com/HIBBS-CUB-CLUE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B00MT8DNLY/

  

I was trying to write in Meilori's again.  It is always an chancy thing.

Each day in it is whatever day it was when the last visitor entered.

You can go from Thanksgiving to Mardi Gras with the entrance of one visitor.

 I heard a scampering of heavy furred feet. 

I looked up. 

Hibbs, the cub with no clue.

Hibbs, being a magical being, can appear in Meilori's at any stage of his life.  This time, the cub looked frantic.

"Hide me, Mr. Roland!"

There was a scurrying of sharp nails and Ratatoskr, the Asgardian squirrel, leapt to my table. 

Hibbs groaned, "Too late."

Ratatoskr took my ice tea tumbler in both hands and gulped down nearly half of it.

"Poooie!  Not enough sugar!"

He scurried to the sugar bowl and dumped its entire contents into my glass as I muttered under my breath. 

Ratatoskr gulped down the rest of my tea.

"Ah, just right!"

Ratatoskr's eyes brightened as he spotted Hibbs.  "There you are!  Why can't you borrow money from a leprechaun?"

Hibbs grumbled, "If I tell you, will you go away?"

"Oh, you're funny!  Like you, they're always short!"

"Where is the Turquoise Woman when you need her?" sighed tiny Hibbs.

"Oooh, another one," grinned Ratatoskr.  Why don't you iron 4-leaf clovers?"

I frowned, "I don't know."

Hibbs pleaded, "Don't encourage him!"

Ratatoskr snickered, "Silly Roland, you don't want to press your luck!"

He scampered up on the shoulder of the fidgeting Hibbs and snorted, "How do you know an Irishman is having a good time?"

"Like I'm not having," moaned Hibbs.

"He's Dublin over with laughter!"  Ratatoskr slapped Hibbs on the back of his furry head. 

"Get it?  Dublin over with laughter!!"

With a trilling moan as of a thousand Apache spirit flutes, a swirl of snowflakes suddenly appeared beside my table. 

My breath frosted in tiny clouds at the sudden chill.

The minature snowstorm twirled and flaired into a column of bright sparkles that slowly breathed into the tall Turquoise Woman. 

Eyes, terrible and beautiful beyond the singing of them, lanced into the startled Ratatoskr who tried to swallow but couldn't.

In a voice like icicles singing, the Turquoise Woman asked the Asgardian squirrel as tiny lightnings formed at the end of her pointing forefinger.

"What do leprechauns love to barbeque?"

"Wh-What?" stuttered the terrified squirrel.

She zapped the rump of Ratatoskr with a minature lightning bolt.  "Short ribs."

Hibb snickered as the squirrel grabbed his bottom with both small paws and leapt off onto the floor, scampering away for dear life.

The Turquoise Woman flowed without effort after the running Ratatoskr and asked, "When is an Irish Potato not an Irish Potato?"

She sent another sizzling bolt into the poor squirrel's butt and laughed coldly as he yelped, popping up in the air, "When it is a FRENCH fry!"

The two of them disappeared around the nearest corner in Meilori's, but we heard the faint voice of the Turquoise Woman:

"What is the main difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish funeral?"

Hibbs huffed and squirmed onto the chair beside me with a bit of an effort. 

"Darn.  They're out of earshot.  Now, I'll be wondering all day what the answer was."

Suddenly, the Turquoise Woman appeared beside him and tweaked his ear.  "One less drunk at the party!"

Hibbs yelped but she was already gone back to "rewarding" Ratatoskr for tormenting the cub she loved.

THE LEAGUE OF FIVE

{"There is a garden in every childhood --

an enchanted place where colors are brighter,

the air softer,

and the morning more fragrant than ever again."

- Elizabeth Lawrence.}


Some have emailed me asking about the mysterious League of Five that I mentioned in the post of yesterday.

I forget that I have new friends, unfamiliar with my older posts.

So pull up a cyber-chair and let me introduce you to something my mother sparked into being:

You see, the origins of the League of Five stretches back to my childhood.

That league was given birth by:

Mystery and wonder.


They were the seeds from which grew the League of Five.

I've talked about Edith Hamilton's MYTHOLOGY with its stunning illustrations by Steele Savage.

As a child I caught sight of mythic Proteus rising from the wine dark sea,

And heard shadowed Triton blow death from his wreathed horn.
 

Mythology and fantasy were the mid-wives of the League of Five. And my tales show it.

But I want to speak on what the League of Five taught me ... and what it might teach you:

LESSON ONE:

{Mystery is the siren call for all lovers of fiction. Better to leave out commas than mystery in your tales.}
 

BEAU GESTE --
Its first sentence : "The place was silent and aware."

Mystery.

A desert fortress manned by the dead.

Every French Foreign Legionnaire was standing at his post along the wall. Every man held a rife aimed out at the endless sands. Every man was dead.


Who stood the last dead man up?


That question drove me to check out a book as thick as the Bible.

I remember sitting down that April 1st with my four junior high chums in study hall. 

They couldn't get over the size of the book. They looked at me like I was crazy. Then, I told them the mystery.

Tommy and Gary snapped up the remaining two copies in the school library. Raymond and B.J. (we called him Beej) had to go to the two different branches of the city library for their copies.

And then, my four friends, sluggish students at best, were racing with me through the pages to discover the solution to the mystery.

But then came stolen jewels and desert danger. We were hooked.

Mid-way through the book, I discovered the classic movie marathon that Saturday was going to show BEAU GESTE, starring Gary Cooper and Ray Milland.

The five of us roughed it that night in front of the TV.

After the movie, we planned on sleeping on the floor of my front room. It would be like we were French Foreign Legionnaires on a mission.

We were enthralled. We booed the bad guys. We cheered on Gary Cooper. And we sniffed back embarassing tears when he died.
But with the mystery solved, my four friends didn't want to go on.

The solution fizzled the fun of the reading. We all moped. A throat was cleared. We turned around.

Mother sat with a leather-bound volume in her hands, and with her voice blessed with the magic of the Lakota Storyteller and the lyrical beauty of the Celtic bard, she smiled,

"Let me read you five something --
 

LESSON TWO:

A GREAT VILLAIN WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN.

{And he will keep your readers' interest up high -- so no lukewarm antagonists. Think epic. Think primal.}

Mother, in her rich, deep voice, read low like distant thunder :

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline,

high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan,

a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of true cat-green.

Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--

which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence.

Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."
 

She put down the book on her lap and intoned, "That, young men, is the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Do you want to hear more?"

Man, did we! And so the League of Five was born.

For every Saturday night for the rest of that year and all through my last year of junior high, 

we sat cross-legged on the front room floor and listened to all thirteen of the Fu Manchu novels ...

along with the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starting with "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." I never went to sleep after that without looking at my headboard!

LESSON THREE :

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER ... NOT THE BAD ... CERTAINLY NOT THE GOOD.

{Instill that truth into your tale, and it will intensify the fragility of the human body and the enduring courage of its spirit.

And if it teaches your readers to hold gently and gratefully the love they find, so much the better.}
Unknown to us, Mother was teaching us the value of a mind that thought beneath the surface, that grew stronger with use as with any muscle.

We made special nights of it when the classic movie marathon played any Sherlock Holmes or Dr. Fu Manchu movie. 

Flash Gordon with Ming the Merciless was great. It was like seeing Fu Manchu in a space opera.

But the seasons pulled us apart to different cities, to different high schools, to different destinations.

Fatal car accident. War. Disease. Mugger's bullet.

Until now, only I remain of the League of Five.


But every April 1st, in the late evening hours, I sit down and pull BEAU GESTE from the shelf. 

I read aloud the words, "The place was silent and aware."

And no matter the room I find myself ...

it is silent ...

and it is aware.

I see five wide-eyed boys, their eyes gleaming with wonder and awe, 

listening once more to my mother reading into the wee hours of the morning,

her voice a beacon in the darkness of our imaginations.

I pull down my worn copy of THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU MANCHU and turn to chapter two with Sir Denis Nayland Smith's description of his adversary.

After a few moments, the words blur. But that is all right. I know the words by heart.

What novel meant so much to you that you just had to share it with a friend or friends? Tell me. I'd like to know.

Compare it to what you are writing now. Did it have any effect on your style or genre of writing? Please write me on that, too.
***********************

***
This is a tune that the League of Five would have liked, each of us imagining ourselves fighting together in some grand adventure:

THERE WAS A TIME I LOST HOPE_Insecure Writer's Support

Hope is an ethereal yet essential thing.

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.” ― Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Beautiful words.  But sometimes the world becomes ashes in your hands, and what do you have left?

When hope dies, life has a weird way of giving you its form of C.P.R. or hitting you with those electric paddles. 

You see, in a strange way there is neither happiness nor misery in the world.

There is only the comparison of one state with another.

He who has been plunged into the deepest grief later comes to see what beauty he foolishly took for granted before.    

That which he was blind to prior becomes to him a healing scene of rare wonder.

Perhaps wisdom can be distilled into two words:

Wait and Hope.

I had a silly dream, born of the wonder my friends in The League of Five had in the thrill of continued adventures in linked books:

http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/11/leauge-of-five.html

To be able to weave a linked world of different heroes fighting in a cosmic war that few even realized was ongoing from one novel to another and have them read and loved was my dream.

Know how many copies of HIBBS, THE CUB WITH NO CLUE I have sold?   Two.  And I bought one of those for my own Kindle!  Ouch!

Some months back it hit me that I was never going to sell many of my books, much less be popular.

The Father murmured, “There are worse fates.” 

And I contracted cancer like my mother before me.

  Stunned and fearful, I said, “Yeah, you right.”

{By the way, for all you males out there – those are the 3 magic words for your angry wives or lovers:

YEAH, YOU RIGHT. 

They will at least not make matters worse!}

After a very unsettling time, the Father granted me a reprieve. 

A reprieve is all any of us get. 

Our promissory note on life always come due, and the Postman in Black turns up at our doorstep … and he has the key to every one of our doors.

Sandra, my best friend, is dying of cancer. 

When she emails me (which now is seldom for she is focusing on her family and her own fears),

she demands to know how I am doing in work, how my health is, and how my prose dream is doing.

It seems trite in the extreme to whine about the Lab Tech who has been actively trying for years to get me fired. 

(It is a puzzlement to all who know of it and me.  But sometimes you work with mentally unstable people … sadly this one has clout.)

Sandra insists she wants to know of my books. 

She says in this age of reality programming and Twitter, no one wants to think while they read. 

If I enjoy the act of writing, then write.  If 5 people find pleasure in my prose, then my dream has not been in vain

Life is short and fragile as both Sandra and I know. 

We must be mindful of the beauty and love that pushes through the cracks of the concrete of a world seemingly intent on crushing us.

If you want to give me some good news to write Sandra, buy a copy of

THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT   http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N758R96  {$2.99}

or

HIBBS, THE CUB WITH NO CLUE  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MT8DNLY    {.99}

If not, that’s all right, too. 

I have learned the importance of each breath treasured for its own sake. 

A  good friend gone far away just reminded me on Facebook of my own words on my Author Page:

“The great thing about being a writer is that you CAN BE a princess, an astronaut, or a dinosaur.

Samuel Clemens was never taken seriously as a writer ... until he was famous.  He wrote ‘You are a crank ... until you succeed.’

People will take you as seriously as you take yourself.

We must be whole within ourselves -- no matter what inane nonsense folks think of us. 

That is why writers are lonely, for a dream is a private thing since no one's dream is dear to someone looking from the outside.

Every pioneer goes it alone, but writers are lucky: they get to take their characters along with them inside their heads!”

It is good to have good friends like Robert to remind us of who we are.

Have a lovely week, my friends.

A BLACK WIND BLOWS

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N758R96

 

“All of us have a path to follow, and that path begins in the heart.”

           - Samuel McCord  {a supernatural LONGMIRE}

 

          The world is filled with mystery and shadow.

 

What is life?  The years bring us the conceit that we grasp life.       

 

What we grasp is but illusion.

 

Childlike we seize a fistful of seawater and say we hold the ocean.  And even that slips through our grasping fingers.

 

As the ocean holds depths Man will never see so does Life.

 

But one cursed man has seen more than most.  And the enemies he has made doing so are now trying to un-make him.

 

From the undead halls of power in colonial Washington, D.C. to the bloody plains of India to the mystery-shrouded deserts of Egypt, Texas Ranger Captain Samuel McCord is spoken of in whispers lest he take notice of the speakers.

 

Follow his cursed footsteps from 1826 and the death bed of President John Adams to the blood stained hills and ravines of 1857 India. 

 

 

And finally to 1895 Cairo and the far deserts wastes of Egypt. 

 

 

Some fool has disturbed the sleep of something that should never have been awakened. 

 

 

And it is up to McCord, his deadly wife, Meilori Shinseen, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Nikola Tesla, and Lt. Winston Churchill to keep the world from slipping into a new Dark Age of madness and death.

 

But this time, the past has caught up with McCord in the form of the undead Abigail Adams and the revenant Empress Theodora of the Unholy Roman Empire.

 

 

Worse, an ancient Pestilence in the body of a mummy child now reaches out for him and those he loves.

 

And his friends and even the world itself may pay the terrible price if he cannot be more than what he believes he can be.

Don't forget

HIBBS THE CUB WITH NO CLUE

only 99 cents

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MT8DNLY/ref=docs-os-doi_0