Happy Astronomy Day! Hope you get a chance to get outside and turn your gaze skyward tonight. As it turns out, Astronomy Day falls on one of my days off from the observatory this year, so I’m spending much of the day writing, but will be back to astronomy soon! In the meantime, I have a handful of new steampunk releases and a great steampunk event to tell you about.
Gears and Levers
First off, I’ll kick this off by telling you about Gears and Levers 1, a brand new anthology from Sky Warrior Publishing that includes my story, “The Pirates of Baja.” As you might guess from the title, there will be a Gears and Levers 2. It will feature the story “Endeavor in Halcyon” that I wrote with Kurt MacPhearson.
Come, my friends, adventure and romance await in worlds that never were but should have been. Magic and science blend together as Gears and Levers explores the quest for all that makes up humanity. Battle pirates, travel back in time, fly in dirigibles, explore the wonders of the Orient, and walk with automatons in twenty amazing tales set in Steampunk lands by masterful storytellers such as David D. Levine, Brenda Clough, Mark J. Ferrari, Irene Radford, K.L. Townsend, Shannon Page, and Bruce Taylor, among others.
My story in the collection tells the story of Ramon Morales, former sheriff of Socorro, New Mexico, who finds himself out of work in Los Angeles. He boards a ship on a mission to hunt pirates who have been sinking ships without firing a shot. He discovers the pirates possess an amazing new weapon: a submarine that can produce its own oxygen. The submarine in the story was inspired by a real-life submarine that was built in 1864 called the Ictineo II.
The story is reprinted from my novel Owl Dance. If you’ve already read Owl Dance, you should still check out the anthology for the nineteen other great stories. If you haven’t read Owl Dance, this is a great, inexpensive way to sample the novel along with nineteen other great stories. The way I see it, you can’t lose! Go pick up a copy right now at:
- Amazon.com in Kindle format.
- Barnes and Noble as a Nook Book.
- Smashwords.com in pretty much any format.
Tales of the Talisman
The special steampunk issue of Tales of the Talisman is now available.
In this issue, M.E. Brines transports us to the Western Front during the Great War when British soldiers must confront a new menace—a giant, steam-powered German soldier. Jonathan H. Self introduces us to Albion, a secret agent for the Empire. What happens when agents from the other side discover her true identity and threaten her family? Douglas Empringham takes us to the distant past and shows us a clockwork marvel, an amazing dancing doll. Our own art director Laura Givens takes us to San Francisco where Chin Song Ping must find a wedding dress for his beloved or else the world will end. He would have a much easier time if not for the tongs, Teddy Roosevelt and the dragons!
Tales of the Talisman is a magazine of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Part of the fun of steampunk is that it encompasses all of these elements. We explore and push the boundaries in this issue, but the one thing we have not done is glued gears on it and called it “steampunk.” You can pick up a copy for yourself at:
Cemetery Dance 66
Cemetery Dance issue 66 is now available featuring my story “The Vrykolakas and the Cobbler’s Wife.”
A vrykolakas is a creature of the night with properties of both a vampire and a wereworlf. My story is set in a small village in Greece in the year 1901. I’m hesitant to say this story is, in fact, a steampunk story. Even though it’s a horror story set during the Victorian age, there’s little in the way of steampunk technology here. Still, I think if you enjoy a good steampunk horror story, you’ll like this one. The issue is available at:
Gaslight Gathering
Gaslight Gathering, Southern California’s first dedicated Steampunk and Victoriana Convention, is coming up May 11-13.
The guest of honor is Kaja Foglio, award winning author of the web comic Girl Genius. I’ll post my schedule here as soon as I have it, but I do know that I’ll be giving my Victorian Astronomy presentation with a few new twists and I’ll be joining Dino Staats to talk about magic and science, and maybe communicate with a few spirits. Of course, I’m happy to sign copies of Owl Dance or Cemetery Dance, or you could just ask me to dance at one of the great concerts! You can learn more about Gaslight Gathering and get tickets at:
David Lee Summers' Web Journal 