Wild Wild West Con 11

This weekend, Wild Wild West Con returns! It will be held from March 9-12 at Casino Del Sol in Tucson, Arizona. Wild Wild West Steampunk Convention (WWWC) is the largest Western-style Steampunk Convention in the United States. I’ve been excited to be part of the convention since it started in 2011. With a splendid lineup of Special Guests, entertainers, panels and games, the convention organizers are planning an amazing event unlike any other. This is a great event for people who are new to Steampunk. You are not required to wear costumes or specific attire, but you are always welcome to come dressed to the nines! You can get detailed information about the convention at https://wildwestcon.com

Among this year’s Special Guests are K.W. Jeter, Bruce Rosenbaum, Tayliss Forge, Madame Askew and the Grand Arbiter. K.W. Jeter is the author of the steampunk classics Morlock Knights and Infernal Devices and also known as the man who first coined the term Steampunk back in 1987. Bruce Rosenbaum has been dubbed the Steampunk Guru by the Wall Street Journal and Steampunk Evangelist by Wired Magazine. Bruce’s functional Steampunk artwork has been featured in the Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Architectural Digest, CNN, and NPR. Tayliss Forge is a non-binary designer, maker, and model located in Orange County, California. They are full-time bridal seamstress who specializes in full-body alterations, beading, repairs, custom sleeves, and custom accessories. Madame Askew is a time-traveling tea aficionado, obsessed with cats, fashion, and the proper uses for headgear. The Grand Arbiter is the highest authority on compliments, wit, and Tea-based Equity. Visit the Wild West Con website to learn more about these and other special guests.

I’m also delighted to say that several author friends will be on panels at Wild Wild West Con this year, including Tamsin Silver, David Boop, Diesel Jester, Chief Inspector Erasumus Drake, and Sparky McTrowell.

Here’s my schedule for the convention:

Friday, March 10

• 2:30-3:30pm – Ballroom G – Space Western vs Weird Western – Have Raygun will Travel? Both weird westerns and space westerns have seen growth over the last decade or so. Are they the same thing? Can Cowboys & Aliens and Firefly truly be cut from the same cloth? Come here from authors who have crafted such tales of western expansion from the Old West to the Final Frontier. David Boop will be on the panel with me.
• 9:30-10:30pm – Ballroom H – Authors of Steampunk. Get to know some of the authors who have written in the genre along with a friendly Q&A about the industry. K.W. Jeter, Diesel Jester, and David Boop are on the panel with me.

Saturday, March 11

• 1:00-2:00pm – Ballroom F – Mars: A Land Across the Aether. I discuss the history of how Mars went from being a point of light in the sky to a place that writers would explore with particular attention to Arizona’s place in the story.
• 2:30-3:30pm – Salon A – Drake & McTrowell’s Hot Potato School of Writing™ with CI Erasmus Drake and Dr. Sparky McTrowell. Once again, I will be one of the “celebrity” author guests in this fun exercise in spontaneous story creation.
• 4:00-5:00pm – Ballroom G – The Many Flavors of Punk. CI Erasmus Drake, Diesel Jester and I will look at everything from steampunk to dieselpunk to atompunk and explore what these worlds have in common and what makes them unique. Is it just the trappings and the time period?

Sunday, March 12

• 4:00-5:00pm – Ballroom I&J – Writing the Roaring 20s. Diesel Jester, Dr. Sparky McTrowell and I will talk about the Roaring 20s. What does steampunk set in the 20th century look like? What kinds of stories can be told? What makes this era different from the more traditional Victorian era of steampunk?

When I’m not on panels or giving presentations, you will be able to find me in the vendor’s hall at space Ae02. I will have all my books along with all the books published by Hadrosaur Productions. Be sure to drop by and say hello!

Remembering David B. Riley

I was saddened to learn last week that my friend and long-time Hadrosaur Productions contributor David B. Riley passed away unexpectedly at the beginning of the month. I first discovered David’s work when he submitted his story “The Brother” for publication in Hadrosaur Tales 2 way back in 1997. It told the story of a vampire monk, an idea I loved and I remember being pulled in by his clean, unpretentious prose.

Although David’s first submission to me involved a vampire monk, he soon started submitting stories featuring the character I believe will be his most enduring, Miles O’Malley. Miles was a down-on-his-luck cowboy in the old west who managed to get caught up in a feud between Nick Mephistopheles (AKA Satan) and Ah Puch, Mayan god of death. These stories were a lot of fun and David ultimately turned them into a novel called The Two Devils. I edited the first edition for LBF Books.

David continued to submit to me over the run of Hadrosaur Tales and his work appeared in many issues of Tales of the Talisman starting with issue 2 of that journal. From the time David first started submitting to me, I became aware of his interest in weird westerns. I knew he ran a zine called Trails: Intriguing Stories of the Wild West. I submitted a couple of stories and I was pleased when David liked them enough to publish them. This zine was just a few sheets of paper stapled together. In 2006, he decided to put together a nice, perfect bound anthology of the same name. I was delighted to appear in the anthology alongside such friends as Uncle River and Robert E. Vardeman. Not only did that prove a nice anthology to appear in, that was the first appearance of my characters Ramon Morales and Fatemeh Karimi who would headline my Clockwork Legion novels.

Although I had been corresponding with David since 1997, I first met him in person at MileHiCon in Denver, Colorado. I think that would have been in 2002. We would see each other at many conventions after that. Often we would be on panels together discussing the weird west, how the weird west intersected with steampunk, or a topic of common historical interest such as observations of Mars in the nineteenth century. David and I didn’t always agree on panels or in personal conversations, but I think we both came away from our conversations with something to think about and we took those opinions to heart.

I appeared in a few other books David edited, including Six-Guns Straight From Hell. David continued to write stories featuring characters he introduced in his Miles O’Malley Stories. I published two of his novellas in this world. One is Fallen Angel, which features Miles and the Angel Mabel. I also published his novella “The Venerable Travels of Ling Fung” as part of the collection Legends of the Dragon Cowboys.

• 

• 

After David retired from working in the hotel business, he moved to Tucson, Arizona. I was pleased to give him and his family a tour of Kitt Peak. Also, David became a regular speaker at Wild Wild West Con. While passing through Tucson one time, I decided to stop at a movie theater to see the latest remake of The Magnificent Seven. I was surprised when David came in. He joined me and we had fun discussing the movie afterward. I was especially gratified when David Boop, who also appeared in Tales of the Talisman and Six-Guns Straight From Hell dedicated the collection Straight Outta Dodge City to both David and me.

I’ll miss David and our discussions about the weird west. I’ll miss his comments on this blog. If you haven’t discovered his writing, I encourage you to look him up on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever you buy books.

Bombshells

While visiting Bisbee, Arizona a couple of weeks ago, I found a fun figurine of Batgirl with something of a steampunk makeover in a boutique called Va Voom! I walked around the shop two or three times and finally decided she had to come home with me. I also decided I had to know whether she had a formal appearance in the comics. As it turns out, she did. She was the star of DC’s Bombshells Annual #1.

For those not familiar with DC’s Bombshells, the comic was set during an alternate World War II and imagines that many of the DC Universe’s female superheroes have gathered together to fight for the Allied cause. Among the Bombshells are familiar heroines such as Wonder Woman and Supergirl. Batwoman, who I remember discovering in reprints of vintage Batman comics, also takes a major role here. The team is spearheaded by Amanda Waller, who readers of Suicide Squad are sure to recognize. I’m sad to say the comic has ceased publication, but the last three years are widely available in collected graphic novels both in print and ebook editions.

The Batgirl story in this world actually opens in the swamps of Louisiana during 1941. Killer Croc has gone in search of the Batgirl of the swamps and he succeeds. What’s more, he discovers she’s a vampire! The action moves to West Point in 1941 where Amanda Waller is talking to a new recruit named Francine Charles. Waller sends Charles on a mission to recruit Batgirl to the Bombshells. When she asks why, Waller tells her Batgirl’s story.

We learn that Barbara Gourdon was a French girl living during World War I who loved tinkering with machinery. Her mother has fields of lavender and her father is a police officer. He buys her an airplane and she learns to fly. She ultimately falls in love, but disappears when she must save her lover. It’s up to Francine Charles to learn how the ace pilot became a vampire and to see if that vampire can be recruited to the Bombshells.

At the beginning of the summer, I talked about “superhero fatigue.” In that case, I spoke primarily of finding nothing but superhero movies at the cinema. One place I rarely suffer superhero fatigue is in my local comic shop. There are many fun and innovative titles on the shelves and I see the superheroes I grew up with being taken in new and interesting directions. Superhero fatigue in the movies has much to do with the fact that we’re seeing stuff that happened 20 years ago or more in the comic pages!

I love the idea of a feminist superhero team like the Bombshells. After reading Annual #1, I picked up the entire first year of collected stories and was impressed by the writing and the artwork. I love the exploration of characters who received too little page time back when I read comics more regularly many years ago. In the Batgirl comic in particular, I liked how they gave her a lavender bat costume like she had in the Adam West series, but also created a good reason for her to have that costume.

I also liked how Batgirl took a dark turn and became a vampire. The opening scenes in the Louisiana swamps with Killer Croc reminded me not a little of Marcella DuBois’s debut in my own novel Vampires of the Scarlet Order. What’s more, Marcella is one of my own characters who I’ve explored in an alternate timeline. That version of Marcella appears in Straight Outta Tombstone which has just appeared in a nifty trade paperback edition. I have a feeling Marcella would be right at home with Amanda Waller’s Bombshells

You can learn more about Vampires of the Scarlet Order at http://www.davidleesummers.com/VSO.html

You can learn more about Straight Outta Tombstone at https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Outta-Tombstone-David-Boop/dp/1481483498/

Chronicles of the Planeswalkers

This week, several of us who contributed to the anthology Straight Outta Tombstone continued our conversation with David Afsharirad at the Baen Podcast. I’m there along with editor David Boop and fellow authors Robert E. Vardeman, Nicole Givens Kurtz, and Peter J. Wacks. In this week’s installment, we discuss our stories and what inspired them. You can download and listen to the podcast at: http://www.baen.com/podcastfiles/mp3/baen-free-radio-hour-2017-07-21-Tombstone-2-Feldspar.mp3

This week I continue my series on books I edited for LBF Books a decade ago with a book I didn’t edit, Chronicles of the Planeswalkers, Part Zero by B.T. Robertson. Although I didn’t edit this book, I enjoyed the series and I took over as editor with the second book, Chronicles of the Planeswalkers, Part One: Alliances. Like the other books I’ve featured in this series, I have a stock of the books available and I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the series’ first book.

The first book tells the story of a world plagued by an unseen evil and growing chaos, where a Krayn elf will search for his destiny. Aerinas, son of Tristandor, journeys to lands far beyond those he has ever traveled before. A group of elves, giants, men, and other beings must uncover the mystery locked within the secrets of the Planes. Aerinas and the others alike face challenges that will affect them physically, emotionally, and psychologically, and ultimately they face an enemy that taunts them from beyond the borders of the physical realm.

The second book in the series is Chronicles of the Planeswalkers, Part One: Alliances.
This is the first one I edited. New York Bestselling Times author David Farland said, “B.T. Robertson’s Planeswalker series provides wondrous, exciting adventure that every fantasy reader will love.”

In Alliances, an unlikely band of elves led by a wizard formerly of the Order of Light treks across foreign lands and seeks a mysterious mirror hidden within the ruins of El-Caras, the place where the final battle between good and evil took place during the Calaridis Wars many years before. They find great evil stirring, and a plan to shatter the fragile peace. Now, alliances will be formed and battle lines drawn across the plane of Vaalüna. Aerinas, a rebellious Krayn elf, continues to discover the power of the magic inside him, but after finding an ancient text penned by a long-dead wizard it becomes clear that he must grow up and face his worst fears, or perish.

I was honored that B.T. Robertson dedicated the third book in the series to me. In Chronicles of the Planeswalkers, Part Final: Alignment the Planar Alignment is at hand and a powerful being named Hydrais awaits his return from banishment on the Dark Plane of Zamas. Meanwhile, on the Plane of Vaalüna, Aerinas, along with his friends and allies, struggle to prevent Hydrais’ return. To do so, they must battle the forces of evil while Aerinas confronts truths about himself and the cold, calculating intelligence that dominates all life and destiny.

David Farland continued his praise of the series saying, “With each book in the Planeswalker series, B.T. Robertson writes with greater power and ease. With this installment, he proves himself to be a master of the craft, on par with the best fantasy writers of the day.”

This is an awesome series and here’s a little secret. I only have one complete set of the series available for sale and each book is half off the cover price. First come, first served! To order copies, visit http://www.hadrosaur.com/bookstore.html#cotp-zero