Tag Archives: The Clockwork Legion

Read a Steampunk eBook

Happy Read an Ebook Week! You can find my steampunk novels available now at @Smashwords at a promotional price to help you celebrate. Find my books and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/ebookweek from March 5-11! Because I’m at Wild Wild West Con this weekend, I’m offering my Clockwork Legion novels for just 99 cents apiece. If you’ve ever wanted to explore my steampunk worlds, this is a great time to jump in!

Owl Dance

The year is 1876, Sheriff Ramon Morales of Socorro, New Mexico meets a beguiling woman named Fatemeh Karimi of Persia, escaping oppression in her homeland. When an ancient lifeform called Legion comes to Earth, they are pulled into a series of events that will change the history of the world as we know it. In their journeys, Ramon and Fatemeh encounter mad inventors, dangerous outlaws and pirates. Their resources are Ramon’s fast draw and Fatemeh’s uncanny ability to communicate with owls. The question is, will that be enough to save them when a fleet of dirigibles from Czarist Russia invades the United States?

Richard Harland, author of WorldShaker and Liberator says, “Owl Dance has everything. Airships, owl-ornithopters, a clockwork wolf, a multiple alien entity, a fast-shooting sheriff, a Russian plot to conquer America, and a very sexy, eco-aware, Bahá’í Persian healer-woman – I mean everything! Heaps of fun!”

You can get Owl Dance for just 99 cents today at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1116949

Lightning Wolves

It’s 1877. The Russians have invaded the Pacific Northwest and are advancing into California. New weapons have proven ineffective or dangerously unstable and the one man who can help has disappeared into Apache Country, hunting ghosts. A healer and a former sheriff lead a band into the heart of the invasion to determine what makes the Russian forces so unstoppable while a young inventor attempts to unleash the power of the lightning wolves.

Deby Fredericks, author of The Seven Exalted Orders says, “The Old West as we wish it had been. Full of adventure and crazy inventions but with some honesty about the prejudices and mores of the day. This is as much alternate history as adventure tale, with an ethnically diverse cast fighting battles that never were. Appearances by a few historical figures, like Geromino, add spice. There’s a poignant undercurrent on how inventions meant to lift humanity up can draw us into the same old quagmire of ambition and greed, plus an intriguing alien race trying to find its way through First Contact with humans. Nicely done.”

You can get Lightning Wolves for just 99 cents today at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1119716

The Brazen Shark

Pirate captain, inventor, and entrepreneur Onofre Cisneros sweeps his friends Fatemeh and Ramon Morales off to Hawaii for their honeymoon. Once there, a British agent makes Cisneros an offer he can’t refuse and the captain must travel to Japan. Wanting to see more of the world, Ramon and Fatemeh ask to accompany the captain only to find themselves embroiled in a plot by samurai who steal a Russian airship, hoping to overthrow the Japanese emperor.

Robert E. Vardeman author Gateway to Rust and Ruin says, “Airships battling! Samurai fomenting war with Russia! Historical characters and powerfully drawn fictional ones mixing it up with political intrigues make David Lee Summers’ The Brazen Shark a steampunk novel not to be missed. Put it at the top of your reading list. Now!”

You can get The Brazen Shark for just 99 cents today at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1139224

Owl Riders

When Fatemeh Karimi married Ramon Morales, she neglected to share one small detail. She was already betrothed to a merchant named Hamid Farzan. She had no interest in Hamid or an arranged marriage. She wanted to live life on her own terms. Eight years after marrying Ramon, she assumed Hamid had long forgotten about her, as she had him.

Settled in New Orleans, Ramon works as an attorney, Fatemeh owns a pharmacy, and they’re proud parents of a precocious daughter. Out west, Apaches armed with powerful battle wagons have captured Fort Bowie and threaten Tucson. Businessmen with an interest in a peaceful solution ask Ramon to come west and settle the conflict. Meanwhile Hamid arrives in New Orleans and he has not forgotten Fatemeh or her vows to him.

Now, the famed Owl Riders must assemble once again to reunite Ramon and Fatemeh so they can tame the Wild West.

You can get Owl Riders today for just 99 cents at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1148595

Arkham Dreams

In several posts, I’ve mentioned being a Star Trek fan from a very young age. Even before I discovered Star Trek, I was a fan of the Batman television series starring Adam West and Burt Ward. Part of Batman’s appeal in whatever format is the rogue’s gallery of colorful criminals who try to get away with some dastardly deed only to be foiled by the caped crusader and the boy wonder. My favorite villains at the time were the Penguin played by Burgess Meredith and Egghead played by Vincent Price. Nowadays, I’ve come to appreciate Caesar Romero as the Joker and all the talented actresses who played Catwoman.

Over the years, I’ve remained a fan of the Penguin as a character. Some of that, no doubt, is because I still hear Burgess Meredith’s performance whenever I see the character in the comics. I have to admit, I liked the Penguin’s tuxedo. Some of the appeal came from the Penguin’s use of gadgets hidden in umbrellas. As a kid, umbrellas were fairly easy to come by, so it was easy to play the part without many other accessories. I have to admit, the fact that the Penguin was portrayed a bullied, bookish kid in the comics played on my sympathies. In fact one of my favorite Penguin origin stories was “The Killing Peck” written by Alan Grant with art by Sam Kieth. As it turns out, I wrote about the artist just over a year ago, when I reflected on the comic and animated series, The Maxx.

Batman meets the Maxx

I recently learned that in 2018, Sam Kieth returned to both the worlds of The Maxx and Batman in a comic book miniseries called Arkham Dreams. Three issues of the mini-series were released in 2018, then there was a hiatus, and the series was finished at the end of 2020. The Maxx himself is a large, purple-clad homeless superhero. In Arkham Dreams, we find him in Gotham City going back and forth between the real world and the Outback, which is the world of the subconscious, and, as it happens, fertile ground for exploring both the psyche of Batman and many of his nemeses. The story opens with the Maxx among Gotham’s homeless. Batman catches up with him and takes him to Arkham Asylum for treatment. Of course, Arkham is where many of Batman’s rogues gallery are housed when they’re not committing crimes. At Arkham, Batman encounters a new doctor named Disparu who is trying a new treatment on the Penguin. With the Maxx at Arkham, the worlds of Gotham City and the Outback begin to merge and the two heroes must figure out why this happening and whose Outback they’re going into before the world devolves into chaos.

I love it when characters from different universes meet. Part of what made The Maxx great was its quirky sense of humor even as it delved into serious issues against a psychedelic backdrop. These days, Batman is known for its grim and gritty storytelling, but the best stories often include a certain sense of fun. When that sense of fun is taken to an extreme, Batman becomes like the Adam West and Burt Ward TV series. Pull it back just a little and you find a middle ground where the Maxx and Batman work well together. My favorite part of Arkham Dreams is that even though it’s a crossover, it doesn’t forget to continue some of the narrative from the original Maxx series of the 90s and we get a nice continuation of the story of Maxx and his friend Julie Winters even as Batman confronts the psyches of his rogues gallery.

The real joy of a Sam Kieth book is the art, which is in fine form here. There is a fascinating sequence where the Maxx and Batman are going back and forth between the two worlds. In the Outback, they’re on an air whale battling a strange infection that’s hurting the creature. In the real world, they’re trying to release bombs placed by the Joker on an airship. Arkham Dreams is available in a handsome hardcover edition, which includes all five issues of the comic plus a cover gallery.

If you’re in the mood for crossover stories and want to see the time the Clockwork Legion met the Scarlet Order vampires, read the story “Fountains of Blood” in the collection Straight Outta Tombstone available in ebook at: https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Outta-Tombstone-David-Boop-ebook/dp/B071JGTN3H/

Lightning Wolves Update

As I mentioned two weeks ago, Hadrosaur Productions is in the process of releasing updated editions of the Clockwork Legion novels. This week, I’m proud to announce the release of the second edition of book two, Lightning Wolves. Although the cover is much the same as the previous edition, sharp-eyed folks will notice that Laura Givens adjusted the look of Professor Maravilla. He now looks much more like I pictured him in the novels. Lightning Wolves was a top-ten finisher for Best Steampunk Novel of the Year in the 2014 Preditors and Editors Reader’s Poll.

For those unfamiliar with the Clockwork Legion novels, Lightning Wolves takes place a few months after Owl Dance in the year 1877. At the end of the first novel, the United States army had thwarted the Russian assault on Denver, but the Russians still occupied the Pacific Northwest. Now that they have regrouped, the Russians, under the direction of the alien Legion, are advancing into California. New weapons have proven ineffective or dangerously unstable and Professor Maravilla, the one man who can help, has disappeared into Apache Country, hunting ghosts. A healer named Fatemeh Karimi and a former sheriff named Ramon Morales lead a band into the heart of the invasion to determine what makes the Russian forces so unstoppable while a young inventor attempts to unleash the power of the lightning wolves.

As with Owl Dance, this edition is not markedly different from the previous edition because I didn’t want it to deviate from the audiobook read by Edward Mittelstedt, which has not been updated. However, the ebook and print editions have been reformatted.

Neal Wilgus wrote the following in Small Press Review: “David Lee Summers is a talented spinner of pseudo-science adventures with nary a vampire or zombie in sight. This may not be ground-breaking literature but it’s great fun to read and well worth the time spent doing so. Don’t miss it!”

You can pick up the paperback edition of Lightning Wolves at Amazon.com.

The ebook edition is available at Amazon and Smashwords.

Edward Mittelstedt’s reading of Lightning Wolves is available at Audible.com.

As I mentioned in my earlier post about Owl Dance, there will be a brief pause before the updated editions of The Brazen Shark and Owl Riders appear. This will allow me to make more progress on other books I’ve committed to editing. Watch for news about Greg Ballan’s second Hybrid novel, Forced Vengeance, and Lyn McConchie’s collection of weird western tales, The Way-Out, Wild West, soon.

In the meantime, I learned that Comixology’s Independent Comic platform is being folded into Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. Because of that, I had to hustle and create a version of my comic Guinevere and the Stranger according to KDP’s guidelines. Fortunately, because my artist and letterer delivered great, high-resolution files, this wasn’t terribly difficult. The upshot is that you can now get an electronic copy of Guinevere and the Stranger through Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09N9JVMQV/

Of course, you can still purchase print copies of the comic directly from me by visiting https://www.hadrosaur.com/GuinevereStranger.php

Guinevere and the Stranger is an adaptation of a chapter from Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires. The comic book introduces the vampire Roquelaure and shows how he met Queen Guinevere in the years after the fall of Camelot.

Owl Dance Update

I hope my readers in the United States are having a good Thanksgiving weekend. I’m spending the weekend with family and reflecting on those things I’m thankful for. One of the things I’m thankful for has been the opportunity to work with some great publishers and editors over the years, such as Sky Warrior Book Publishing who published my Clockwork Legion steampunk series. Sky Warrior connected me with some great editors, gave me excellent marketing tips, and generally supported my efforts as an author. Still, after some discussion this fall, we decided it was to our mutual advantage for Sky Warrior to return the publishing rights to me. We’re parting ways, but I’m thankful that we’re parting ways as friends.

Owl Dance

The new edition of the first book in the series, published by Hadrosaur Productions, is now available. The new edition hasn’t changed much from the previous one. The paperback edition has a spiffy new layout featuring some cool-looking separators designed by Laura Givens. Laura also remixed the cover slightly to make it a little brighter. I only gave the book a cursory edit, looking for any minor copyedits that might have been missed. Partly that’s because the wonderful audiobook edition read by Edward Mittelstedt is still available and I don’t want to revise the text so the audio and text don’t match. I hope to make the new edition of Lightning Wolves available in about two weeks.

Owl Dance is set in 1876. In the novel, Sheriff Ramon Morales of Socorro, New Mexico meets a beguiling woman named Fatemeh Karimi of Persia, escaping oppression in her homeland. When an ancient lifeform called Legion comes to Earth, they are pulled into a series of events that will change the history of the world as we know it. In their journeys, Ramon and Fatemeh encounter mad inventors, dangerous outlaws and pirates. Their resources are Ramon’s fast draw and Fatemeh’s uncanny ability to communicate with owls. The question is, will that be enough to save them when a fleet of dirigibles from Czarist Russia invades the United States?

Richard Harland, author of some of my favorite steampunk novels, including Worldshaker and Song of the Slums, says, “Owl Dance has everything. Airships, owl-ornithopters, a clockwork wolf, a multiple alien entity, a fast-shooting sheriff, a Russian plot to conquer America, and a very sexy, eco-aware, Bahá’í Persian healer-woman – I mean everything! Heaps of fun!”

If you’ve already read and enjoyed Owl Dance, thank you for your support. If you haven’t discovered the series yet, this is a great time to start. As I say, the new edition of the sequel, Lightning Wolves will go live in about two weeks. After that, it’ll probably be about six weeks before the final two novels are published, since I need to finish some editing and layout work on two new Hadrosaur titles from Greg Ballan and Lyn McConchie.

You can purchase the paperback edition of Owl Dance at Amazon.com.

The ebook edition is available at Amazon.com and Smashwords.

Edward Mittelstedt’s reading of Owl Dance is available at Audible.com.

The book should be appearing at more vendors soon. You can see a book trailer and find all the places where the book is available at http://www.davidleesummers.com/owl_dance.html

The Spirit of Rebellion

This past week, I received my signed copy of the latest Boston Metaphysical Society graphic novel, entitled “The Spirit of Rebellion.” The Boston Metaphysical Society is the brainchild of Madeleine Holly-Rosing and it’s a comic and story series set in an alternate 1895 where there are already rudimentary airships and computers, but where society has not progressed as much as it did in our world. The “Great States of America” are dominated by Great Houses and people in the lower and middle classes exist to serve the upper classes. The stories focus on ex-Pinkerton detective Samuel Hunter, a spirit photographer Caitlin O’Sullivan, and scientist Granville Woods. Together the three confront supernatural mysteries in Boston. Along the way, they encounter such historical figures as Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison.

I first met Madeleine Holly-Rosing a few years ago at Gaslight Gathering in California soon after she started releasing the original six-issue miniseries of The Boston Metaphysical Society as a web comic. In the years since, she’s been quite adept at using Kickstarter to crowdfund new chapters in her steampunk world. “The Spirit of Rebellion” is the latest chapter in that series and is a follow-up to the original six-issue miniseries. This chapter focuses on Caitlin O’Sullivan and the consequences of her actions in the original series. It also moves the action from Boston to Philadelphia, giving more scope to the stories.

Even though “The Spirit of Rebellion” is a sequel, the story is self-contained and gives the reader the backstory needed to follow along. The change of setting also introduces all new characters for our protagonists to get to know and interact with. The story begins with a flashback to Caitlin being thrown out of her mother’s house. In the story’s present, Samuel Hunter takes Caitlin to Philadelphia to find a new place to live. While there, Pinkerton agents recruit Samuel to infiltrate a group of organizing laborers. In the meantime, Caitlin learns more about the extent of her paranormal powers.

This chapter has much of what I’ve come to appreciate about the Boston Metaphysical Society. It has a healthy respect and genuine love for the science of the time. Even though paranormal things happen in the story, they are treated as knowable with a suitable application of science. In earlier chapters, not everyone thinks before they apply their scientific know how, but that does sometimes happen in the real world. What I really like in these comics is the social sensibility, as Holly-Rosing looks at the role of class, race, immigrants, and women through the lens of steampunk to shine some light on where we are today.

You can learn more about the Boston Metaphysical Society and even read the original six-issue miniseries for free at the website http://www.bostonmetaphysicalsociety.com. Of course, you can also learn about my steampunk series with its own share of social sensibility and mad science by visiting http://www.davidleesummers.com/books.html#clockwork_legion.

Women Marshals of the Old West

Marshal Larissa Seaton is a character who appears in my novel The Brazen Shark from the Clockwork Legion steampunk series. Brazen Shark-300x450 She also appears in some of my short stories set in the same universe, including the story “Fountains of Blood” which will be in the upcoming Straight Outta Tombstone anthology. In my world, President Rutherford B. Hayes appoints her to be a U.S. Marshal after her work recovering a lightning gun from Curly Bill Bresnahan in the novel Lightning Wolves. It’s a fair question to look back at history and ask whether it’s realistic to imagine a woman marshal in 1877.

As it turns out, Larissa of my fictional world was only appointed marshal seven years before it happened in real life. phoebe_couzins In 1884, John Couzins was appointed marshal for the Eastern district of Missouri and he appointed his daughter Phoebe as one of his deputies. When John Couzins was killed in 1887, President Grover Cleveland appointed Phoebe interim marshal. However, she only held the position for two months before a man was appointed as her full-time replacement. Not only was Phoebe Couzins the first woman to become a U.S. Marshal, she was the first woman in the United States to get a law degree and the first woman to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis. She was an early supporter of both women’s suffrage and the temperance movement. In later years, she actually renounced both and became an active lobbyist for the American Brewers Association.

There were several notable women deputies marshals with longer careers. ada-carnutt Perhaps the most famous was Ada Carnutt of Oklahoma. In 1893, she arrested nineteen men at the Black and Roger saloon in Oklahoma City for perjury. Shortly before Christmas that same year, she single-handedly arrested two forgers and escorted them to jail. The two heavily armed men supposedly scoffed at being arrested by an unarmed woman, but she pointed to the crowd around and told them she was willing to deputize every one of them to help her. Newspapers of the day noted that after the arrest she went back to her favorite hobby: china painting.

Even before Ada Carnutt, Mrs. F.M. Miller was making a name for herself as a deputy marshal in Paris, Texas. Unlike Ada Carnutt, Mrs. Miller had no problem carrying weapons. According to the November 6, 1891 issue of the Fort Smith Elevator, “The woman carries a pistol buckled around her and has a Winchester strapped to her saddle. She is an expert shot and a superb horsewoman, and brave to the verge of recklessness.” The article also noted that she was a “charming brunette” and wore a sombrero.

So, while true Larissa Seaton would have been the first woman U.S. Marshal in history if she existed, it wouldn’t be long before more brave women would stand alongside her. You can find Marshal Larissa in the following books: