Mike Perschon's Blog, page 4

Lord Kelvin's Machine by James Blaylock

I'm reading my way through the seminal steampunk works of K.W. Jeter, Tim Powers, and James P. Blaylock for a chapter in a forthcoming academic anthology on steampunk. It's meant a re-read of some of the books, and in other cases, a first read. I'd read the short version of Blaylock's "Lord Kelvin's Machine" as it appears in Tachyon's Steampunk anthology, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, but I'd never read the entire novel before.

In their anthology, the Vandermeers speculate that "Lord Kelvin's Machine" may be the "quintessential steampunk story, with its combination of darkness and diabolical invention and cosmic scope" (17). I'm not sure why darkness needs to be present in the quintessential steampunk story, since so much of Blaylock, Jeter, and Powers' seminal steampunk works are whimsical and light-hearted. Cynthia J. Miller and Julie Anne Taddeo make a similar minor error concerning how "dark" these early steampunk works are in their introduction to Steaming into a Victorian Future, calling these early steampunk books "darkly atmospheric novels" in a "London darker and wilder than anything imagined by Dickens" (xv). There's a good deal of night-time dealings in these books, but while Blaylock's Homunculus is filled with animated corpses, it retains Blaylock's signature whimsy. Lord Kelvin's Machine (LKM), however, has far less whimsy than Blaylock's other early steampunk, and so is arguably as dark at points as the Vandermeers indicate, quintessential steampunk notwithstanding. Nevertheless, I agree that the cosmic scope of the novel especially make it a strong candidate for the best of the seminal steampunk offerings, including the works of Moorcock and Priest.

The book is divided into three acts: The first part, "In the Days of the Comet," contains an expanded version of the text from the short story, "Lord Kelvin's Machine" ("LKM"), which originally appeared in Asimov's SF in December of 1985. The expanded first part begins with a new prologue and shifts the original prologue into the body of the first act. (Minor Spoiler Alert!) The new prologue, "Murder in the Seven Dials," tells of the death of Alice St. Ives at the hands of Ignacio Narbondo, Langdon St. Ives' nemesis. The rest of "In the Days of the Comet" reads very much like the original "LKM," concerning St. Ives and Co. racing to stop Narbondo from driving the earth into the path of an oncoming comet using volcanic eruptions while trying to thwart the Royal Society's plan to shift the Earth's poles using Lord Kelvin's machine, save that St. Ives is far more brooding, driven by his wife's death. The original "LKM" reads like most other St. Ives' stories, with Blaylock jumping back and forth from adventure to absurdity. The absurdity of sabotaging Lord Kelvin's device with famished snakes and mice seeking grain stuffed into the machine remains in LKM, but has become muted in the shadow of Alice's death. The first act ends much the same way as it did in "LKM," with Narbondo seemingly drowned in a mountain lake, and Lord Kelvin's machine ruined by the offending snakes and mice: we learn that the unfortunate animals "had rained on Leeds like a Biblical plague" when the Machine exploded (323).

The second part "The Downed Ships: Jack Owlesby's account" is weaker than the other two, mainly because Blaylock shifts to the first-person perspective of Jack Owlesby. Like "LKM," "The Downed Ships" could nearly stand alone as another short work. (Medium Spoiler Alert!) The reader learns of Narbondo's remarkable survival from the mountain lake, witnesses the return of Willis Pule from Homunculus, and is treated to a number of Owlesby's bumbling misadventures; while these are funny enough, Owlesby lacks the same wit and concision that Blaylock's third-person omniscient narrator possesses in Blaylock's other steampunk writing. In short, he's just not as funny. This is a credit to Blaylock, who can clearly write in another voice, not simply transferring all of this narrators' traits to Owlesby.  Nevertheless, the shift weakens the overall product somewhat, and is ultimately unnecessary.

The third part, "The Time Traveler" is really the tour de force of LKM. In it, St. Ives uses the reconstituted core of the Machine to travel through time. (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!) The journeys share a kinship with the time-hopping in Powers' Anubis Gates, with Ives changing himself as he changes the past. I don't know Time Travel in SF well enough to know if this is a first, but the way Ives' memories keep shifting as he changes the past might necessitate giving Blaylock creative credit on the concept for Looper. St. Ives seeks to change the past to save his wife, but in the process ends up saving the young Ignacio Narbondo from Menangitis. This act of compassion changes St. Ives as well, healing the bitter wound Alice's death left festering inside him. partly blaming the tragedy on his own indecision. When he finally succeeds in changing the moment of the past when Alice was murdered, he has changed enough to realize that he cannot remain in that past:

He looked out into the street, where his past-time self lay invisible in the water and muck of the road. You fool, he said in his mind, I earned this, but I've got to give it to you,when all you would have done is botch it utterly. But even as he thought this, he knew the truth--that he wasn't the man now that he had been then. The ghost in the road was in many ways the better of the two of them. Alice didn't deserve the declined copy; what she wanted was the genuine article.
And maybe he could become that article--but not by staying here. He had to go home again, to the future, in order to catch up with himself once more. (458)

This is a beautiful speculative reflection on the nature of identity and potential: St. Ives is no longer the man whose hesitation cost him his wife. He is no longer the man who stood and watched her die. He is another man, a man no longer driven by revenge upon his nemesis, but tempered by compassion, knowing the origins that may have driven Narbondo to the life he lead. The passages where St. Ives visits the fitfully sleeping child Narbondo are beautifully heartbreaking, given what a bastard Blaylock makes Narbondo out to be in Homunculus and more recently, The Aylesford Skull. St. Ives cannot conflate that villain with this child. The moment when he traces the spine for a hump is particularly touching, since it echoes the sort of touch a parent visits upon their own child, checking for injuries. St. Ives changes the past by curing the child's ailment, but more importantly, he changes himself. We often consider ourselves fixed entities, old dogs with an inability for new tricks, but plasticity has revealed that our selves are not nearly so fixed as we once thought. Blaylock's St. Ives, through the fictional novum of time travel, undoes even the fixed nature of the character in a play or novel, as Pierandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author once argued was set, always cursed to play out the same actions. While this is arguably still true of St. Ives in LKM and "LKM," even the existence of two versions of this story undermines the idea of a fixed self, a fixed path, a fixed destiny: as St Ives realizes in-between one of his time traveling jaunts, "he had come back to a different world than he had left" (448). Changing the past through time-travel is not only St. Ives' game, it is Blaylock; he is rewriting St. Ives' past in this novel by giving him a wife. And while we, in the real world, are unable to make such massive changes arbitrarily, we can, like St. Ives, change the world around us through the sort of compassion visited upon Narbondo as a sickly child. It is an act that doesn't change him so much as it changes St. Ives.   

I find this particularly compelling because of how it synthesizes with a challenge I issued to steampunk writers in my Verniana article on Captain Nemo: to take the Captain's example in Mysterious Island of committing anonymous acts of charity as template for a possible steampunk ethos. Rather than railing against Empire or thwarting enemies of the Crown, if steampunk really sees Verne as a narratological guru, than shouldn't steampunk characters and personas seek to do likewise? Nemo welcomes the strangers to his Island and cares for them, a radical act of hospitality. Blaylock makes St. Ives go the extra mile of Christ's beatitudes, loving his enemy, blessing the villain who has persecuted him. This is a far cry from the sort of politicized "punk" ethos that continues to be thrown at the doorstep of the seminal steampunk writers. But before anyone assume I'm endorsing it as some sort of essentialist core to steampunk, think again. Like the time traveling adventurer of Lord Kelvin's Machine, steampunk has changed its own future. That said, while I cannot claim Blaylock as part of a Holy Trinity creating the scriptures of steampunk, I can at least say that I far prefer the path he takes his hero upon to the one writers like Mieville and Moore lead theirs upon.
My references to Lord Kelvin's Machine (novel) are taken from Subterranean Press's The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives. My "read" of the book was via the excellent audiobook. Readers hoping to find the novel in print will be glad to know that Titan Books has released a new edition, with a lovely, albeit narratively incongruous cover.

The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross

I was given a signed advance copy of Kady Cross's The Girl in the Steel Corset when I presented at the Canadian National Steampunk Exhibition in Toronto in 2011. Studying steampunk over the past four years has taught me not to judge books by their cover or imprint, but Harlequin Teen had me expecting something generic and insipid. Consequently, since it wasn't an ARC I'd been sent with the express purpose of reviewing, and because I never lack for romance and erotica reading to fill the February schedule, I left Girl in the Steel Corset on the shelf. I picked it up as my nightly reading to my wife (a tradition we started with Harry Potter over a decade ago) in the lull between books four and five of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate. My low expectations were exceeded in the first chapter, so I adjusted them. Those expectations were exceeded, followed by repeated adjustments, until I can say, without reservation, that Girl in the Steel Corset stands among the best of romantic steampunk adventure, YA or otherwise. In short, don't judge this book by its lovely cover. At no point in reading Girl in the Steel Corset have I felt like I was reading Chick-Lit for Teens. The only teen reference that kept coming to mind was DC comics' The New Teen Titans in the 1980s, when George Perez was illustrating it, or X-men from the same period,  done steampunk style. Once again, as with Seleste deLaney's Badlands, I had some burning questions, and Kady Cross was kind enough to take time out of her busy writing schedule to talk to me about the first book in The Steampunk Chronicles.

Mike Perschon: Were you consciously creating a steampunked Super Team when you went about writing Girl in the Steel Corset? What, if any, were your comic book inspirations here?

Kady Cross: I pitched the series as 'Teen X-Men meets League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,' minus the extreme violence. I started reading X-Men when I was... oh, seven or eight? I remember the first time I saw Dark Phoenix! I remember reading X-Men, the Age of Apocalypse, especially with Chris Bacholo's style, Sandman, Shade the Changing Man, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen...I don't read comics much these days, but I still love them. I was a little kid in the 70s, but I watched Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, those awful live action Superman and Captain America shows, The Greatest American Hero... When friends would play 'pretend' I always wanted to be Jean Grey or Ororo. My uncle used to call me Jamie Summers.

Mike Perschon: I often played as the Six Million Dollar Man, and I know that generation of TV shows well. You seem to have created a steampunk version of Steve Austin in Sam. Not the Steve Austin as played by Lee Majors, who always seemed pretty content to have been brought back from the dead via technology, but the Steve Austin of the original Cyborg novel Martin Caidin, where Austin is angry and resentful to the point of attempted suicide about his bionic second life. Sam's angst and his fight with Finley was what got me thinking Teen Titans, since DC's Cyborg is another example of a character whose life is saved by technological prosthetics which he ends up having mixed feelings about.

Kady Cross: Oh my God! You totally figured out my basis for Sam! Actually, in the Kate Cross romances I've done for Signet I set each hero up as homages to Steve Austin, Wolverine and Han Solo! You are also right with the 'Cyborg' reference. Plus, I just love the conflict that comes from man vs machine -- something you'll see more of in #3 and definitely in #4. I think Sam is finally coming to terms with what he is, and that it doesn't make him a monster.

Mike Perschon: I'm interested in knowing how much of this is a fully aware inspiration, or just years of having this as the playtime foundation of a child. I know that a number of fictions I played as a child are fully formed in my mind.

Kady Cross: I have to think that there is some of that childhood play in my work. The heroes I loved then definitely make up the heroes I write now. Han Solo, Steve Austin, Jamie Summers, Wonder Woman, Jean Grey, Ororo Monroe, Wolverine, Gambit. I can't write a character that doesn't have at least a bit of sarcasm or smart-ass about them. And I find it next to impossible to write a weak woman -- not emotionally, but physically.

Mike Perschon: It says you learned one of the foundational concepts of writing, I suppose - crisis and contrivance! Writers contrive crises for their characters - even the most realistic writers. It isn't just the ones riffing off SF and comic books. Even though I've been doing a yearly focus on romance at my blog, I'm still really new to the genre as a whole. My specialization is speculative literature. So I expect an SF or fantasy novel to run 400 pages, but I'd not expected that in a Harlequin. The stereotyped image of the Harlequin romance is the slim little paperback with the formula plot. How is it that your romance, one specifically targeted to teens no less, is so long? Is this the result of the mash-up of romance and SF, with the SF element filling out the pages the romance doesn't occupy and vice versa, or am I just talking like the neophyte I am?

Kady Cross: The books you are thinking of are the Harlequin romances that are called 'category' books. They'll have titles such as "Harlequin Presents" or "Harlequin American" or "Harlequin Intrigue" -- that sets them up as a particular category. Those books are usually around 70k in word count (I think), and they are the same as other Harlequin books in that readers know what kind of story they will get when they pick them up. It's actually kind of ingenious because the brand is so identifiable. But, Harlequin does other stuff as well. They also own Mira, which is a big imprint. And they own the imprint that publishes the Mac Bolan books. Now, to add to the confusion, each 'category' has its own set of editorial staff, though editors can edit for all lines.
Now, Harlequin Teen is a imprint owned by Harlequin, but it's not really under the romance umbrella at all. It is its own division, for lack of better term. So, it was set up to be more like a traditional YA press. So, the books have different levels of romance, angst, etc. And the word count varies as well.
So, to answer your question - my books are long because the teen line is not modeled after the typical Harlequin category imprints.

Mike Perschon: How about the difficulty of writing within the rumored strict guidelines of Harlequin? I've been told by romance writers that this is very challenging, contrary to the popular opinion so many people have that "they could write a formula romance, no problem." Are those parameters set for you? Were there restrictions on the world you could build as a Teen Harlequin writer?

Kady Cross: Yes, writing for Harlequin's lines can pay very well and allow an author to write a ton of books, but there are parameters for the categories. The reader wants a particular thing and you have to deliver. Romance is sort of like that because you HAVE to have that happy ending. I find some houses very strict in what they want. I used to write for Avon but I ended up leaving because I didn't want to write what they wanted -- what they thought they could sell. They do very well with Regency romance, but I was done with all that.
Harlequin Teen has never told me I couldn't do something. That's what's great about writing YA -- anything goes. Fiction is becoming more like that again, romance as well. I know a lot of people are scared of the industry right now, but I think it's a grand time to be a writer. These self-pubs that are doing so well are forcing publishers to take chances they wouldn't have normally taken.

Mike Perschon: I recently talked with Seleste deLaney, the author of Badlands, about the speed with which characters fall in love in romance. It's like the hyperbolized action of Mac Bolan (and while it was a surprise that Harlequin has that imprint, it makes sense - again, those books follow a very tight formula!) translated into the world of attraction rather than violence. Yet your characters are very slow burn in their romantic tension. Is that something endemic to YA romance, or is this a Kady Cross propensity?

Kady Cross: I so appreciate that you enjoyed the slow build to romance. I didn't think it made sense for them to be madly in love by the end of the book. Or even by the end of Book 2, Girl in the Clockwork Collar, though it's building. The physical side of their attraction comes out more in Book 3, and so by the events of Book 4 they will be so involved that Finley will risk her life to bring Griffin back. That's the end of the spoilers!


Mike Perschon: Those are pretty serious spoilers!
I'm sure you've been asked this before, but I'm curious for myself. Was there anything of Ali Larter as Niki Sanders on Heroes that ended up in the construction of Finley Jayne? Or was this a case of having similar starting points? After all the Incredible Hulk was Stan Lee's answer to Jekyll and Hyde, and Niki Sanders was the Hulk for Heroes. I should add that I really appreciated how you made Finley's father's story the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson writing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, rather than making her the daughter of Jekyll. Much as I appreciate recursive fantasy, I like that you're creating your universe whole cloth.

Kady Cross: I didn't have Ally's character from Heroes in mind for Finley. She was definitely all Jekyll and Hyde for me. The Hulk has never been a favorite of mine, so I didn't think of that all. However, I will admit that there's a little Batman in Griffin.

Mike Perschon: What has the response been from the steampunk community, or is the fan-base for Girl in the Steel Corset broader than that? I think this first outing in this series is great, and refused to skim-read it, because I enjoyed it so much.

Kady Cross: As for the community... Well, the Steampunk folks have been great, except for a couple of not-worth-mentioning exceptions. However, I've gotten tons of notes from people who say that Steel Corset was their first Steampunk book. Plus, I get people who read Cassandra Clare's books first. So, I'd hazard a guess that maybe 30% of my readership is from within the Steampunk community -- if that.

Mike Perschon: Well, I love the book, and if most of your readers are outside the steampunk scene, all the better. Steampunk shouldn't be a genre ghetto, and writers and readers from outside the so-called scene are what keeps it fresh. Readers interested in the Steampunk Chronicles series should know that in addition to Girl in the Clockwork Collar, Kady Cross has the third book, Girl with the Iron Touch, coming out this May.

Badlands by Seleste DeLaney

I haven't done a proper interview with a writer here at Steampunk Scholar since my chat with Arthur Slade, author of The Hunchback Assignments in fall of 2010. But even that was an anomaly, with the only other interview I've done at Steampunk Scholar being Rudy Rucker in 2009. By the fall of 2009, I knew that the focus of this blog was going to be steampunk books, and reviews were my primary way of achieving that.

In the wake of finishing my dissertation, I've had trouble returning to the blog in earnest, all the while piling up steampunk reading without review. I haven't been an idle reader, just an idle blogger. But as I was reading Badlands by Seleste deLaney, I found myself with questions and observations begging to be submitted to the author herself. As I switched from Badlands to Kady Cross's The Girl in the Steel Corset, more questions leapt to mind. Granted, I could ruminate on my own answers to these questions, but some were related to inspiration and industry, and in the case of deLaney, I knew I would only be speculating. Unlike many steampunk writers, deLaney's approach to Badlands was not grounded in nineteenth century literature or history. As I found out, it was grounded in the desire to write a damn fine space western, inspired by a Luis Royo painting, and realized through a competition for steampunk romance. Sometimes, it pays to ask the author what they were up to.

Mike Perschon: While I realize this is supposed to be the question I close with, I have to ask about a sequel to Badlands, given that I was reading Badlands on my iPad Kindle app, and I checked to see my position in the book. I was thinking, "Wow, this is really gearing up, I must be around the halfway point by now," but I was actually very near the end. So my first question must be, is there a sequel in the works? Are we going to see more of the world of Badlands?

Seleste deLaney: Yes, there is a sequel! It actually comes out at the end of April, and it's already up on Amazon and Barnes & Noble for pre-order. It's called Clockwork Mafia, and it takes off about six months after the end of Badlands. The series is planned for four books (length may vary as Clockwork Mafia is nearly twice as long as Badlands), with each book revolving around one of the four main women (and their love interests, of course). The last two are not under contract yet, so I have zero information on release.


Mike: Connected to that question, I'm wondering about the process of world-building for you. While you make a few quick nods to real-world history, most of the world of Badlands could have been a fully secondary or other world, like Middle-Earth, or Arrakis. Why did you forego the full-fantasy sandbox in favour of a an alternate history?

Seleste: Badlands started out as a space western with all these crazy planets that had each undergone their own mini-evolution of humans and... it sucked. I wrote it for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) 2009 and I shelved it as soon as I hit my 50,000 words because I hated it so much. Literally the only bit that worked for me was the core story, everything else felt wrong. Then a call came out for steampunk romance novellas and a friend poked me about doing something for it. I immediately went back to that story of the warrior woman on the desert planet and the captain of the trading ship that rescues her. Suddenly everything that didn't work as a space western I could see working perfectly on the smaller, more intimate scale of an old west steampunk. From there, I took a look at my crew, did some shuffling around (and re-naming), and things just started falling into place with slavery and the gold rush.

Mike: I hear what you're saying about taking the space opera/western and moving it to a single planet. When I was working on my steampunk Star Wars article, I kept thinking about how interesting it would be to reimagine the original Star Wars trilogy as a steampunk story taking place on one planet. Hoth simply becomes the North or South Pole - Tattooine is some desert, a distant land that the Colonial Empire hasn't yet reached. And I think that was what I sensed about your approach to world-building here. It felt so utterly out-of-this-world, that I kept forgetting it was taking place in a version of America. That's not a bad thing - I'm not one of those steampunk fans who demands historical fidelity. That's usually last on my list of requirements for good steampunk. It can add to the enjoyment, but sometimes historical verisimilitude just gets in the way of a good story.

Seleste: I totally agree with the Star Wars idea! Love that. Honestly, one of the things I love about steampunk is that freedom to twist history. Too much history frankly bores me.

Mike: Is that a devil-may-care attitude about being true to real-world history? I know some steampunk fans are hardcore about there being serious, in-depth history in their steampunk. 

Seleste: I have a "get the reader engaged" attitude. I find in-depth history boring, so I snag bits and pieces to use, but I don't get bogged down in it (which is also why I don't write straight historical). For example, Clockwork Mafia...at the time the book takes place, the mafia was still most commonly known as the Black Hand, but most readers wouldn't know that. Readers get mafia. I don't have to bog down the pacing to explain it.

Mike: In some ways, you have a "get the reader engaged" attitude to the love story as well. Is the accelerated "loins a-quiver" response to the object of desire in a romance novel the romance genre's equivalent to action heroes kicking ass effortlessly?
Seleste: The "loins-a-quiver" response is fairly common in romance. That instant attraction and spark and "oh-shit-who-is-this-person?" is part of the fairy tale aspect of romance. Because of the limited time frame of most romance novels (and definitely of my Badlands stories), the insta-attraction is a necessity unless the characters have known each other for a while. I will say, however, that if I am allowed to take the series where I plan, every romance will be different in tone and scope.

Mike: I like that term, "insta-attraction." That's definitely the allure of romance, even for guys, though I'm sure few will admit it. The NaNoWriMo origin of Badlands answers another question I had concerning length. As a novella, Badlands rushes along at a breakneck pace, which works well for both the action and romance, but leaves readers interested in the world you've built feeling a bit let down.

Seleste: Yes, the novella length did involve very minimal information on the world. The funny part is I tried to inject more into Clockwork Mafia in a couple places, but it slowed the narrative too much and was cut by my editor. One section of it though will be on my website later because I know it's a question readers have about the world and the men who are part of Badlands' society. So, basically, I'm more than happy to answer questions about the world, but a lot of things don't make it into the books because we don't want to lose the adventure-style pacing.

Mike: I love the idea of using material that doesn't make the book at your website. That's a great way to expand the world without losing narrative pace. I'm keen on it as well, since I'm interested in the cultures you've built up, especially given the "warrior woman" Ever's heritage. How does someone with that background end up fighting as part of an elite warrior society?

Seleste: Ever. Dear, wonderful, messed-up Ever. One of the thing about patriarchal societies that has always dumbfounded me is the idea of "the first born son." First born prince becomes king. Second born (if I recall in many societies) is supposed to become clergy. I have no idea what happens to the younger ones. But there is this mindset of who does what just based on their birth order that makes no sense to me. When I saw the women laying claim to the Badlands and "taming" it, that was one change I thought was more female-minded. People do the job they're suited to, with minimal care to birth order or even family. Ever was born an old soul, very angry with the world, but very very good with weapons. She'd be ill-suited to be a midwife or a cook or... pretty much anything other than a warrior. So, in the world of the Badlands, that's what she was free to become.

Mike: She's a very easy character to visualize, and not for the obvious reason a male might find it easy to visualize a woman who runs around topless for the first half of the book, though it is about her naked torso: the tattoos. I don't think Ever fits the standard steampunk heroine in her initial outfit, or lack thereof!

Seleste:Badlands was actually inspired by a painting by Luis Royo called "The Wait." A friend showed it to me a long time ago and I knew I had to write the story of the woman in the painting. And honestly, switching that from space western to steampunk was what got me started. There’s a long history of tattooed warriors and I wanted to examine that on a deeper level. You actually find out more about Ever’s tattoos in my favorite scene in Clockwork Mafia. (Oddly, for a romance, my favorite scene is between Henri and Ever, not Henri and her hero.)


Mike: Since Badlands was originally a space western, was the romance between Ever and the captain always an element, or did you add it afterwards? I felt frustrated every time Ever and the Captain were working out their sexual tension, since I absolutely LOVED the opening and wanted more of seeing Ever in her ass-kicking element. Of course, you're writing romance, so that element must be there, and I know from reading reviews on Goodreads that most of your fans loved the whole book, so perhaps I'm just not the target demographic! Still, I have to say, and I hope you don't take this as a criticism, that I'd like to see Seleste deLaney write a steampunk adventure without any pressure to include the Nookie.

Seleste: There was always a romantic element between Ever (the only name that remained from the original draft LOL) and the captain, but it was slower building because they simply had more time. One of the things about my writing that some people love and others find infuriating is that I'm a big fan of...mashing things together. A rollicking adventure is awesome, but I like intrigue too. Intrigue's great, but where's the romance? And so on and so forth. So, I tend to write things like (for example) Badlands--a steampunk-action-adventure-romance. For that series, there will definitely always be romance, but I do have plans (as soon as I finish up a couple series I have going at the moment) for a steampunk-parallel-universe-fairy-tale-adventure.

Mike: That mash-up approach is one of the hallmarks of steampunk.  Did you see what you were doing as steampunk, or did that designation come from others? I only ask because Badlands,while recognizably steampunk in its aesthetic approach at points, is also very much its own thing. As you say, you mash many things up to come up with something that is familiar without being terribly derivative.

The author herself: Speak softly and carry a large gun while wearing a little hat.
Seleste: I saw it as steampunk, but others confirmed the designation for me. You have to understand though, I was introduced to steampunk first via clothes at a convention, then through random conversations on Twitter where all I thought was, "I want to know more." So I went in search of a way for me to understand steampunk. I'm kind of an odd duck in that I could read/watch a ton of things, but there is always a singular entity that defines a genre in my head. For me, that came in the realization that Briscoe County, Jr. was steampunk. Suddenly all that Victorian London and otherworldly stuff didn't matter. BCJ I understood. BCJ I LOVED. So was that straight-up steampunk? Not for the hard-core, narrow-definition people. For me, it is. 

Mike: Okay, given the reference to hard-core, narrow-definition steampunks, combined with your outspoken nature, I'm dying to hear what you'd say to someone on a panel at a steampunk convention who claims that steampunk needs to be political, or serious, in a way that clearly indicates that your work isn't being included in the "club."

Seleste: I'm prone to laughing at people like that. Just as with any genre there are those things that follow all the "rules." I'm much more Pirates of the Caribbean in my way of thinking: "They're more like guidelines."

Mike: Do you have a definition for steampunk?

Seleste: For me, steampunk needs three things (and I'm flexible here even): gadgets, corsets, and the punk angle (some sort of bucking against the system/sticking it to the man/undermining political...blah blah blah) In it's own way, my stuff is very political, but it's not very serious. It's commentary about the state of women's rights and the amount of decay in the political world as we know it. But if I just wanted to write about that, I'd blog about it and fall asleep at my keyboard. (It's great for other people, I'm sure. It's just not my thing.) I'd rather wrap that up in adventure and romance, and I'm not afraid to tell that to people.

Mike: What steampunk have you read, and what titles are among your faves?

Seleste: Most of the steampunk I've read has been of the romance and YA variety. I really enjoyed Scott Westerfeld's YA series, and I love the Steampunk Chronicles by Kady Cross. And of course I have Cherie Priest and Gail Carriger and Delilah Dawson and... LOL there's a lot. If I had to pick a favorite though? Steampunk Chronicles. I'm so excited for book 3 that I get all giddy thinking about it.

Mike: That's encouraging, since Kady is up next here at the blog! She's already been really generous with her responses to my questions.

Seleste: Kady Cross (and all her other names--that's just the one that she is in my head) was incredibly sweet every time I've spoken with her--online or in person. I could go on and on with the awesome authors I've met at events. Gail Carriger was incredibly friendly. Suzanne Lazear... I adore her. Karina Cooper is fantastic. But...as I said above, there are always exceptions, and I've met a few of them too. The point you mentioned about people defining steampunk (narrowly) makes a difference. So, I don't necessarily think there is some huge sweeping camaraderie among all authors of steampunk. When you narrow that field to steampunk romance authors, I think there's more of a "team" attitude. Most of us know what it's like to be the odd man out in those "serious steampunk" discussions, so we're very supportive of each other in general.

Mike: There's an anecdote about you writing a book at age 12 in your bio in Badlands.  I submitted an application to a writer's college about that age, so I'm always interested to know what spurred people to start writing, and who inspires them to keep doing it.

Seleste: At age 12? I don't remember. LOL I know Walter Farley was an inspiration earlier than that, and around age 12 was when he responded to a fan letter I wrote for a class project. (He's also one of the reasons I love horseback riding.) The thing is, my writing career was...put on hold shortly after that because I was convinced by family that I needed to "get serious about my future." So I did. Writing took a backseat and I went out and got a degree in chemistry. I was teaching high school and wrote a sample paper for one of my classes to be able to reference if they were stuck. After reading it, one of my students asked me why I wasn't a writer. That was truly the thing that inspired me to try again (many) years later once I was staying home with my kids. One of these days, I'll dedicate a book to her (and stalk her online for an address so I can send her a copy). From there, my biggest inspiration was Kelley Armstrong. I joined the online writing group on her forums and the people there whipped me into shape. Kelley herself actually pushed me to attend my first Romantic Times convention and introduced me to her agent. She's been an amazing mentor and support. I will never be able to thank her enough.

Mike: Finally, beyond the forthcoming sequel to Badlands, is there anything else we should be watching out for from Seleste deLaney?

Seleste: Remember how I said I liked to mash things together? I also like to (need to) mix up what I write--it helps keep my mind fresh for the next project so I don't burn out on one genre. To that end, I have an urban fantasy series called Blood Kissed. The first book, Kiss of Death, is out now as well as two prequel short stories, and the second novel, Kiss of Life, should be out before the end of the year. I also do paranormal romance short stories for Evernight Publishing. And I have a couple contemporary romances coming this fall from Entangled Publishing. I think Gaming for Keeps might be of interest to some of your readers. It takes place at a sci-fi convention and involves a super-secret government agency called TRAIT. I usually tell people if they put Chuck and Leverage in a blender and add a little more romance, that series (For Keeps) would be what came out. I'm really excited to see people's reactions to it.