Goodreads asked Stephanie R. Sorensen:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Stephanie R. Sorensen Idea: Samurai with dirigibles. I had recently discovered steampunk and wanted to write a fun adventure novel in that genre. (Think Cherie Priest's swashbuckling Clockwork Century Series.) Found most were set in Victorian England or the Weird Wild West, so I wanted to do something new and fresh with the setting. Long ago, I lived and worked in Japan, and realized that many steampunk themes would be fabulous in a 19th century Japanese setting--samurai, their rapid industrial revolution, Meiji restoration upheaval. So I researched and poked around for a while until I stumbled across the true story of a fisherman who returned to isolation-era Japan just in time to teach the Shogun about the Americans. I don't want to spoil the story, but I wove a completely fictional story from that factual spark to create a world of samurai with dirigibles who dramatically alter history.

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