Tag: Epiphany Club

Just Like Fairy Tales – a steampunk short story

“This is crazy,” Dirk said, hacking away the brambles that trailed between the statues. Life-sized courtiers, servants, and guards stood stiff and silent, recreations of humanity with enamel skin over brass flesh. “Who builds a clockwork palace just to let it get overgrown?”

His words, accompanied by a steady ticking of gears, echoed back from the vaulted ceiling on which figures from ancient myth had been painted, their faces concealed by centuries of cobwebs. Dirk wanted to wipe those cobwebs away and see the long-lost art underneath, but not as much as he wanted to see these statues in action. A thrill ran through him at the prospect of wonders no-one else had witnessed.

“Becoming overgrown was the point,” Sir Timothy Blaze-Simms said. “To embody the very essence of the fairy tale – a sleeping kingdom buried beneath the wild. Count Volkengrad meant to return after a decade and awake his porcelain princess with a kiss.”

With a click of gears, Blaze-Simms finished winding the mechanism inside a guard captain. He drew out the key, walked to the woodworm-riddled remnants of a bed, and knelt beside the figure who lay there, pale and dust-covered amid the rotten sheets. He brushed the dust from her neck, thrust the key into a hole by the collar bone, and started to wind.

“Then why’s she still here?” Dirk asked, dragging the last of the trailing plants away.

“Volkengrad caught a chill reenacting the emperor’s new clothes, came down with a fever and died. His descendants decided it was best to just fence off his fairy tale forest and pretend it never happened.”

Blaze-Simms withdrew the key from the automaton and stepped back.

“Now what?” Dirk asked, rubbing his hands together.

Blaze-Simms shrugged. “She should be waking up.”

“Don’t you need to kiss her?”

“I don’t see how saliva could help in any mechanical way.”

But the princess lay sleeping still, the intricate plates of her face inert.

Dirk leaned in and ran a hand across a cold cheek. She really was beautiful, the most perfect princess art could create.

“You do know that magic isn’t real, don’t you?” Blaze-Simms asked. “Kissing her won’t break some spell. One of the gears has probably just rusted in place.”

If Dirk knew one thing in life, it was that there were limits to scientific understanding. Maybe there was some kissing-based mechanism here and Blaze-Simms just didn’t know it. If that was what it took to wake the place up, then Dirk was willing to give it a go.

He ran a thumb across the princess’s cold lower lip. The metal gave way, there was a click, and she jerked upright.

Dirk leapt back, almost reaching for his pistol before his rational brain took hold.

“I say!” Blaze-Simms exclaimed. “Well done, old chap!”

Around them, whir of wound springs turned into a rattle of movement. Guards, servants, courtiers, every statue that Blaze-Simms had wound sprang into action, approaching the two adventurers with shuffling, mechanical steps. The statues opened their mouths and a terrible cacophony filled the palace.

“What is that?” Dirk asked, clamping his hands to his ears.

“I think they’re cheering!”

The princess approached Dirk, arms rigidly outstretched, lips parted, her once-beautiful face transformed into an uncanny imitation of human movement.

“No thanks,” he said. “You go find yourself a porcelain prince.”

But she kept moving, grabbing at Dirk’s arms with pinching metal fingers, trying to pull him close.

He backed away but she kept coming. The others were closing in too, surrounding him with a crowd of twitching metal limbs.

“Maybe this wasn’t the best idea,” Blaze-Simms said, glancing around.

“You think?”

“So now what?”

Dirk slammed into the nearest statue, a guard swinging an all too real halberd. The statue fell to the ground with a clang and he leapt over its prostrate form.

“Now we run!”

They dashed through the palace, followed by a cacophony of clattering and clanging. Dirk couldn’t tell if the statues were following, or if they had just fallen in a heap in the main chamber. He didn’t care, as long as he was clear of those strange and stumbling figures.

They emerged from the palace into the forest, where their horses stood tied to a tree. While Dirk looked back, watching for signs of pursuit, Blaze-Simms pulled out a notebook.

“What a marvellous place,” he said. “I wonder if I could replicate it.”

Dirk snatched the notebook and snapped it shut.

“Some things are best left to the imagination,” he said. “Just like fairy tales.”

***

If you’d like more flash fiction then you can sign up to my mailing list, where you’ll get a free ebook of steampunk short stories and a flash story straight to your inbox every Friday.

***

Dirk Dynamo is used to adventure. He’s chased villainous masterminds across the mountains of Europe, stalked gangsters through the streets of Chicago, and faced the terrible battlefields of the Civil War. But now he’s on a mission that will really shake his world.

For centuries, the Great Library of Alexandria was thought lost. Now a set of clues has been discovered that could lead to its hiding place. With the learned adventurers of the Epiphany Club, Dirk sets out to gather the clues, track down the Library, and reveal its secrets to the world.

Roaming from the jungles of West Africa to the sewers beneath London, The Epiphany Club is a modern pulp adventure, a story of action, adventure, and romance set against the dark underbelly of the Victorian age.

Available in all good ebook stores and as a print edition via Amazon.

Of Slugs and Science – a flash steampunk story

Dirk Dynamo stood on the roof of the Epiphany Club, a gentle summer breeze bringing him the smoke of Manchester’s cotton mills and the noise of its crowds. Below, the city was a sprawling mass of factories and tenements, a coal-smeared wonder of the Victorian age. Fortunately, he wasn’t up here for the view.

“It predicts storms,” Sir Timothy Blaze-Simms explained, patting a strange creation of brass boxes, oiled gears, and slender jars. “The slugs in the jars become agitated as the atmospheric pressure changes. They move up, trigger the levers, and so set off strings of gears. When enough gears fall into place, the alarm sounds.”

“And this works?” Dirk asked, trying to hide his incredulity. Blaze-Simms had a brilliant mind, but sometimes his imagination got away from him.

“Absolutely. I have seen a near-perfect correlation between agitation in the slugs and the arrival of storms over the city.”

“Then why are the slugs moving now?” Dirk pointed at one of the jars. “Sky’s clear today.”

“Perhaps an unexpected squall. I have noticed storms coming in faster of late.”

Dirk crouched to get a closer look at one of the slugs. It was wriggling hard up that jar. If a slug could get angry, this one was pissed as hell, and he would have been too if someone had trapped him in a jar.

“When you say ‘of late’, do you mean since you built this machine?”

“I suppose so. That is when I started paying attention.”

Dirk looked up. Out of nowhere, small grey clouds were forming above their heads. He figured he should be grateful – rain would help clear the air. But still…

“You sure you’ve understood this right?” he asked. “That the storm’s making the slugs angry, not the other way around?”

“They’re not angry, old chap. They don’t have the capacity for it. They’re just agitated.”

“Agitated. Huh.”

Clouds were moving in fast. A fat drop of rain hit Dirk’s face. The bell at the top of the machine started ringing as more slugs slid up their jars.

“You ever consider that the slugs might be making the storms?” Dirk asked. “That this might be what happens if enough of them get mad in the same place at once?”

“Don’t be absurd. They couldn’t possibly-”

A roar of thunder interrupted Blaze-Simms. Lightning flashed down to strike the roof of the town hall.

“Most folks would say that weather-predicting slugs were absurd. How about a storm coming in this fast?”

Rain fell, pattering down at first, then thundering across the rooftops, while arcs of lightning flashed between the clouds.

“The very idea! It goes against all of science.”

“All the science you know. But what if you’ve found something new?” Dirk pushed back his rain-sodden hair. He could already feel a chill sinking into his flesh. He wanted to get into the warm and dry, but the idea had hold of him and he couldn’t let it go.

Blaze-Simms’ eyes widened. An expression of frustration tilted up into a smile.

“Well, perhaps,” he said. “But how could we possibly know? What experiment would let us reveal-”

Dirk yanked one of the jars out of the machine and dropped its slug onto the rooftop. Then he reached for another jar.

“We let them out and the storm stops, that’s your correlation. You can work out how they do it later.”

Blaze-Simms joined him, excitedly dismantling his own machine, releasing its slimy prisoners as fast as he could. He grinned as the rain soaked them to the bone and washed away the smoke clouds shrouding the city.

“This could have countless uses,” he said. “Watering fields, refreshing the air, refilling reservoirs…”

Dirk dropped the last slug and looked up. Was it his imagination or were the clouds parting?

“One thing at a time, Tim,” he said. “First, let’s see if this works. After all, it rains a lot in Manchester.”

***

Unlike Blaze-Simms’ storm predictor, George Merryweather’s Tempest Prognosticator was a real Victorian invention that used slugs to predict oncoming storms. A creation of the Victorian era’s wild and sometimes inspired inventiveness, it never took off, though you can still see an example of it on display at Whitby Museum.

If you’d like more flash fiction then you can sign up to my mailing list, where you’ll get a free ebook of steampunk short stories and a flash story straight to your inbox every Friday.

***

Dirk Dynamo is used to adventure. He’s chased villainous masterminds across the mountains of Europe, stalked gangsters through the streets of Chicago, and faced the terrible battlefields of the Civil War. But now he’s on a mission that will really shake his world.

For centuries, the Great Library of Alexandria was thought lost. Now a set of clues has been discovered that could lead to its hiding place. With the learned adventurers of the Epiphany Club, Dirk sets out to gather the clues, track down the Library, and reveal its secrets to the world.

Roaming from the jungles of West Africa to the sewers beneath London, The Epiphany Club is a modern pulp adventure, a story of action, adventure, and romance set against the dark underbelly of the Victorian age.

Available in all good ebook stores and as a print edition via Amazon.

The Epiphany Club – What Was That All About Then?

After years of hard work, distractions, and delays (some self-inflicted), I’ve finally got my Epiphany Club series out in print. So it’s time to talk a bit about this book – what it is, why I wrote it, and what it means to me.

The Epiphany Club started out as a throw-away line in a short story. I was writing about Victorian adventurers heading into the sewers beneath Venice to face the mechanised head of Leonardo da Vinci. To flesh out their background, I made them part of a scholarly club with a history of such escapades. That story became “The Secret in the Sewers”, published in issue four of a magazine called Fiction, and later republished in my collection Riding the Mainspring. And out of that story, Dirk Dynamo and Sir Timothy Blaze-Simms were born.

I liked Dirk and Tim, so I ended up writing more short stories about them, some of which saw publication. In fact, I liked them so much that, when I wanted to write something longer, I decided to make it about them.

This was a decade ago, a time when I knew much less about writing, but when I went at everything with gusto. Any fragment of steampunk or Victoriana I came up with was shoved into my Epiphany Club planning. From Parisian sewer maintenance to the aftermath of slavery, in it all went, with little thought to theme, audience, or consistency. By the time I got onto part two of however many, it was a bit of a mess.

But it was a mess that I loved and one that could be broken up into novella-sized chunks. So when I decided to try self-publishing, and that the best way to do that was a novella series, it was a perfect fit.

In the meantime, I’d learnt more about writing and representation. This led to some big changes in the book, particularly around character arcs and the roles of men and women. The results are something far better and far more coherent than my original vision. It’s far from perfect, as is everything in this world. But for my first serious attempt at putting something this substantial out, I’m still pleased with it, and more fond of my characters than ever before.

The me who started this project so messily, creating much more work down the line? Him I’m not so fond of, but it’s a little late for recrimination.

Despite the eclectic nature of its birth, there is a coherence to The Epiphany Club. It’s a story that tries to mix pulp adventure with the things we often ignore in steampunk and Victorian adventure stories. Gender inequality, colonialism, and the toxic effects of nationalistic politics are all there. But to stop that dragging it down, there are also strange machines, hideous monsters, and action galore. It’s the sort of adventure story I’d like to read, and so I’m proud I’ve written it.

If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, then you can get The Epiphany Club now. And if you enjoy it, please let me know. It’s always good to hear when your story works.

The Epiphany Club Out Now

The Epiphany Club is out today! Collecting all five novellas in my steampunk series, it’s the biggest book I’ve put out so far, and the first one that’s available in print as well as e-book.

So what’s it all about? Well…

Dirk Dynamo is used to adventure. He’s chased villainous masterminds across the mountains of Europe, stalked gangsters through the streets of Chicago, and faced the terrible battlefields of the Civil War. But now he’s on a mission that will really shake his world.

For centuries, the Great Library of Alexandria was thought lost. Now a set of clues has been discovered that could lead to its hiding place. With the learned adventurers of the Epiphany Club, Dirk sets out to gather the clues, track down the Library, and reveal its secrets to the world.

But Dirk and his colleagues aren’t the only ones following the trail. Faced with strange machines, deadly assassins, and shocking betrayal, can they survive the perils confronting them? And what will they find when they finally reach their destination?

Roaming from the jungles of West Africa to the sewers beneath London, The Epiphany Club is a modern pulp adventure, a story of action, adventure, and romance set against the dark underbelly of the Victorian age.

The Epiphany Club is available now from all sorts of online outlets. Go get yourself a copy now, and if you enjoy it, please leave a review where you bought it or on Goodreads.

Fireworks and Foolishness – a flash steampunk story

The smell of fallen leaves and bonfires filled Dirk Dynamo’s senses, as close to fresh country air as London ever got. Somewhere in the distance, the first fireworks were going off, but here in the heart of the city the crowds were just getting warmed off.

He headed off the main thoroughfare and up a well-appointed residential street. Outside Sir Timothy Blaze-Simms’s apartment, something was looming, its bulky body, heavy wheels, and strange projections casting a monstrous shadow in the gaslight.

“You’re here!” Blaze-Simms appeared, his top hat askew and a wrench in his hand. “Just in time to see my latest creation.”

“What is it?” Dirk asked, peering dubiously up at rows of brass tubes.

“An automated firework launcher, programmed using a miniature Babbage engine.”

“Why the wheels?”

“So that it can drive past crowds. This way, everyone can have a good view.”

“Nice thought. Did you have to get a licence?”

“A licence?”

“For a truck full of explosives near Parliament.”

“It’ll be fine.” Blaze-Simms pulled a lever. Steam burst forth and wheels began to turn. “What could possibly go wrong?”

After years of working with Blaze-Simms, Dirk couldn’t pick a single answer. There were just too many options.

With a whoosh, the first firework shot skyward, exploding in a dazzling burst of white light. A red one followed, then a blue, then a stream of smaller yellow rockets as the machine accelerated down the street.

“It’s not meant to go that fast,” Blaze-Simms said. “Maybe we should stop it.”

He looked expectantly at Dirk, who raised an eyebrow.

“You can clean up your own mess this time.”

“But I…”

“Your machine, your mess.”

“I suppose so.”

Blaze-Simms dashed after the machine. It had reached the end of the street and headed out into the crowds. People jumped aside to avoid it, laughing and screaming as Catherine wheels spun on its sides.

Dirk strolled along behind, keeping the machine in sight. He saw the moment Blaze-Simms leapt onto its back and started prying a hatch open. He saw the burst of steam that blew the inventor’s hat off. He heard his friend cry out in pain and fall back into the crowd.

“Dammit.” Dirk started running.

The machine was veering through an increasingly panicked crowd. Dirk had hoped that Blaze-Simms could learn from this one, but he couldn’t let that happen at other people’s expense.

The sky blazed with artificial stars as the machine rolled at ever-increasing speed through the city. It hit a lamppost, spun around, smashed into the side of a Hackney carriage, and continued its rampage towards Westminster Bridge.

Some people saw the machine in time to leap clear. Others, distracted by its fireworks, were almost crushed as it bore down on them.

Dirk caught up just as it thundered onto the bridge. He leapt onto its back, clinging to the towering mass of gunpowder and brass as it headed towards the lights of Parliament.

With a crash, the machine hit a chestnut seller’s cart. Hot nuts and blazing coals flew in every direction, some of them falling down the pipes at the front of the machine.

A renewed volley of fireworks sprang into the sky. So many launched at once that the machine shook, almost flinging Dirk off. His shoulder blazed with pain as he was hurled to one side and then the other, but he clung on with all of his strength.

Hauling himself up, he peered through an open hatch into a mass of gears and pistons. Acting on instinct, he reached inside, ready to yank something out or jam something in, anything to bring it to a halt. But a blast of steam forced him to pull his hand back, skin red raw.

The pain was intense. He had to cool the hand down before it got any worse, but first he had to stop this machine.

Over the side of the bridge, he saw an answer to both his problems. The problem was, it meant diverting a machine ten times his own weight.

Clinging on with his good hand, he flung himself one way and then the other, putting his whole weight into it. His shoulder went from an ache to a raw blazing pain as he became a human pendulum, each swing bigger than the one before.

At last, the machine started to sway with him. It tipped up onto just two wheels on one side and then the other. As Dirk flung himself back and to the left, the machine started to turn.

They were nearly at the end of the bridge now. A dozen alarmed-looking policemen were rushing to get between the machine and Parliament, but Dirk couldn’t see any way they could stop this. The heart of democracy was about to face the explosive fate Guy Fawkes had once planned, this time at the hands of a well-intentioned eccentric.

He swung with all his remaining might. The machine lifted up on one wheel and pivoted around. It clanged back down at ninety degrees to its previous course, hit the side of the bridge with an almighty clang, and tumbled over, taking Dirk with it.

As they plunged through the air, Dirk kicked off from the machine. There was a huge splash, then a smaller one as he hit the Thames. The water was filthy, but the cold on his hand came as a sweet relief.

He surfaced to see a crowd looking down at him, pointing, gasping, and cheering. Beyond them, Parliament stood proud against the night sky, lit up by fireworks.

Dirk turned onto his back and watched the fireworks as he drifted towards the bank. He had to admit, they were spectacular.

On the bridge, a figure in a top hat stood awkwardly, waiting to face the consequences of his latest endeavour. Maybe this time he’d remember how these things could go wrong.

Dirk wasn’t holding his breath.

* * *

 

For more of Dirk and Blaze-Simms’s adventures, check out The Epiphany Club, a story of action, adventure, and intrigue set against the dark underbelly of Victorian society, released on the 1st of December. And if you’d like more short stories like this one then you might want to sign up for my mailing list. You’ll get free flash fiction straight to your inbox every week, as well as updates on my other releases.

Coming Soon – The Epiphany Club

If you’ve been following my blog for any time at all, you’re probably familiar with the Epiphany Club. They’re a band of Victorian steampunk adventurers I invented for a short story, reflecting my interest in Victorian history, strange machines, and old-fashioned adventure stories. In the decade since, I’ve written five novellas exploring their adventures. And now, at last, those novellas are collected in one place.

The Epiphany Club isn’t just my biggest self-publishing project yet – it’s also the first time that I’ve dared go into print. Previously, my books have been purely digital, but now, for the first time, you can also get a physical version. A preview is currently sitting on my desk and I have to say that it looks pretty awesome. I’m very proud of this project.

So what’s it all about? Well…

Dirk Dynamo is used to adventure. He’s chased villainous masterminds across the mountains of Europe, stalked gangsters through the streets of Chicago, and faced the terrible battlefields of the Civil War. But now he’s on a mission that will really shake his world.

For centuries, the Great Library of Alexandria was thought lost. Now a set of clues has been discovered that could lead to its hiding place. With the learned adventurers of the Epiphany Club, Dirk sets out to gather the clues, track down the Library, and reveal its secrets to the world.

But Dirk and his colleagues aren’t the only ones following the trail. Faced with strange machines, deadly assassins, and shocking betrayal, can they survive the perils confronting them? And what will they find when they finally reach their destination?

Roaming from the jungles of West Africa to the sewers beneath London, The Epiphany Club is a modern pulp adventure, a story of action, adventure, and romance set against the dark underbelly of the Victorian age.

You can pre-order the e-book now, and if this is a story that appeals to you then please do pre-order. If you want to read a sample before you buy, the first novella is free from all good e-book retailers. Sadly Amazon won’t do pre-orders for the paperback, but I’ll provide details when it’s available.

Welcome to a world of curiosity and adventure. I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoyed the writing.

New Version of Guns and Guano

A new, revised version of my novella Guns and Guano is now available for free at a multitude of e-book stores. This rewrite doesn’t substantially change the story, but is still something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I’ve tidied up some of the prose and tried to subtly improve the way the character of Isabelle is presented. The place of women in Victorian society is an important issue in this series, and this story in isolation wasn’t dealing with that the way I wanted it too. The result of the changes is far from perfect, but it sets the tone better than I could a few years ago.

Guns and Guano is a tale of action, adventure, and strange events on an Atlantic island. It’s about dealing with the past and looking to the future. There are gangsters, conspirators, and a chisel-jawed hero punching a shark. Honestly, what more could you want? Go get a copy, you know you want to.

Things I’ve Learned in Writing The Epiphany Club

This Friday sees the release of the fifth and final instalment in my Epiphany Club series of novellas (you can pre-order it here). These were the first piece of original work I started self-published some years ago. There have been delays along the way, but I’m finally getting to the end of something that’s important to me. I’ve learned a lot from this experience, so I thought I’d share some of it.

First up, I learned that I’m not as good as I’d like to be at tackling gender issues. I set out to tackle gender inequality, to present female characters who defy the stereotypes of their time. But along the way, I ended up slipping into modern tropes and stereotypes, like the idea of a woman’s strengths lying purely in her social skills. And because the undermining of stereotypes happens more in the later books, the first one looks like it’s playing even more into the stereotypes. I remedied some of this through the advice of beta readers. I’m also planning on revising the first book quite heavily and re-releasing it, to make things better.

I learned that novellas are harder to market than novels. A lot of marketing avenues aren’t open to them, even within the relatively flexible field of self-publishing. I’m going to get around this by creating a collected edition of this series, but it’s made me re-think what I’ll write in future.

I’ve got a lot better at planning and at persevering with projects. That’s how I got to the end of this one, despite numerous delays.

Just through this much practice, my writing skills have grown stronger. One more reason to revise that first book!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. But it’s important to combine that pride with spotting the flaws in my work and the ways I can improve. After all, that’s the only way I’ll get better as a writer.

And if I’ve learned one thing from this experience, it’s that I am getting better.

Coming Soon: Old Odd Ends

A magic-wielding card shark living by her wits. A diplomat frustrated by criminal aliens. A private investigator in a city built on rusting machines. Meet these characters and more in fifty short stories set in worlds beyond our own.

My latest collection of short stories, Old Odd Ends, is coming out on the 16th of March. Collecting all the flash fiction published on this blog in 2017, it features 50 stories, including my experiments with episodic serials. It’s available to pre-order now as an Amazon e-book. So if you’re looking for something new to read, or you’ve enjoyed these stories and would like to support my writing, you can go order a copy now.

Coming Soon – Dead Men and Dynamite

Adventurer Dirk Dynamo finally has all the clues he needs and is heading into Egypt to find the lost Great Library of Alexandria. But as he sets out on the final leg of his trail, others are there ahead of him, people who would use the knowledge of the Great Library to nefarious ends. As he races spies and criminals through the land of the Pharaohs, Dirk must decide how far he will go for knowledge, and what he really values most in the world – life, love or learning.

Find out the final fate of Dirk Dynamo and the Great Library in Dead Men and Dynamite, the fifth and final book in the Epiphany Club series, published in February 2017 and available to pre-order now.