The ground shook beneath him, cobbles rattling down to the road, and he sank to his knees. To his left, a shop front trembled and started to grind back along the road. The terrace to the right was moving as well, threatening to leave the barricade exposed in the middle of a crossroads, with reactionaries closing in on three sides.
Apparently new stories from me have become like political scandals – nothing for months and then suddenly the internet’s full of the buggers. But stories are awesome and I love writing them, so the internet will just have to cope.
Hot on the heels of ‘Feathers‘ comes ‘Goddess of the Barricades‘, out today in Plasma Frequency magazine and free to read on their website. This started out as my attempt to write a steampunk romance, but romance really isn’t my forte and other parts of the story grabbed my attention more. There’s still romance in there, but there’s so much more as well. It also reflects my fascination with France’s long tradition of street protest and revolution, and my continuing mission to address the less comfortable elements of the Victorian era in my stories. After all, the century that gave us the steam train was also an era of class divisions and colonialism. If we can find ways to fit those issues into exciting and evocative stories then we can face important issues without getting bored, and surely that’s a good thing.
If you enjoy this story of moving buildings, racing pulses and battles with authority then you might also enjoy ‘Urban Drift’, available as part of my steampunk collection Riding the Mainspring. And as always I’d love to hear what you thought about my story.
So hop on over to Plasma Frequency, read my story and let me know what you think – that’s what the comments are for.
Picture by Nefariousenator via Flickr creative commons.