Library Dreams

I am currently seated at a desk in UNO library which overlooks Dodge Street, a pile of books about opium and 19th century Victorian shipping surrounding me, and my vaguely steampunk bracelet now off my wrist because I have forgotten it rubs painfully against my skin when I am typing. Today is a research and library day for me and I am inordinately happy for I can pretend I am a graduate student once again. This morning, I dropped my car off in the bowels of Crossroads Mall parking garage and joined a long line of students waiting for a shuttle bus to campus. UNO has an admirably effective shuttle bus system - every few minutes a fleet of shuttles arrive and whisk off several dozen students, so I was at the library in just ten minutes from parking my car to stepping onto campus pavement.

Then it was a quick jaunt across campus to the library as I basked in remembrance that college life by necessity offers a number of walking opportunities, perfect for someone like me who has a pathological loathing of sitting still. Inside UNO's library is a welter of useful books, and I trawled the shelves searching for necessary research material, including a book on opium production in the Victorian era and a bonus find entitled "The Age of Steam: Part One" which contained this lovely line about early steam-powered ships "Yet the descendants of these ridiculous little boats would, in time, inherit the dominion of the seas".

Alas, I did not find an excellent and lavishly illustrated book about opium I had discovered a few weeks ago, and I shall need to request the assistance of a librarian to locate it. If one were to browse my computer's search history over the past few months, one would encounter a variety of links to sites about opium, cocaine, drug trafficking, prostitution, and other less savory topics that I have been researching for both Book 1 and a fanfiction story set in the Elizabethan era. The other day, I popped into Google to research the status of the butler in Victorian England. Google autocompleted, "butlers in the buff". Out of morbid, yet hesitant curiosity, I clicked on the link to discover that this is a UK company that supplies buff, handsome young men in the buff (one would assume they wear white gloves and little else) to hen parties and ladies nights.

The link reminded me of a news story I read about a wild girls night party at a home where the attendees were so rowdy that the neighbors called the police. A police officer showed up at the house, unaware that the ladies had ordered a male stripper dressed as a police officer. When the real officer showed up at the house, the ladies pulled him into the house and began removing his clothing until the frantic officer explained the situation and, one would assume, called for backup. Bear in mind this happened in the Middle East a few years ago. I have been told by a friend of mine who was a former bouncer that he would much rather supervise a bunch of men watching female strippers than have to be a bouncer for a ladies night event with the Chippendale dancers: apparently women are far more crazy at these events than men. Someone else told me that she went to the opening night of "Magic Mike" and the women attendees were practically rioting in the aisles.

Sooo, all this is to point out that research leads one to all sorts of interesting topics. My challenge for today is to finish my allotted amount of pages to draft out (five) and plunge into these books stacked around my desk. The "Age of Steam" one is practically begging to be read, ruffling its pages temptingly. One question to be answered is whether the steam on the Horizon will be used primarily for keeping her airbags full or if her engines will be steam-powered as well. I am thinking that both will be the case: the section I am currently writing has Captain Roberts at the wheel and he has a steam divert valve that can feed more steam into the engines for extra power. But I am not sure about the technical feasibility of such an apparatus. My brother Seth and I were talking about Book 1 as we drove to campus this morning, and my plan for now is to draft out the basic plot. Many mechanical and technological features are being left to the wayside or merely glossed over until the first draft is done. Then comes the exquisite challenge of answering many of the technical questions people have been asking me, and it is surprising how many of these questions are ones that are already in my mind. The Horizon is constantly mutating and changing in my mind as I think about her: her envelope growing and shrinking, doors appearing and disappearing alongside her hull, decks switching like the stairs in Hogwarts.

All this means it is time to stop writing about the Horizon and get back to actually writing her. Take heed, my fellow readers. We who are about to write salute you!

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What a Tool!

My family went on a camping trip this weekend: the lake was beautiful, the weather was cool, and Scooters was less than ten minutes away. I spent this morning meandering through a beguilingly pleasant woods, my Basset Hound Erasmus excitedly sniffing and gamboling about, my dad and oldest brother with me, and a tall Scooters Butter Pecan brew with cream and double sugar in hand. Yesterday evening, my dad pulled this out of the car...

I took one look at this hand-powered drill/screwdriver and squealed, "Oooohh, I could totally steampunk that!" Dad handed it over to me, knowing that I'd probably sneak over and swipe it anyway. Now I am thinking a steampunk carpenter might be an upcoming costume: I could be an airshipwright and build airships for a living. This drill/screwdriver would be a handy accessory and could double as a weapon if something irksome needs a good poking.

Speaking of airships, my plan tomorrow is to hie myself to UNO's library for some serious research. I have an ever-growing list of research topics, and astronomy just added itself. The Horizon will be flying day and night, and I need to acquaint myself with Victorian maritime course plotting and other ways of directing an airship without modern navigational methods. Sadly, Captain Roberts does not have the nifty star chart app a friend at our campfire showcased last night: we were using it to view the various planets, constellations, and stars on display over our heads while the app sounded out the names of the stars in a monotone android voice. Roberts would probably kill for something like this. Sadly, he has to make do with following the stars and hoping clouds don't cover up the heavens and prevent him from guiding the Horizon in the right direction.

In the course of some research Friday, I encountered this handy article about marine chronometers http://scheong.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/time-in-motion-the-story-of-the-sea-clock-or-harrisons-chronometers/    It points out the interesting fact that a marine clock that was just a few seconds off could potentially cause a ship to be diverted miles off course. So far, I believe Captain Roberts will have a state-of-the-art (for the time) marine pocketwatch that is extremely accurate and there will also be a marine chronometer on board the Horizon. When I left writing on Friday, the Horizon was flying across Ireland to deliver a load of grain to the dock in Galway, Ireland because a massive grain mill explosion in the country meant that food prices were skyrocketing and they needed food quickly. Writing this section made me realize that 1) I didn't know how 19th century ships kept time on board 2) I didn't know nearly enough about how 19th century ships navigated their path 3) I have even more research to do.

Therefore, Monday will see me at the library of UNO for several hours where I can pretend I am a graduate student again, eat the homemade potato chips served in the library cafe, and amuse myself by fiddling around with the moving shelves in the basement. The long shelves of books in the basement are on railings, so if you wish to walk down a particular aisle, you press a button and an aisle magically appears between two shelves. This allows both for more shelves to be placed in an area and unique amusement opportunities as I see if I can run the length of an aisle as it is closing without being squished. Therefore if no further blog posts are forthcoming, I probably got laminated between the shelves at the library. Death via books: that would not be a wholly terrible way for a former grad student to go.  

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Chapter 1, Part 3

We last left the good airship Horizon in the turmoil of a sudden catastrophe - read below to see what happened to her!

Steam on the Horizon 

Chapter 1, Part 3

Boiler explosion, Roberts thought furiously. I'll kill that damned Silverman. Already the wharf alarm was blaring as soldiers and ship workers poured across the deck, racing for the wounded airship as she floundered helplessly in the sky. With three bounding steps, Roberts reached the edge of the deck, watching in panic as the Horizon dropped at least twenty feet in less than a minute. As her main deck dipped below the edge of the wharf walkway, Roberts didn't think, just acted. Grabbing a mooring rope in a work-hardened hand, he slid the length of it down to the forecastle which was now several feet higher than the poop deck, the ship's rear sagging downward as equipment and cargo slid down the angled decks and filled the aft with weight, dragging the ship's back end towards the waiting ground below.

On board the Horizon, men were racing up and down barking out orders or scattershot bits of information and Robert's eyes quickly swept the crowd as his feet hit the deck. No sign of the captain, but Roberts wasn't too particularly concerned about that, his attention quickly diverting to the bosun staggering across the tilted deck towards him, blood pouring freely from a head wound.

“Sir!” the man gasped out. “Boiler blew all the hell to....”

“I know!” Roberts bellowed back. “Where's the damned crane jib?” The Horizon was clearly too injured to keep afloat: she'd be crashing to the ground in a minute if not assisted. But as he spoke, the groaning squeal of the crane filled the air, mixing with the screams of the Horizon's engines overheating in their desperate plight to keep the ship from plunging to the ground. Already the ship had reached the end of her mooring ropes, and the lines were wire-taut, creaking with stress. After a minute of valiant effort, one broke under pressure, the thick line snapping with violent force and the airship jerked in recoil, sending her nose towards the ground as the deck pivoted, loose gear, baggage, and crewmen now sliding down towards the bow forward.

Another line snapped under the vicious pressure, jarring the airship again and starting a nasty seesaw motion as the Horizon continued her uncontrolled descent, the ground below looming up to embrace her in its unyielding arms. Then with a thunderous crash that nearly rent her asunder, the crane jib swung around and plucked the floundering airship from the sky.

The Horizon rocked chaotically in place, suspended fifty feet from the ground and liberally shedding broken pieces of futtock, assorted barrels, and shredded ends of rope into the open air, the great wound in the ship's side weeping pus of hemp and metal fragments. But she was caught now, and the crane jib lifted her up away from the looming ground and carefully swung her around into the arms of a gantry crane. Thus snared, the Horizon was moved smoothly down the line and set in an unoccupied berth as gently as a mother placing her child to bed, Roberts shouting for order and counting heads as the ship was carefully righted and secured in the berth. With a final coughing grunt, the belabored engines stopped, sending the airbags sagging against the mainmast as the ship rested its full weight on the berth with the sound of groaning wood and escaping steam filling the air.

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Home Bound

It has been a week exactly since I exited the corporate world for the excitement and financial insolvency of self-employment. It has been an exceedingly rewarding week that, in retrospect, seems to have fitted into at least a month of normal time: time passes quite differently when you spent the vast majority of it within the confines of your own home. I had been in this position before: for seven years, I was a college composition instructor and aside from the times I was in the classroom, the bulk of my work was done at home. Upon giving notice at my job last week, I was rather surprised at how easily I slipped back into the patterns of working at home. However, this particular venture has involved me converting a hobby into a career, a noble and envious position, but one that is not without its drawbacks.

For those of you who have not had the experience of working from home before, I hereby offer you a list of some of the positive and negative aspects culled from my own experiences.

Pros 
- Freedom of scheduling: this, for me, involves rising at 5:00 am and sitting down at my computer to start my day before 7:00 am, long before most mortals are stirring to life.
- Clean house: I think best on my feet and since writing requires constant mental gymnastics, quite an enormous amount of my work time is spent while my hands are busy with dishes or a broom and my mind is chewing meditatively over a sticky plot issue.
- Naps: Oh lovely, fabulous, sweet naps. I surrendered to the sweet embrace of a nap just an hour ago and passed a blissful thirty minutes floating cozily in that dreamworld between sleep and consciousness, letting my mind adrift to whatever happenstance whiff of fancy passed by. This lasted until my untroubled consciousness began refocusing itself on its task at hand and interrupted my sweet rest with insistent barkings that I return to work.
-  Basset Hounds. This fat, fuzzy fellow here adores sleeping on my feet and keeping my toes warm with his long ears. I sincerely love spending the work day with him asleep under my desk, his head propped up on the printer.

- Off peak hours: No more the madness of trying to rush to the bank after work or arranging for a half day off so I can get to the DMV. When one works from home, one can complete necessary chores at times that the rest of the city is not doing so. This morning, I was sharing Panera with a clutch of white-haired seniors past retirement age and the normally full store had plenty of seating available for us all.
- Gas savings. I spent almost two years driving approximately 90 minutes a day and every three days saw me at the gas station. Today my car has just under 1/5 of a tank left and the last time I put in gas was on Friday. This is such a novel concept I am half afraid I am going to drive my car until it sputters and dies from lack of fuel just to see how conceivably long I can go without filling up again.

However, everything is not rainbows and unicorn farts - working at home on a hobby-based career does have its drawbacks, chiefly which are....

- Isolation: When your office is three steps from your bedroom, you have little reason to mingle with the greater world outside and find yourself going stir-crazy quite frequently. The Panera trip today was borne out of the desperate realization that I was going to go quietly mad if I spent another long day at home. $4.32 for a bagel and coffee was a small price to pay for being surrounded with people noises and the cheerful bustle of human beings.
- Devolution: There is an exceedingly great temptation for the stay-at-home worker to degenerate to a level of proto-human, wandering around the house in old pyjamas or nothing at all, picking thoughtfully at your toenails with a butter knife you just used to make a sandwich and which still has the remnants of peanut butter sticking to it, subsiding off a diet of Doritos and Cheese Whiz squirted directly into your mouth, forgoing showers and all basic grooming for days on end. To combat this urge, I do not allow myself to fire up my computer for the day unless I've gone to the gym, eaten breakfast, walked the dog, made the bed, read my Bible, and showered. Otherwise a very few weeks may find me a Nutella-besmeared blob of unwashed flesh and greasy hair who only communicates in grunts.
- Boredom - Turning a beloved hobby into a career is a dream of many. However, one of the unsavory drawbacks to doing so is that you can quickly start to despise said hobby. Not to mention that when you spend all day trying to get your hobby to earn you money, you are somewhat at a loss of what to do when the workday is over. I have a flood of other writings to work on but a distinct disinclination to spend all evening doing what I just did all day.

On a different, more steampunk note, a friend of mind was telling me about the triple point of water: this is a state of thermodynamic marvel when H2O exists in steam, liquid, and ice form. This has marvelous steampunk possibilities, and I have been toying with ideas all morning. Say, hypothetically, an airship who is being assailed by an attacking airship, wouldn't it be useful if they could somehow convert the steam in the attacking ship's airbags into water or ice through some technological wonder? Anybody know anything more about this triple point concept or have ideas about its various steampunk applications?

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Chapter 1, Part 2

Moving along, here is the second installment of Chapter One of Steam on the Horizon. Enjoy!

Steam on the Horizon

by Melissa Conroy

Chapter 1, Part 2

By now, Roberts had the captain firmly enough in hand that as long as he kept an eye on things, the Horizon stayed aloft and on course and the men received their pay. But with the increased numbers of empty bottles rolling out of the captain's cabin, keeping a tight ship was becoming harder and harder. Roberts had nearly walked away from the whole damned mess more than once, but the pay was too good. After a successful run, Captain Smothers was apt to freely distribute bonuses in a rum-inspired fit of generosity if coaxed into the right mood, and Roberts was hording every farthing he could lay hands on. One day he'd have command of his own airship and none of this nonsense of slaving away under an idiot in the command seat.

Preoccupied with the future, both immediate and distant, Roberts stalked forward, mind growling irritably with thoughts and eyes intent on the bobbing bulk of the Horizon dancing impatiently in the stiff wind. Here, further down on the wharf, there was less traffic and fewer things to impede his feet except a huge stack of crates piled high in the middle of his path and being negligently supervised around by a small knot of Chinamen, the tonal chops of Cantonese rising in the air. Despite his grumbling worries over the Horizon, Roberts had to smile thinly to himself as he caught wind of their conversation: he knew enough of their tongue to surmise that they were talking about women, as men were wont to do after too many weeks crammed inside an airship with nothing but other men for company.

But the smile was fleeting as Roberts stepped irritably around the traffic jam, impatient to get back on board to discover just how much chaos had been unleashed in his brief absence. Mind thus preoccupied, he was completely taken off guard when an enormous explosion rocked the wharf, shock waves reverberating along the wooden planks as something exceedingly powerful struck it like a battering ram. Knocked off balance, Roberts fell to his knees behind the stack of crates, then rolled quickly out of the way as one at the top teetered for a moment, then fell to the deck with a crash, spilling open and sending a battalion of paper-wrapped opium logs careening across the deck.

A scream of Cantonese, and a Chinaman slide helplessly towards the edge of the wharf, slithering down the length of a floor plank that had knocked loose and was tipping the unfortunate man towards the ground seventy-five feet below. With a growl, Roberts shot forward on his hands and knees and grabbed the coolie's ankle, halting the fall and leaving the man dangling upside down from the lip of the wharf, his thin arms flailing pitifully as terror shook his small frame. But Roberts had a firm grip on the man's bony ankle and like most Chinamen, he was a skinny little runt; Roberts pulled the man to safely with one swift jerk of his arm and clambering to his feet with a heart-thumping suspicion of what had just happened.

He wasn't mistaken. Rounding the edge of the tower of boxes (which was now a disorganized jumble), Roberts burst into view and then froze at the sight of the chaos spreading before him. It was worse than he he had anticipated, much worse. The Horizon was wreathed in angry smoke, a gigantic hole gouged out of her hull and her engines shrieking in alarm as the airship sagged on her mooring lines, her airbags already deflating before Roberts' eyes. The once taut envelope was now rapidly deflating from a sizable hole in one of her airbag that must have been caused by a piece of shrapnel tearing through the tough canvas, for the jagged wound was loosening steam in angry waves of white and the airship was losing air by the minute.

They hadn't properly docked the airship on Captain's orders, hadn't carefully set her down on an empty berth where she could have rested against the canvas-cushioned supporting beams and waited for Roberts' return. Captain Smothers had insisted that they simply tie the Horizon off at the wharf and let her bob in the wind, a common procedure for a quick stop, but one that left the ship dancing about and too prone to slam into things, such as other airships also tied up like balloons at the wharf. With nothing underneath her but air and her deflating airbags struggling to keep her aloft, the injured Horizon was tilting backwards, her aft sagging towards the ground as her bowsprit edged upwards into the sun in a ferocious squeal of overheated engines. 

Steampunk or Not?

Yesterday, I wandered into the vast garage sale that is Ebay searching for a pink lace Victorian blouse for the Steampunk Society of Nebraska's upcoming Military Ball. With just a few moments' of perusal, it because appallingly clear that many of the denizens of Ebay are either a trifle confused about the genre of steampunk or are hoping that affixing the label "steampunk" to whatever they are hawking will increase its sale potential. Some of the items I encountered which proudly bore the name "steampunk" in the posting title were this...

And this......

And this....

Now, to be fair to the lightly-informed, steampunk is a quite broad genre with a multitude of possibilities open to the creative and descriptive. The website Nazi Dieselpunk has an excellent article on the different types of punk that may be found http://nazidieselpunk.devhub.com/blog/639253-all-sorts-of-punk-die-wachen/  One of the charms of steampunk is its inherent fluidity. Some steampunks are more rigid about their classification of the genre than while others are more forgiving of less-than-period elements such as open-toed boots or metallic-painted plastic weapons.

There are others who have a far more developed understanding of the steampunk genre than I do, and there is much helpful wisdom to be found on websites and in the Steampunk Bible book. However, for the purpose of this blog post, here are some simple guidelines that I like to pass along:

1) Make a decent attempt to stay in period. You should make a concerted effort to choose items that look passably Victorian, hence why the hot pink, drop-waist blouse posted above is not anywhere near steampunk-worthy.  

2) Think function over form. If you have not watched "Just Glue Some Gears On It", get thee to YouTube straightaways. As the title implies, there is a regrettable tendency in steampunk to randomly attach gears wherever they look snappy without any thought whatsoever about what practical function the gears serve. Just the other day, someone commented on the lace gloves I just constructed and asked me what the gears were for - my reply was that they were to tighten the ribbon in case I wanted a snugger fit. Now, one of my friends also pointed out that having some extra gears around one's person is a smart idea in case a mechanical breakdown happens, so a few random gears here and there are certainly no crime. However, as one is constructing steampunk, a consideration of function should play a role somewhere.

3) Go easy on the glue. This is a personal pet peeve of mine and it somewhat goes along with #2, but do make sure that if you glue gears on, you don't make it obvious you did so. Yesterday I almost purchased this neat, gear-laden ring at Nobbies, but a second glance reveled that most of its components were sitting in obvious puddles of glue. Keep your gluing, soldering, or other adhesives discreet to not ruin what you are making.

4) Keep it somewhat real. This is more for writing than anything else, but a decent attempt at practical reality should be attempted. Fantasy is certainly part and parcel of steampunk, but good fantasy does have some consideration for the limits of gravity, physics, and other elements. As I have harangued on before, one of the most pressing concerns of an airship would be weight. One steampunk story I was reading had an airship land and out of its belly came an onslaught of elephants with cannons on their backs. Bear in mind that this would represent a significant amount of weight, not to mention that heavy animals moving around an airship could easily throw it off course. Good steampunk should have some grounding in the probable!   

Chapter 1 Part 1

I'm going to be regularly posting segments of Chapter 1 (and maybe 2) of my book on this blog, Facebook, and Twitter. Because of how Facebook and Twitter is set up, I had to take a screenshot of my Word document and post the text as a picture. However, for you fine readers of my blog, you get the text as part of a blog post! Please enjoy and feel free to toss comments my way. I have solid drafts for Chapters 1 and 2 and am working on 3, but a piece of writing is never done and there is much room for improvement. Feedback from others is an excellent way of realizing what I need to work on and what gross grammatical manglings I have committed. Thanks for reading!

Steam on the Horizon

by Melissa Conroy

Chapter 1, Part 1

The Horizon bobbed and swayed, tugging at her mooring lines like a rebellious horse pulling against its halter. From his position on the wharf, first mate Gavin Roberts eyed the bloated canopy of the airship critically as he approached the vessel. Tight as a woman's corset, the airship's envelope was straining to hold back cubic yards of agitated steam from bursting loose and the seams of the airbags were visible underneath their rough canvas cover as they stretched desperately outward in futile attempts to find more space. On the crowded, noisy wharf, other airships were snugly strapped down in canvas-cushioned berths or tied up at the wharf in preparation for takeoff, but they were all sedate and restrained in comparison to the Horizon's erratic dance across the sky. The airship was hissing in impatience, and Roberts' feet quickened, carrying his broad-shouldered frame through the press of crowds roving up and down the length of the wharf.

Idiot Silverman's ignoring the pressure gauge again, Roberts thought to himself darkly as he irritably shoved his way past an airman overloaded with gunnysacks. The airman staggered out of the way, barely avoiding a collision as the taller man plowed through the crowd with nary a glance at who might be impeding his path. I'm gone a half hour and it all goes to hell, Roberts added, his gray-green eyes fastened intently on the airship, seeking any evidence of an imminent catastrophe.

Cursed ship. They all said it about the Horizon, too many burst valves and men falling to their deaths to encourage an onslaught of eager volunteers every time there was an opening on the ship's roster. But Roberts knew better; sure, the Horizon was a fussy little bird, apt to sulk or threaten a crash if mishandled, but she was as light as a cloud and damned fast, capable of racing a scant twenty hours from London to Edinburgh on a good run if she had the right crew to baby her.

But Captain Albert Smothers was not the type of man to get the most out of an airship like the Horizon or any airship, truth be told. When he wasn't boozing it up in his quarters, the captain was apt to be barking out orders that changed by the hour or fighting with the engineers or sometimes leaning over the edge of the ship spewing his guts out over whatever landscape they happened to be crossing due to chronic airsickness combined with too much alcohol. More than once, some doxy had come wandering sheepishly out of the captain's cabin after the Horizon had docked in a port, and then there had been the care and feeding of the unexpected passenger until the airship could land somewhere and see the girl off with enough money to get back home.

It was Roberts ran the show, had to, otherwise God knows where they would have ended up on this last run, what with the Captain demanding a change of course halfway through their flight to Liverpool that added an additional three hundred miles to the trek. Roberts had been flying under Captain Smothers' unskilled leadership (if it could be called that) for nigh on two years now, and if the captain had any discernible attributes, predictability was one of them. By this point, Roberts had grown reasonably skilled at tactfully redirecting his superior away from the worst of his idiotic ideas and mitigating damages if the Captain Smothers insisted that his harebrained schemes be enacted. Now, worriedly observing the Horizon's bloated envelope straining to keep from bursting, Roberts knew that his brief absence had allowed yet another magnificently stupid decision to manifest.