Steampunk Valentine's Day Prep!

The Steampunk Society of Nebraska has their annual Valentine's Day shindig next month, and this is going to be an all-day event: a steampunk swap meet, tea party, gaming time, dance lesson, and a re-dedication ceremony of two of our key members. What could be more romantic than renewing your wedding vows during a Valentine's Day event surrounded by steampunks in their finest? Needless to say, these festivities require an awesome steampunk costume, and I have been hard at work at something appropriate. My enthusiasm has been severely curtailed by the fact that I am a virtual pauper and my first paycheck from my new job is going entirely to the mortgage and bills. This has required some creativity on my part, not to mention a thorough scouring of the house for items that can be pressed into service as part of my costume.

Last time I posted pictures, I had this lovely ensemble going on:

Expert Basset Hound fashion criticism gives it one tail wag. Erasmus is rather persnickety with clothing: the other day, my brother popped into my office all spiffed up in a new outfit and asked, "How do I look?" Erasmus immediately gave out a loud groan of disapproval, so clearly Seth and I both have a better fashion sense to develop. Since then, I have made some modifications to the costume.

Attending a 1920's party left me with a long strand of pearls that seemed apropos for Valentine's Day and while not exactly steampunk, the effect with the red jacket (which I shortened into a bolero) was quite nice. This self-same 1920's party left me with some material I had intended to work into a flapper costume. Alas, my sewing machine declined to cooperate, and I was left without a flapper costume but with a very nice length of black fringe that I decided to put on my corset.

I handsewed a layer of fringe to the bottom part of the corset using a loose running stitch for easy removal later. The overall effect with the red bolero was vaguely reminiscent of 19th century brothel/dancing girl style, which seemed to fit into a Valentine's Day theme. I didn't have quite enough to line the entire top of the corset, so I put fringe just on the front (where it would show) and left the back without fringe benefits.

Liking what I had so far, I cast my eye around my steampunk work room/crafting area/disaster zone and spotted a roll of red ribbon. I needed to do some bustling/tucking of the skirt as it was a tad too long, so I decided to make some silk roses. First, I cut a length of ribbon, ironed it to make a crease, and cut it in half lengthwise. 

I then rolled the ribbon up, making some tucks and bends to replicate a rose.

When it was vaguely rose-shaped, I ran some red thread through the ends to secure everything and form it into a round shape.

The next part was a lot of eyeballing (I tend to be gleefully imprecise when crafting/sewing). I simply pinched a section of the skirt, shoved the rose in the middle, and sewed it from the inside to hold it in place. This slightly bustled the skirt to raise the hemline up a bit (it was too long to begin with) and added some nice visual effects to what is a very dark, rather plain skirt.

Liking this, I placed several roses around the front of the skirt in a random pattern.

The back seemed to call for something different, so I made two roses out of a full piece of ribbon and put a little bustle at the back. The whole effect put the skirt at a good height for walking, just enough to show a bit of stocking. I intend to track down a pair of striped stockings to wear under the dress.

I may add a few mini roses to the back, but I think this might mess up the hemline some, so I believe I will leave it as is.

So far, so good! I have a lovely pair of embroidered white gloves to wear, and my next order of business is making a teardrop hat. I will use the red silk I took off the bottom of the jacket and a bit more black fringe. Pictures forthcoming!

But first, I must hurry off to the nearest print store to obtain all 299 pages (10.5 point, 1.5 space) of Draft 2 in print form and start reading it over. A dear friend of mine and my mother are currently in possession of Draft 2 in order to offer their feedback. However, my dear mother does not get steampunk. She tries for my sake, but her logical, rational mind is not predisposed towards fantasy, glamour, and the improbable. Therefore, I wholly expect she will dutifully read my draft and try to find some enjoyment out of it. If she honestly tells me that she likes it a lot, I will know that I have likely crafted a novel that even non-steampunks will enjoy.

Oh dear red pen, prepare yourself. You have some editing to do.

Draft 2 Completion!

Hooray, hooray, it's a wonderful day for I have finished Draft 2! Last night about 7:45 pm, my overworked keyboard stilled and I flipped over the last sheet of the printed draft into the inbox, signaling the completion of Draft 2. In excitement, I ran a word count, eager to know how much I had hacked away during the intense pruning that happened between Draft 1 and 2.

To my surprise, Draft 2 clocks in at 186,432 words, a whopping 14,713 more words than Draft 1 contained. Confounded, I ran the numbers again and did the math, and my original assessment was correct; despite the sections ruthlessly eradicated from Draft 1, I still managed to pack in almost 15,000 words to a draft that was quite lengthy to begin with.

Writer friends of mine have informed me that a typical book usually runs about 100,000 or less and publishers start squawking when the count hits 120,000. To give a rough idea of how that translates into pages, common wisdom states that a page of published book generally contains about 250 words. Which means I currently have a 700+ page draft on my hands.

To give you a better visual picture, below are two books: Cheri Priest's Boneshaker which is 414 pages and James Clavell's Shogun which is 1152 pages.

At this point, Steam on the Horizon would be about in the middle between these two books as far as length.

To the eye and hand, Shogun is chunky and awkward: it is obvious in a glance that the book will be a challenge to read. Boneshaker is slimmer and less intimidating, and to the eye it doesn't seem particularly long. Obviously Shogun has smaller dimensions than Boneshaker and that affects the overall presentation. Standard manuscript format and printing dimensions vary quite widely, and on Amazon's Createspace, self-published authors have a variety of printing choices and manuscript dimensions to choose. Yet, despite whatever size a printed copy of Steam on the Horizon ends up being, the very real questions I am currently asking myself are:
1) Is this too damned long?
2) Do I have superfluous stuff to cut?
3) Would the story suffer if I cut out a lot?
4) Would anyone read it if I didn't do significant whittling down?
5) Should this planned trilogy involve more than three books?

Right now, I have no answers to these questions. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to meet the dynamic steampunk writing duo Tee Morris and Philippa Balentine at the 2012 Emerald City Steampunk Expo, and they were kind enough to enthusiastically share ideas with me for several hours. Last night in a befuddled panic about how the heck I was going to tame this wild madness of a draft, I dashed off a message to them asking for their advice and I am eager to see what they have to say.

One thing I am pondering is breaking down Steam on the Horizon into three parts just for e-book form. For printing, I still want to offer just three books for this trilogy I have planned. But it may make more sense to have a Part 1, 2, and 3 for Steam on the Horizon in e-book form. What I could also do is offer Part 1 for free as a way of hooking readers on the trilogy. I was already planning on offering the e-book for just a few dollars, and giving away part of it could possibly be a strategic marketing campaign.

However, this may simply be a case of a wiser, more objective head looking over my draft and identifying about 40,000 words or so that need eradicating or could simply be removed without causing damage to the overall story line. I have a small cohort of beta readers ready with their red pens sharpened, and I will be getting them Draft 2 soon. It will be interesting receiving their feedback. I can envision a scene where kind, well-intended friends are gently prying a chapter from my white knuckles as I moan, "No!!!! Don't take that from me!!!! Pleeeeeassssee, can I keep it????"

On another note, I have started my new job as a coordinator for a medical helicopter company and am excited about learning more about latitude, weather conditions and how they affect flying, helicopter anatomy, and a vast assortment of topics that hopefully will transition somewhat into steampunk. Also included in the training process is a chance to ride along on a helicopter transport, a prospect I am looking forward to with boundless enthusiasm. I only hope pictures will be permitted so I can document the exciting adventure!

Next up, finish costume for the steampunk Valentine's Day event. I have a skirt to bustle and some accessories to make!

Valentine Costuming!

The Steampunk Society of Nebraska is making plans for their annual Valentine's Day ball, and I am working on my costume. A few days ago, a friend and hied to that epicenter of steampunk: Goodwill. I was lucky enough to score a lovely dark blue skirt and a snazzy red top for under $6.

I am already loving my dressmaker dummy form for costuming purposes. It is so much easier to work on it in 3D form rather than trying to put in pleats and hem the edge while the garment is dangling flatly from a clothes hanger. However, my new weight-loss goal is to perfectly fit the constrains of the dummy - so far it is about two inches too small in the bust. I had lost some weight due to waitressing, but alas the gluttony of the holidays ensured that the abandoned poundage quickly found its way back to my thighs and hips.

Ahem, back to costuming. The red jacket was originally longer - I whacked off the bottom and made it into a bolero jacket. Now I have a nice strip of red fabric that will soon become a Victorian teardrop hat. Teardrop hats look like this.

Never having made a teardrop hat (or any hat, come to think of it) I turned to the internet for inspiration and discovered this wonderful blog that offers a tutorial for making a teardrop hat. Lorie, who maintains the blog, sells the form for the hat if you don't or can't make one of your own. I will be ordering a form this week and starting work on the hat! I am thinking that the hat itself should be red, then I will have black roses, black ribbon, and black tulle on it. We shall see what inspiration strikes.

I'm also planning on hunting down a hearts pattern fabric like this...

and making a wrap around bustle to add some Valentine's Day color to the dark skirt.

However, I still have Draft 2 to finish! I finished up Chapter 27 the other day and will be starting Chapter 28 today. Most likely, I will have Draft 2 done by next week. Then there is the exciting moment of discovering what the word count is for Draft 2 and printing the sucker out for more editing! I'll edit and revise Draft 3, then beg/borrow/steal money so that I can put the draft in the hands of a professional fiction editor. Hopefully the editor will not suggest too many changes and one day in the future, the draft will be ready for publishing...

after I work with a graphic artist to create the cover illustration, figure out a marketing campaign, and arrange for a million other things. Sigh.

Writer Rambles

Today is a glorious work-free day - after I finish vacuuming  I have the rest of the day to tackle Draft 2. Right now, I have Chapter 25 to finish, and it is timed to occur just after the 1st of November. The Battle of the Alma and the Charge of the Light Brigade have happened, and the Horizon witnessed both campaigns, not exactly the safest of ventures if you are dangling from a steam-filled canvas balloon. She survived, and Roberts and crew will soon be flying a load of desperately ill/injured soldiers down to the military barracks in Scutari where they will run against the indomitable might of Florence Nightingale.

As I revise, it is astonishing how many little things demand attention. Yesterday I was reading Bill Bryson's peerless At Home: A Short History of Private Life when the topic of soot arose. It dawned on me that I had never considered the fact if the Horizon's anthracite-fed boiler produces soot from the coal dust it burns. I would assume that would be a yes, but before I make a decision, I have to research to check my assumption. I do know that anthracite burns essentially smokeless but if the boiler will produce soot or other byproducts, then I have to tackle the question of what the Horizon does with all its soot. I also realized that my engineers, by default, are permanently covered with coal dust and need to work that into their description.

I'm also wondering if I need to touch on scurvy, the plague of sailors until people figured out that it was caused by dietary deficiency (Bryson covers this in his book). However, airship flights are much faster than marine ship sailing, so perhaps airships touch down in port often enough to access fresh food? Or I could have my on-board surgeon Harding be an innovative soul that has worked out the link between nutrition and health and insists that the crew eat properly. Also, a steampunk world would probably have better standards of medical knowledge than the historical 19th century. Bryson states that several medical researchers figured out that scurvy was caused by a vitamin C deficiency long before the Navy began to supply their sailors with lime/lemon juices. Many medical professionals thought that scurvy was caused by too hard work, unsanitary conditions, constipation, etc. In fact, one commander encouraged his sailors to rinse out their mouths with their own urine in attempts to combat scurvy - yuck!

Now that Draft 2 is nearing completion, I am starting to think about cover art, illustrations, and advertising media. I've talked with a few artists and there are a number of possibilities out there. So far, I have a fairly good idea in mind for what I want as the front illustrations, and I am hoping to have a diagram of the Horizon on the flyleaves. The anime series "Last Exile" is a good model for what I want: each DVD cover has intricate diagrams of the different airships inside the cover, and these help give great detail and scale for the ships.

I haven't quite worked out what the Horizon looks like, and in my head, I have been playing with 125 feet for her length. What I need to do is find an unbroken stretch of snow, a tape measure, and a friend to help me sketch out in the snow what the circumference of the Horizon's gondola should be. I figure I can bring a spray bottle of colored water to help mark in lines and create a canvas on the snow. I'll definitely take pictures of this so you can see the crazy things I do for accuracy and concept.

And at last...here is a picture of Erasmus for general "awws" and morale-boosting!

Shipwrecks and Ballads

I was listening my way through a playlist of Gordon Lightfoot's songs on YouTube when I ran across "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". This song reached out of my computer and grabbed me by the throat - as I type this, I think I've listened to it at least six times and am working on memorizing the lyrics.

I know I've heard of this wreck before, but I always assumed it had taken place at least a hundred years or so ago and on saltwater. I was shocked to discover it happened November 10, 1975 on Lake Superior. This is tremendously exciting because back in the spring 2005, I spent a week kayaking across the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior in order to run away from my thesis before my head exploded. The Outdoor Venture club at my college offered this kayaking trip and I was so stressed out from writing my thesis that I abandoned it to scamper off a vast, unknown land heavily peopled with bears, poison ivy, and more mosquitoes than any patch of earth has the right to commandeer.

Here I am in my fetching kayaking gear; note the jazzy pink wetsuit and the stylish blue spray skirt. I'm standing happily on a narrow spit of beach about 2:00 in the afternoon after a long day of paddling and after a week of eating dozens of energy bars, to the point that I won't be able to look at plastic wrapped food for a couple weeks. I'm covered with dozens of mosquito bites, about two gallons of sunscreen, and copious perspiration from a week of not bathing. My shoulders are screaming in pain, my hands are callused from the paddle, and I've been battling through 2-3 foot waves on choppy waters with a grey, vaguely ominous-looking sky overhead.

Little do I know that in a few hours, my entire fleet will encounter 6-7 foot waves that will toss us merrily about for several hours like toy boats in a hot tub until we finally push our way into a sheltered bay and collapse from exhaustion. This is, of course, after one of our members capsizes and two kayakers have to get him back on board in 50 degree water and vigorous waves. Note to all: when you tell God you are bored and want an adventure, he may drop you down in the middle of a storm at sea to concede to your wishes. Thankfully none of us drowned or froze, and the event became one of my best stories.    

For those of you who have yet to brave life and limb on Lake Superior, know that there is an official Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum and if that isn't strong enough testament of how capriciously hazardous journeying through those waters can be, I do not know. The Apostle Islands are nowhere near where the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, for that I am infinitely grateful because apparently the good ship encountered 35 foot swells during the last several hours before she sank. I shudder as I mentally try to picture standing on a ship and watching waves the size of a four story house roll towards me.

All of this is to say that ballads about ships, shipwrecks, trials at sea and others of that ilk are haunting, powerful, and alluring. Abney Park's "Aether Shanty" and "Wrath of Fate" put a wonderful twist on these types of songs by centering them on airships instead of marine ships. "Aether Shanty" gets my vote as the most masculine, stirring song I have ever encountered.

 
Hence, I have decided that I must write at least one ballad for the Horizon, something commemorating their adventures and struggles - Abney Park has "The Ballad of Captain Robert" so perhaps Gavin Roberts needs his own ballad too. So far, I am thinking that the Horizon needs a crew member who is musically inclined and pens a stirring, haunting airship ballad for the crew to sing as they pass the long hours in the air and when they are carousing in a local pub.

Writing this song should be an interesting endeavor, and I hope I can rise to the aspiration. I come from a casually musical family: Mom has an excellent voice and plays wonderful piano and guitar, and I grew up in a houseful of music. While us four kids don't possess a great deal of classical training, we all can dink around on the piano, sing well, and create goofy song lyrics on the spot. I have written dozens of songs for my Basset Hound, and last year Mom and I recorded a little Christmas album in a friend's basement.

However, writing a song entails both musical originality and versing skill, and I freely admit that my ability to write poetry and/or pack dense layers of meaning into a few verses is regrettably lacking. Now, give me an existing song or poem to parody, and I can spit out something clever and punchy when inspiration strikes. Starting with a tabla rasa is an entirely different matter, and currently I do not feel I have sufficiently grasped the essence of the Horizon and her story to write a suitable ballad. Perhaps after I have done some work on Book Two (tentatively entitled Opium Skies), the music writing muse will strike. For now, I will content myself to mentally chew over the matter and make subtle forays into the wild depths of creative inspiration.  

Tuesday, I set to work on Chapter 22, nowhere near my deadline of having all of Draft 2 done by the end of the month, but not daunted. Revising has been somewhat hampered by my return to the workforce; I've been waitressing the past month and will soon start a full-time job as a dispatch coordinator for a medical helicopter company. I eagerly anticipate learning an abundance of information about latitude, mapping, air conditions, and a multitude of other facts which will play excellently into writing my Airship Trilogy. I will be working 12 hour shifts alternating between a long week (5 shifts) and a short week (2 shifts). While I don't anticipate getting much writing done during my long weeks, my short weeks will offer days of glorious writing time and as a whole, I think this schedule will offer much more freedom than a regular 9-5.

While I am sad to have to give up writing full-time, I am exceedingly grateful for the three months I had where I was not working a job and could focus my attention fully on finishing Draft . I do strongly believe I will have Steam on the Horizon available by the end of February, and it's amazing how soon that date seems.

Despite the fact that I awoke a mere 11 hours ago, I find myself strangely fatigued. Bedtime!

Happy Wholidays!

Hello all and I hope your holidays were wonderful! Christmas day, I went sledding with my brothers for the first time in over a decade, watched my 2 year old nephew get run over by a sled, and locked my oldest brother out of the house. He came home at 2:30 am and was unable to enter the house due to having forgotten his keys, so he ended up sleeping inside the cab of his pickup inside the garage. Luckily, I had a sleeping bag inside the garage and he's a Marine, so he survived!

On the writing fronts, I don't think I will meet my deadline of having Draft 2 completed by the end of the month. Currently, I am editing Chapter 20 and with 11 more to go, the deadline will not be reached. However, I am making some great changes and cutting out an abundance of superfluous stuff that does not need to make an appearance in the final draft. Chapter 20 sees the Horizon entering the Crimean for the first time, and I am dropping her right into the action: she is with the aether flyer Horus and both airships are bringing a load of Enfield Pattern 1853 musket-rifles to the front lines. Due to the happy juxtaposition of history and authorial omnipotence, the two ships are flying directly into the September 19th siege of Sevastopol and have to make a tricky drop while guns and cannons are blazing around them.

Currently pages 164-165 have enormous scribbles and skulls all over them, which I take to mean that this particular section should be taken out and mercifully put out of its misery. Reading over it, I see why. Thankfully Draft 2 will be nowhere near the 170,000+ words that Draft 1 clocked in at, and I am excited to see what the final word count will be.

Tuesday, I had the pleasure of sitting down with some friends to watch the Christmas special of Dr. Who and am now fixated on replicating Clare's dress.

The dress has a gorgeous gathered bustle in the back, and Clare wears it with such elegance and splendor. When she first appeared on screen wearing this dress, all of us burst into rapturous coos of admiration. This would be a spectacular dress to steampunk - I see so many possibilities. However, I am so enraptured with River Song's character that I do not know if I could ever cosplay a different Dr. Who costume!

Back from the Unknown!

Hello all, I have been terribly negligent in my blogging lately, and I do apologize. In the past few weeks, I have started a waitressing gig which has consumed time and metal effort, and I have been plugging away at editing Draft 1 of Steam on the Horizon. The editing process is going well: I left off Chapter 14 this week before a cold claimed all my strength and focus. All 240+ pages of Draft 1 are liberally coated with crossing out marks, questions, comments, ideas, and an abundance of "Yuck". "Yuck" is my ever-handy, all-purpose word for "This section is ridiculous tripe that would have been better scribbled by a neurotic monkey. Please vigorously renovate said section until it is something approaching decent prose."

As I have read through the draft, I've realized I've not made Captain Roberts' character as consistent as it should be. Roberts is supposed to be a level-headed, intuitive thinker who does not anger or fluster easily. In sections, I have him reacting too harshly or quickly and I usually annotate these sections with "Calm down, Roberts". I also am recasting Victoria's background because since I am writing historical steampunk fiction, I am trying to better keep in mind the regulations and deprivations of women of the Victorian era. Originally I had Victoria tramping all over the world with a quasi-adopted brother named Jules as a companion, but I have decided to make Jules an actual blood brother of Victoria, plus changed some other aspects of Victoria's background to make her more consistent.

There is a terrific mess spanning about 30 pages and located halfway through the book that needs either heavy revision or exorcism  and I'm not sure quite yet what would best befit it. I will be approaching this section sometimes next week, and it will be a sticky mess to wade through, that I know.

My goal is to have Draft 1 revised into Draft 2 by the end of the month, where I will then hand it over to a couple loyal beta readers to get some feedback. So far, I feel that I am on track to have a published version ready by the end of February, so keep your fingers crossed!

Right now, I am looking for full-time work after realizing quickly that waitressing is unlikely to support a mortgage. My brother Seth told me about an interesting job as a medical helicopter coordinator which I think would tie in quite splendidly with my steampunk writing because the job would entail learning about things such as latitude and longitude. As I was writing the cover letter for my application, I considered working this in but decided that it would look a trifle unprofessional to say, "I'm writing a fantasy book about airships and this job would really help me learn more about how stuff flies." If I get an interview, I will try to bring it up, but I didn't think I could express this in a one-page cover letter without looking like a total dweeb. Hopefully by the end of the month I have secured either a full-time job or an offer of one because I am broke as a clock right now!

Yesterday, I had a lovely 33rd birthday party with some great friends, and steampunks were in abundance. The wonderful Matt M, operates his own antique and parts-selling business and this was his gift to me:

Yup, these are awesome! I can't wait to make stuff out of this. I was glad to see the larger gears too as these are generally pretty hard to find, When I take apart the watch, there should be some nice tiny gears in there too. Okay, what shall I build first?