Circuits & Steam

The Steampunk World’s Fair

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Steampunk Welsh Corgi

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This girl’s costume is beautiful! She’s already hooked on a kids’ supernatural book by my fellow author, K.A. Davur!

This weekend was a whirlwind road trip to the Steampunk World’s Fair in New Jersey.  Armed with 3 bags of snack food and 16 bottles of Powerade, Zak and I made the 11.5 hour drive through thunderstorms and hail and mountains, but arrived safely and met up with the rest of the gang at the 3 Fates Press tent.  Saw some incredible costumes, but unfortunately only got a couple of photos (including this fantastically cute and well-mannered steampunk corgi!) because I was otherwise too preoccupied with selling books!  I’m sorry, but the whole world stops when a cute animal walks by.  We sold out of our anthology, Circuits and Steam, before the end of the day (it will now only be available in electronic format), and Erica Flynn was selling itself by the evening.  Cutting up with my fellow authors, my cover artist (a.k.a. boyfriend), and my publisher was a blast!  My own costume was sadly lacking, compared to the other attendees, but at least it was comfortable!  Unfortunately, I didn’t take any selfies, so I can’t post my combat-boots-and-khakis style “steampunk lite” outfit.

Thankfully, the drive back contained no major storms or sliding down a mountain grade on marble-sized ice, so we actually got to enjoy the beautiful scenery through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia on our way back to Kentucky.

Next weekend, May 24-25, Erica Flynn will be much closer to home, at the Howard Steamboat Museum’s Art and Antique Jubilee (a free event in Jeffersonville, Indiana!)  Whether I will be there in person or not depends on how far along I am with arrangements for my departure to my archaeological field school in Spain next week!  Even if I don’t make it to the Jubilee, 3 Fates Press will be there with copies of the book.  I can promise many pictures and stories about the field school experience will appear on this blog in June, after my return!

Somewhere gorgeous in Maryland or Pennsylvania, I’m not sure which

Catching Up With Fiction

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So I’ve made it through another school year, and have over 250 pages of essays and notes to show for it.  As usual when I don’t have time to write fiction, I’ve been missing the process of putting together stories, settings, and characters – but they say a variety of types of writing is good practice.  I know for a fact that my expository writing has improved this semester, and connecting ideas and maintaining pacing  is important in either style.  Now that it’s summer, I’m so excited about the chance to get back to fiction that I can’t decide which project to work on!

Not that my summer is going to be much less busy than the school year…for the next few weeks, I’m doing book events, hopefully getting some editing work, and preparing for my archaeological field school.  Then I head off to Spain for 3 weeks to help excavate a Celtic Iron Age necropolis (stay tuned for updates on that!)  When I get back, I’ll (*fingers crossed!*) have a job waiting – plus more book events and independent research for my senior honors thesis for next year.  Not that I’m complaining, mind you!

Still, it’s high time to make time to write.  I’ve got a sequel for Erica Flynn to work on, a follow-up story to my steampunk/cyberpunk short story for 3 Fates Press’ anthology (Circuits & Steam) and a series of other interconnected post-apocalyptic short stories to go along with it,  and a prequel story to King Kong.  I feel like a kid in a candy store just thinking about all these projects!