"Amongst the rusting towers of Overthink, the insidious creature waited..."

 

For the last three months I've been working on my submission for the upcoming Steampunk Shakespeare anthology, 'The Omnibus of Bill Shakes and the Magnificent Iambic Pentatetrameter'.

 

I've written, edited it, re-edited it. I've sent it to friends and family; English professors-in-waiting to penny bag hawkers. The feedback's been mostly positive, some  of it…

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Here I am, wrestling with this short story. I am adapting Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra into a Weird Western, Steampunk world. The themes of Shakespeare meld perfectly with Steampunk... the worlds of Rome vs. Egypt parallel sweetly the rigidity of Victorian sensibilities clashing with the wild lawless debauchery of the American west. Cleo is the typical antiestablishment, anti-heroine who thumbs her nose at those self-righteous smug poofs, and rail against being…

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Characters are the motive force behind any good story. You can have the most amazing plot, world building, write the snappiest dialogue and…

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"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." --George Orwell, 1984

If we are to believe what George Orwell has said about living in the present to rule over the past and the future, then the present he speaks of is definitely not the age we are in, one where the current fashion is dominated by styles from at least two decades ago, or where cellphones have applications in the likes of Hipstamatic that digitally modify… Continue

Some of the favorite drugs and medicines that Old West/Victorian doctors had to choose from...

 

Laudanum: Tincture* of opium, for relief of pain and inflammation.

 

Ipecac: Preparation made from dried roots of a South American creeping plant, used as an emetic**.

 

Jalap: Tuberous root of a Mexican plant, used as a…

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I think the big idea, or high concept, of a story is one of the most important things for an aspiring writer to…

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Bell, Alice R. (2009). The anachronistic fantastic: Science, progress and the child in ‘post-nostalgic’ culture. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12(1), 5-22.



Steampunk and children have already been discussed in two previous posts, one analyzing an article by Pike (“Buried Pleasure”) and the other by Nevins (“… Continue

Pike, David L. (2011). Buried Pleasure: Doctor Dolittle, Walter Benjamin, and the Nineteenth-Century Child. MODERNISM/modernity, 4, 857-875.

 

Everyone knows that searching on a keyword will often pull up less-than-applicable results. This article turned up when I hunted on "steampunk" in the academic databases, yet it only mentions the word several times, in one paragraph and a figure at the end. I will cite the passage in full:

The…

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Hooks, for those of you who don't write, are the bits at the beginning of a book designed to reel in a prospective reader, agent or editor. If you've ever picked up a book in the store, read the first page and decided on the spot that you had to buy that book you've experienced a well written… Continue

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Written and directed by Kevin Eslinger, Nickel Children is the first in a new Steampunk series set in a surreal environment that is an alchemy of H.G. Wells and Deadwood.

Eslinger's confidant direction brings to bear a fully-developed alternate universe  that is underscored by Keith Stacey's spare…

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