I mentioned in a previous missive my reentry into the Royal Road community, where writers dash off chapters for free, sometimes over the span of years, hashing out webnovels.
Some of these become quite popular and gain adoring Patreon fans who pay for early access to the works in progress. Other novels have turned into Amazon bestsellers, with their kinks worked out online ahead of time.
I have some history there, since my series Pirates of the Milky Way originated as a webnovel. Even though it never pulled in much Patreon support, I had a lot of fun writing the series while engaging in an ongoing dialogue with readers.
This time around, Steamworld is the working title for a steampunk sci-fi mashup. An Army sergeant from our future ends up transported to an alternate reality where the great powers still exist, a sort of Victorian England with some intriguing differences.
Writing steampunk has been refreshing, as someone who cut their teeth on fantasy and space opera. Steampunk has technology, but of course it’s typically steam-powered tech. That does not mean it’s limited, necessarily. In this world, air travel (via dirigibles, of course) is commonplace. They also have the best that vacuum tube electronics can offer, such as telephones, wireless and so forth.
There are also killer robots. Now, Victorian England did not have killer robots, it’s true. But such are the wonders of an alternate reality that they could exist. How does a killer robot move about on steam power and shoot at our heroes? Ah, well. It would take too long to explain here. Let us just say that steam engines combined with vacuum tube circuit boards can accomplish quite a bit when mad scientists put their minds to it.
When the sky’s the limit, primitive electronics are no barrier. We have bombing raids and aerial dogfights with the dirigibles, not to mention airborne troops. Or, more precisely, enhanced robots that can simply be dropped over parts of the city without parachutes.
Another nice thing about steampunk: nobody looks askance at a little magic thrown in. We have super computers (vacuum tube based, of course) that can pull people over from other worlds (at least when they’re in virtual reality). We have steam vaults to explore, guarded by mud golems. And of course health potions. Lots and lots of health potions.
If you’d like to see how this book is progressing, jump over to Royal Road and take a look while it’s free. It’s sitting on about 125,000 words, with new chapters posted daily, or near daily. If you make an account there you can leave comments on the things you like, or don’t like as the case may be.
I also wanted to share with readers that Clarion’s Call, Book 2 in Pirates of the Milky Way, is free for a few days. Books 1 and 3 are at 99 cents.
I'll take a look at. Interesting as I had a great twitter discussion with mutuals , some who are published authours. My perspective is steampunk is it's artificial. There only 2 that've done it right Philip Ligon and a French comic Le Régulateur. Too many writer fixate on the golly gee technology without making it organic. In any case, I take a look at yours and check out the worldbuilding😁 xavier