Bookaholic Steampunk High
Got a delivery from Amazon yesterday for books that I can’t get on my Sony eReader. (WTF is up with that? I want all books, right here, right now!)
So much of my weekend will be spent wrapped up on the couch (or in my bedroom when football matches are on) surrounded with a pile of books. (It’s not that I can’t read during football matches… it’s that I can’t read when a certain Highlander is yelling at his favourite team, their manager, their fans, the idiot announcers on Sky Sports, etc.)
The new reading list is:
- The Anubis Gates – Tim Powers
- The Difference Engine – William Gibson
- Steampunk (Anthology)- editor: Ann VanderMeer
- The City & The City – China Mieville
- Barely Bewitched – Kimberly Frost
If you’re sensing a theme (in all but the last, which is the new sequel to a paranormal I read last year), that’s because I’ve decided to read into the Steampunk genre. I had an idea that I thought would work well as Steampunk, but most of what I know of it came from movies like The Golden Compass, Hellboy, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Wild Wild West, Stardust, Lemony Snicket, and memories of long-ago readings of Jules Verne…. not to mention dwarves on Warcraft. 
I decided that some genre background research was in order.
I’ve always loved Steampunk, but hadn’t run across the word until about 6 months ago. In fact, I used a similiar style when I designed a website for Swedish rocker Andreas Lundgren a couple years ago. I think I explained it to him as “gritty urban” or something. It’s probably just as well I didn’t know the term Steampunk back then, because I would have found it hard to explain how, and it might have restricted my creativity to slap a label on it.
Right now I have a one page synopsis of the book (working title: Dominion), and I hope to expand that to an outline this week. I’m not giving up on any of my other projects, but I felt inspired and I know better than to ignore that feeling when it comes. Plus my characters in Wildings needed some time to cool off (they’re still pissed at me).
So, question for you! What’s the last thing you worked on/did that stretched you?
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Looks like some great reading. Good luck with the plotting, always my favourite bit of writing.
[ Follow me on Twitter: danpowfiction ]
I’ve been curious about what steakpunk actually is. This post helps. I think it’s great to work in different genres and important to stretch. For me, writing a mystery has been a challenge. Coming from a non-fiction background, it’s been a challenge to write any of the fiction I do, really. But I love it. Good luck with your WIP.
[ Follow me on Twitter: molliebryan ]
You will probably need some more books.
The World Cup is about to start.
I just bought a steampunk book: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. Hopefully I’ll like it and if I do, I’ll check out some of the books you just bought.
I might pick up Leviathan to read, although I doubt I will write any steampunk.
And you worked on a site for Andreas Lundgren? That’s really cool!
[ Follow me on Twitter: alexjcavanaugh ]
The research for my last book really stretched me – I knew nothing of basketball!
My son liked Leviathan, but I haven’t read it yet. I haven’t read much steampunk yet.
I like your question. Last winter, I wrote something that I didn’t even know what to do with so I left it for another year, and only looked at it again this spring. I needed to learn more about writing to figure out how to make it better and be confident in the story I wanted to tell. Now it’s almost ready to see the light of day (ie: query).
I decided to stretch myself a while ago by writing steampunk – I’m currently revising it. It’s a fun genre!
[ Follow me on Twitter: jemifraser ]
I love the research phase of a book…recently did alot of research into the Amish lifesytle and religion for my latest novel, now I think maybe i should just write a non-fiction about the Amish rather than a novel surrounding them. (I got a bit carried away!)
Thanks for the definition of steampunk. I sort of thought it was like that, but didn’t have the right words.
Helen
Straight From Hel
[ Follow me on Twitter: MermaidHel ]
Q: Where’d you attend school?
A: Bookaholic Steampunk High. You?
[ Follow me on Twitter: girlfrenkate ]
Now that sounds like an awesome place to go to High School, GirlFren!
[ Follow me on Twitter: IndiaDrummond ]
Glad I read the word Steampunk here for the first time, I would’ve let my imagination run wild in another context!
hi
Oh I too have only been very recently acquainted with the steampunk genre/label while participating in a blog review thing – a book gets passed round blogs, you read and review along the way. I remember reading the wikepedia description of the word and going “Ahhhh!”.
I hope you had a great time reading all your lovely books! It’s so great that you’re inspired to write your synopsis (I hate writing taglines, synopsis, blurbs only because I’m completely RUBBISH at them!). Anyway!
The last thing I worked on that stretched me? My latest blog post! Only because I’m expiring from my nasty cold and was seriously about to die – head first down on the keyboard as – I typed. LOL!
Take care
x
Firstly, answering the question posed at the end of the post: it’s never the stuff I think will be hard that turns out to gut-punch me. The seemingly simple, everyday little things always ends up more complex than they have any right to be, while the massive and interconnected things seem to fall into place. Happy coincidences, possibly, but I’ll take whatever I can get. It’s not that I’m deliberately placing the connections in, they seem to grow. Organically.
The other end of the spectrum is things which seem easy. The minuscule bits of business which have no real inherent complexity, but which manifest their dark and tangled nature only when I step back and see them for what they truly are. The “simple” writing I do normally takes me the most time and effort, precisely because their simplicity is deceptively shallow.
[ Follow me on Twitter: BigWords88 ]
I’ve gone through a similar situation to yourself in that my novel (which I am now well into writing) clearly fits into the Steampunk category (airships, mechanical men, etc) yet I wasn’t that familiar with the core of the genre, the closest I’ve been is the examples you’ve given – His Dark Materials, etc.
I did sit down and put together a steampunk reading list (you may also want to look at Whitechapel Gods and Boneshaker btw) and then decided to not read any of them. My fear being that once I’d read a few I’d begin falling into the “rules” of the genre and change what was I going to write to fit, so instead I’m hoping my naivety will result in something fresh and more me.
Here’s hoping I don’t finish and then discover everything I’ve written had already been done before!