Season's Greetings from BookViewCafe.com

To celebrate the New Year, Book View Cafe is offering a free gift to its registered users. On January 1, 2010 for one day only "The Accumulating Man," by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, from THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY: Tales of the Steam Age Vol. I will be available for free at http://www.bookviewcafe.com  Go look!  Registration with Book View Cafe is free, so you can become a new member, if you aren't one already, and read Maya's wonderful story.

We did it! The Shadow Conspiracy went live this morning! It’s a shared world steampunk anthology, and it was a blast to write. My story “The Soul Jar” is a part of it. Go check it out!

You can find it at Amazon’s Kindle store at http://www.amazon.com/The-Shadow-Conspiracy-ebook/dp/B002YD8BWK or at Book View Cafe: http://www.bookviewcafe.com/ in a variety of e-formats. No DRM.

You can read a sample story from the anthology at http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/News/A-Princess-of-Wittgenstein .

The cover blurb reads:

In the Year Without a Summer, a group of mad geniuses descended on Geneva. In an attempt to save the body and mind of George Byron, they performed a dreadful and forbidden experiment that forever changed history—and tore their own lives apart.
( Read more... )

I got to see a preview of an illustration for my story "The Soul Jar," which will appear in the upcoming anthology THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY.  The illo is pretty cool!  Mechanical spiders and a ringmaster done as . . . I don't know how to describe the style.  Art shapes?  Anyway, I like it.

This looks neat! SF/F book publisher Tor is holding a steampunk costume photography contest.  (Can I have the watch? Even though I don't do costuming?)  Full details at:

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58075

Prize 1 starts off with a $50 gift certificate to Clockwork Couture, the first and best clothier devoted exclusively to steampunk fashion, where you can purchase countless gorgeous costuming elements for ladies and gents.

The first prize also comes with one bottle of a perfume oil blend from the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Phoenix Steamworks collection, a series of scents designed to represent the steampunker within us even when we’re in jeans and a t-shirt. The crucial question: do you want to smell more like The Antikythera Mechanism or The Obsidian Widow?

Prize 2 is two passes to the The Steampunk World’s Fair, which will be held on the weekend of May 14th, 2010, in Piscataway, New Jersey. The World’s Fair is the first major steampunk convention in the Northeast and promises an absurd array of retrofuturistic delights, including a Chrononaut’s Jubilee Ball, the Cup of Brown Joy Tea Party, a Murder Mystery Dinner, a Cabaret, a Gentleman’s Duel, a Mad Science Fair, and maybe even a Steampunk Rock Opera.

The winner of Prize 2 will also get a 5ml bottle of Phoenix Steamworks perfume.

Prize 3 is a ridiculously gorgeous “gold” Victorian/Steampunk-style watch. It has a filigree front; a clear back, so you can see the gears at work; and a glow-in-the-dark face to illuminate your nefarious business.

And—you guessed it—the winner of Prize 3 will also get a bottle of Phoenix Steamworks perfume.

And what about us honorable mentions? Each person who receives an honorable mention will also get a scent of their choice from the Phoenix Steamworks perfume line.

Rewrote the synopsis for the steampunk book based on writer group input, then rewrote chapter one of the same book.  Now on to chapter two!

Just finished the rough synopsis for a new novel, a steampunk book.  Ohhhh, I do like this one.  I like all the ones I write, but this one is massively cool.  It even impressed Aran.  He leaned over my shoulder and asked, "What kind of book are you writing?"

"It's called steampunk," I said.  "It has giant robots in it.  And zombies."

"Coooool!" he said.

Massively cool!