Guest Post with SteamFest Host Phoebe Darqueling

Hi everyone,

Last year, as part of a kickstarter, I helped Phoebe Darqueling as a backer for her Steamfest Gazette, a kind of traveling news magazine that visits different Steampunk Conventions. She’s an awesome person, and I’m so glad I get to share this interview with you as part of our blog swap for my Steel Praetorian blog tour! The rest of the interview is beyond the break!

 

I am also going to coordinate a collaborative Steampunk novel in 2017 so I am working now recruiting writers for the project. In a nutshell, 3-5 writers will make an attempt at a new chapter in the story every week December-August and I’ll get to choose my own adventure by selecting the chapter that moves the story along the best. Writers get access to chapter summaries, character bios, and prompts to help them along the way, and at the end there’s a unique piece of fiction written by at least 30 people.

I’ll admit, I’m a little embarrassed by the size of my current to-be-read pile… but I did start Iron Tribune earlier this fall and I hope to get back to it soon. The most recent book I finished was Jules Verne’s Master of the World, and before that was Eterna Files by Leanna Renee Hieber.

Hands down, for me it’s about the freedom of imagination. The most powerful words in any creative person’s arsenal will always be “what if..?” I feel like Steampunk adds such an amazing amount of whimsy into the world; I just can’t get enough!

Mistress of None is my second major fiction project, and I’m working hard to use dialog effectively, especially as a means for exposition and to avoid the dreaded info-dump. My main character is surly but lovable, which also makes writing her witty banter with both her friends and her enemies really fun.

Music with a driving beat

Muting Facebook and Twitter notifications

Something to eat within arm’s reach or I will get into the zone and forget to even eat breakfast until late afternoon.

I love all the eye candy at Steampunk conventions but I tend to be a bit more low-key in what I personally wear. That being said, I think it would be really fun to gender-swap a hero like Flash Gordon or Batman.

Just this weekend I made a lot of great new memories, but one of the sessions at TeslaCon will always stick with me. 35 years ago, a man recovered 150 films that had been sitting in a basement for decades. The newest of the films came out in 1908. Many of them had only just been converted to a digital format in the past few months and we got to be the first people outside of the museum world to see them. It was AMAZING.

I’ve been very slowly teaching myself the Adobe creative suite, so if that whole thing could just get dumped into my brain that would be awesome. Otherwise, I’d want to gain a martial art ala The Matrix.