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Month: January 2012

Since you asked … How I define Steampunk

Post Views: 3,534 Recently on Twitter, someone asked me “How would you define #steampunk?”. I’ve sort of answered this question over the span of two or three author interviews on different blog sites, but I’m going to summarize and condense it all in one place. First, I want to get “politics” out of the way. To me the best way to define Steampunk is by inclusion. I prefer to be inclusive; it’s all Steampunk, unless we all agree that it isn’t. Don’t tell me this isn’t Steampunk. It might not be -your- Steampunk, but that’s okay. This is -my- take on Steampunk. It is what I understand based on what I see the fans and advocates at Cons, concerts and meets talking about as cool. Now that we’re…

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The Sauder Diaries On Six Sunday – 26 Jan 2012

Post Views: 699 This weeks “Six Sunday” contribution is from the as yet unreleased second book in “The Sauder Diaries”, titled “A Bloodier Rose“. From “The Sauder Diaries – A Bloodier Rose”: The constable broke into a broad grin at the Spaniard and then glanced back at the men with him. A round of silent nods and smiles were passed. A few men went ahead on foot shouting for the street to be cleared, while the constable and his second rode to either side of the young couple’s carriage. The remaining men rode one to each side of a cart, and one officer behind. This brought the total of the procession to eight pirate officers on horseback, two engaged love birds in a carriage, twelve armed pirates driving six loaded wagons…

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The Sauder Diaries On Six Sunday – Jan 22

If you’re not familiar with “Six Sentence Sunday”, swing over to http://www.sixsunday.com/and take a look. Its a great idea; dozens of authors submitting the punchiest six lines out of existing or soon-to-arrive stories. Browse them; see what hooks you.

From “The Sauder Diaries – By Any Other Name“:

In spite of the fact that the Bloody Rose had been the victor in the battle with the French air-frigate Triomphe, it had not been bought without cost. Two dozen of her Gunner-Marines had died during the battle and in its aftermath. Half of those had died in the initial exchange of cannon fire between the two ships. The French gunners had been targeting the gun decks in an attempt to defang the Bloody Rose as quickly as possible.
Using Koblinski’s definition of wounded – any battle injury that caused a crewman to be unable to stand at least one watch in the day – almost 80% of the surviving crew had been wounded to some degree. Both Annika and Arietta were technically wounded, but insisted on remaining on their feet and doing their jobs.

Want to win a copy?  Enter the raffle:

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My thoughts on a first manuscript and an editor

Post Views: 370 Recently a friend of mine — who is both and editor and a writer — published a piece on her blog about the need for every author to have a good editor.  I have also seen a lot of Tweets from a variety of editors-for-hire whose sales tactic seems to be to imply I’m an incompetent writer who, for a suitable sum of money, they can rescue from literary oblivion. I’m not sold on either point.  I am going to be unpopular here and say that I know too many editors who don’t ask one simple question… “what are you trying to do?” Allow me to be gauche and talk about my current novel, “The Sauder Diaries – By Any Other Name“.   I had two different…

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We’re still online, but SOPA/PIPA could change that

Post Views: 462 As you may have heard, today many websites around world and across the Internet are “blacking out” in protest of the USA SOPA & PIPA bills. You can check the list of who is participating in the “SOPA Strike” if you like, but JKL5 is not one of them. I wish to be clear that we are staying online today because of our commitment to servicing our customers, not because we support SOPA/PIPA. In fact, if these bills pass, we will be put in a position of being shut down. How so, you might ask? JKL5 is a Canadian company that specializes in Asterisk/ VOIP systems integration for telephony, small business “hands-on” web hosting, and, of course, Persony conference server hosting. You might think that…

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Book Review: Mina’s Daughter…The Harker Chronicles

Post Views: 159 Mina’s Daughter…The Harker Chronicles- Volume 1 S.L. Schmitz (Author) 8 pages $0.99, Amazon Mina’s Daughter…The Harker Chronicles- Volume 2 S.L. Schmitz (Author) 12 pages $0.99, Amazon Mina’s Daughter…The Harker Chronicles- Volume 3 S.L. Schmitz (Author) 13 pages $0.99, Amazon The opening scene drops you in, feet first, into literary cold water. Three young ladies are out for a picnic in Regent’s Park and a large example of Canis Lupus drops in for tea. And then things get weird. The writing in the opening scene is loaded with well paced pieces of detail that frame the time, place and culture of the story within just a few paragraphs. At the same time, they are never overwhelming or distracting from the flow the story. It is rapidly established…

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