See the video at the Coal City Steam blog: http://wp.me/pDibz-6C

Praise is rolling in from around the Steampunk community. Here is what some early reviewers are saying:

“St. John Murphy Alexander, ‘Her Majesty’s Explorer,’ is literature’s most charming mechanical man since L. Frank Baum’s Tin Man.” ~ Jim BarnesIndependent Publisher.

“I just finished reading Her Majesty’s explorer to Chloe (9 years old) and 1Isabella (just 6). They both loved it, and both wished they could have their very own Steamduck.” ~ Captain Robert of Abney Park.

“Utterly charming.” ~ M.K. Hobson, Steampunk novelist.

“The story is simple and cute with a natural sense of adventure winding down to serenity making it perfect for bedtime.” ~ TotusMel’s WunderKammer.com

“Absolutely charming.  It is the Dr. Seuss of Steampunk, and… I LOVED it.” ~ DJ Doctor Q, The Artifice Club

About the book Her Majesty’s Explorer: a Steampunk bedtime story -
It’s a dirty job, but he loves it.

St.John Murphy Alexander walks the world exploring for the Queen. He sees the most extraordinary landscapes, creatures and weather. He gets very, VERY dirty. Exhausted, he returns to HQ and gets ready for a well deserved rest and some sweet dreams.

This gentle book, written by Steampunk novelist Emilie P. Bush and brilliantly illustrated by William Kevin Petty, is the perfect wind-down for your little adventurer.

The book, to be released on February 28^th (exclusively through Amazon.com and at a deeply discounted price on the launch date), features an automaton explorer who loves his work, even though it makes him very tired and dirty. As a bonus, an additional bonus tale “Three Cheers for Steamduck” is included in the full color book.

“It’s something totally new,” Bush says. “In the vast body of Steampunk literature, picture books have been totally left out. Her Majesty’s Explorer not only fills that void, it overflows it with joy and wonder. Kevin and I are really pleased to have had the opportunity to work on this project.”

###

About the Author: Journalist and writer Emilie P. Bush has written two novels. Her first, Chenda and the Airship Brofman, was a “ripping good yarn!” and the tale was a 2010 Semi-finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The Gospel According to Verdu picks up the epic tale where Chenda left off – high in the skies. Emilie P. Bush lives, laughs and writes with her family in Atlanta.

About the Illustrator: William Kevin Petty is the founder of Allied Aethernautics, LTD., a Steampunk illustration company and specializes in exceptionally detailed pencil sketches and acrylic paintings. His work has appeared in Steampunk Magazine and across the web. Capt. Petty, when he is not deployed with the U.S. Army, lives and draws in central Louisiana.

“If torrenting was called ‘mooching’ instead of ‘piracy’ I think less people would do it. I mean, Jesus, pirates are COOL.”

- Caustic, Industrial Musician

Real-life sea pirates were nothing like the dashing anti-heroes we see in the movies. There were few swashbuckling rogues amid the ranks of seaborne murderers and thieves.

So, let’s not sugarcoat things. Illegally downloading music is theft. It’s a crime. Putting aside intellectual property and copyright violations, perhaps its greatest offense is the devaluation of an artist’s hard work.

This “mooching” has been in the news quite a bit due to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), failed legislative attempts driven by major record labels to defend their empires against music piracy. Had they gone into effect, these laws would have potentially damaged Internet commerce, threatened freedom of speech, and still failed to accomplish their goals.

Plenty of airtime was spent covering piracy’s effects on major labels and their artists. Where do the independent artists—the ones who make up the majority of steampunk music—fall into the mix?

Ten steampunk musicians volunteered their input for this article. In a modern world where their anachronistic art can be swiped with a mouse click, how do they find their music careers affected by a growing demographic that prefers to acquire its music rather than purchase it?

Read the rest of this important article at The Steampunk Chronicle

Eyes will burn. And they will at least see. We save them all.

The Preacher promised his people in the land that forgot its name that no enemy ship will chug over their cities. They shall be protected.

Doctor Faust remembered that last speech over the wireless, as he sat in the Pink Chipmunk, sipping a glass of wood alcohol and clutching the notice-of-death telegram in his hand. Explosions rattled the building. He covered his drink  to keep it free of falling dust. He didn’t recall his walk from the Ministry or even entering the cabaret.

Poison Sumac leaned over the table, posed her cigarette holder pert in her painted rosy lips. She leaned her leg on the table side, exposed through the split in her midnight satin gown, showing her garter strap.

“Got a light, Herr Doctor?” she said.

He scanned the showroom of the humble club. The tables waited empty, their candles dead. Only he, the drag queen and the record player patronized the cabaret. The third guest sung Marlena Dietrich in a dull drone, skipping on the record scratches.

The mechanism in Faust’s mechanical leg wheezed, playing background to Marlena. He’d lost it in the early bombings of the war.

Never releasing the sallow telegram, Doctor Faust turned the crank on the side of his gas lighter, held the silver flare to the performer’s smoke.

“I adore a gentleman,” the drag queen said, sucking in the miasma then blowing the acrid smoke in a thin spout from her puckered lips. Faust’s stomach twisted from the ersatz cigarette, rife with chemicals, sulfur, tar, maybe a hint of tobacco.

“I don’t know how you managed to get tobacco with a war on,” Doctor Faust said.

“A lady has her ways,” Sumac said.

The high notes of her feminine voice dropped at the end of her sentence, reflecting the deep roots of her vocal cords.

The showroom of the Pink Chipmunk trembled after another detonation. Photos of guests and previous drag queens who once graced the stage rattled, some slipping from their nails and cracking on the floor. The pink flame from the gas spouts flickered.

“All my lovely boys are at the front,” the transvestite said. “My lovely lovely boys coming back missing bits and pieces, limbs blown up, stumps and gouges. Still my lovely lovely boys.”

She paused for another explosion to play out, this time closer. They listened to the grumbling of a low flying steamfly. It’s boiler sputtered and chugged.

“I had such a fine man you know,” Sumac said, putting her leg up on a chair and leaning on her knee. Leg stubble grew back up her shin, piercing the worn, white stockings. Everyone had to make do. “My man is coming home, stomach full of lead, won’t open his eyes. Not much good now.”

She blew another smoke stream into Doctor Faust’s austere mug—skin so tight down his forehead and cheeks, it looked ready to split. In the dull, gas lighting of the club, his eyes drained of any color, all the life long since fled. He removed his spectacles and rubbed the lenses with a handkerchief. He sipped his drink.

“My son comes home today,” Doctor Faust said. “He so wanted me to be proud.”

His mechanical leg sputtered. He reached below the table, pulled up his pant leg and tightened a copper coil. A vapor stream released from the exhaust pipe, burning his palm. He didn’t flinch, didn’t pull his hand back by reflex. It felt like a tale of pain told to him by a stranger.

“Coming home by ship?” Sumac said.

“In a box.”

“He has my congratulations,” Poison Sumac said, pulling up her stockings. Their thin fabric couldn’t conceal the masculine design of her thigh muscles. Her short dress bounced. “He’s won. Victorious. Gone and gone. No more pain for him. Isn’t that the purse? The kitty?”

Doctor Faust slurped the rest of his drink then slammed it down on the table, cracking the crystal.

“You must break the rigor mortis,” she said. “Don’t you see? It’s all a comedy. This war will never end. Our fearless leader lives by this war. To make peace would be to die.”

Doctor Faust searched the room to ensure they were alone. Such words would quickly have them both sucking down volts in a static throne.

“He sorted paperwork at the Ministry of Defense, exempt from conscription,” he said. “Only joined the army because I told him it was his duty. I couldn’t tell him how proud I was. I always made him fight for it, held it over his head just out of reach.”

Sumac set her leg down, leaned over and kissed Doctor Faust, clutching his jowls in her gloved hands. She tasted of skunk stink, the residual smoke flowing into Faust’s mouth.

“You are a skilled surgeon from what I read before your disgrace,” she said, still holding his cheeks. Her furry, left eyebrow slipped its glue and dangled from her forehead. “Why not sew up all the holes, make your son all pretty?”

“No animation. No life. He is not a ragdoll. Not a toy.”

“Life is merely a little extra spice. He’s better off without it.”

The walls shook from more local explosions.

“I cannot think,” Doctor Faust said.

Visions of his son invaded the clarity of the doctor’s cogitations: Wilhelm’s body shredded by shrapnel, burned by poison gas. The body sinks into the mud, forgotten. A flock of doves land in the trench and peck and chew at his flesh. The vision shattered his mind.

“Darling, come with me.” Poison Sumac extended her gloved hand.

Weak in will, an evaporating oil puddle, Doctor Faust took it. Sumac lead him thrown the torn, burgundy curtains hanging over the small stage to a backroom of ropes, curtains, pyramid props from previous shows.

Poison Sumac took off her wig of silvery curls, revealing her shaved head. Without the wig, her feminine delusion thinned with the evidence of his angular nose and stern brow.

“You need a little ragtime, darling,” she said. “You’ll be dead when you’re still sucking down oxygen. Makes you so cold you strip down naked to banish any heat.”

Sumac wrapped her arms around the old Doctor’s shoulders, pressed him down on his knees, rubbing the worn tweed on his knees further into holes. She tapped on his head.

“Don’t go away now,” she said. She swayed off then returned pushing a cart, ferrying a child’s coffin. It looked miniaturized like comedy prop, a coffin from a little world. She set it on the floor in front of him and opened the latch. She held out her palm.

“Ragtime isn’t free.”

He fished the wallet out of his tweed jacket, slipped a few bills into her hand. She blew him a kiss.

“A wealthy man, older, owns his own business, knows how to take care of a lady,” she said. “I just might have to marry you.”

She pulled the alembic components from the coffin, setting them on the floor between them. She attached the silver pipes to cast iron balls, opened the valves, set to work building the boiler and pipe venue in the coffin. She attached a central bong and placed it on a stand.

“Another light?”

Doctor Faust cranked his liter and ignited the burner beneath the bong.

Sumac slipped a leather bag from a concealed pouch in her dress bust. She held it before his eyes.

“Essence of life—the passage to death. I am your priest. Do you accept?”

“He trusted me,” Faust said.

“Ground from the dried frontal lobes of our war dead, neurotransmitters regulated in small dosages—too much and madness, addiction. The gift of the gods, a taste of paradise, but only a taste so you’re desperate for more. Will you drink the wine of the dead?”

“I drink in the name of my son, for Wilhelm Faust.”

She fed the crimson powder into the boiler and flipped several valves. The fluid in the bong popped and sputtered and buzzed. The pipes expanded from the pressure. Sumac worked the gears, a master at her craft. She let the alembic boil and cook.

“My poor disgraced physician,” she said. “Not even the war office wants your madness.”

She folded back his pant leg. She ran her finger along the aluminum, moaning as she fondled the gears and wheels and springs, smearing her hand in oil.

“Your handiwork?” the drag queen asked.

“That’s the only reason the ministry doesn’t toss me in the Tower. I craft replacement parts for our soldiers. I own a company. This is an advanced model, doesn’t require a boiler attachment to power it. I’d build more for the wounded, but the Ministry won’t shell out the extra money. There’s a war on, they say.”

She pulled the final piece from a compartment in the coffin bottom. The silver mask glowed in the dull light from the gas wall sconces. A hollow shaft ran from the lips. She attached it to the bong.

“Wear this face over your mask.”

“Anoint me,” said the good doctor.
She pressed the cool metal to his face, a perfect fit in the contour of its cheeks and brow and chin. She wrapped a leather strap from the edges around his head and tightened it in a buckle. The metal cut the circulation from his face.

“A sacrifice,” she said. “It burns away the tadpoles of your taste buds, but you’ll no longer care. Food will do little to satiate you after your first dose.”

She set her hand on the steam release valve.

“Trust me?” the transvestite said.

“Of course not.”

She twirled the valve. A jet of boiling vapor shot up the shaft, striking Doctor Faust in his mouth. He yelled from the searing steam, burning away the mucus membrane, his gums, the surface of his tongue and roasting his throat. Then the pain assuaged.

He floated, bobbing in low, ocean waves. The doors in his head opened simultaneous. Circuits connected. Valves turned. The vivacious essence of his thought in synergy with the plasma of his soul flowed in pleasurable current to the muddy parts of his mind.

“The fog lifts?” said Sumac.

“Ja! I am a god.”

She grinned, pleased that she’d poisoned another mind. She worked her art with pride, pleased to unleash her chaos into a world obsessed with spurious order.

“Ja darling. You are Anubis, the jackal.”

When the high court had stripped his medical license, had decreed him a monster, a hack for his work, Doctor Faust buried the files of his reanimation research in his mind’s cellar. The boiling steam pouring into his blood cracked its hinges. It could be done. It must be done. This is why he’d been woman born, sent to this world to save the savages from death, to lead them on the road to divinity.

“Now I understand why my son had to die,” he said.

“You’re going to cover the world in darkness,” she said. “I must love you.”

“All the equipment is still in my home, the cathedral. With sound, vibration I will renew, invigorate. I will tell him how proud I am, how wrong I was. He will wrap his hands around my neck and kiss my cheeks. I will make him immortal.”

She clapped like a child, pleased by the clowns in the show.

“How terribly cruel,” she said.

The transvestite wrapped her legs around his waist, pulled up her dress. Doctor Faust panted from the ragtime. Swamp sweat drenched skin, soaked his tweed pants and jacket.

“Drill a hole in me. Fill me with your insanity.”

Doctor Faust wore the silver mask as they made love.

***

Across the broken road in the low south end of the city, Doctor Faust watched a lithe lady, long in limb in shadow spirit, dancing in the jaundiced light of the gas lamps. He gazed upon the shadow puppet twirling on the surface of the brick buildings, watching through the shattered torso of a silvery-blue angel, depicted in the stained glass portals of the derelict cathedral.

The price of the vaulted, stone castle had come cheap after the Preacher’s faith had been named the state’s. Many of the grand buildings had been torn down to make way for cheap apartments. At night, Doctor Faust would stare up to the arches holding high the marble buttresses, now the nest of bats and fouler night things, and he’d marvel in nature’s perfection, the arch bearing its load without a whimper, devised and set to a purpose by a mathematician’s rites.

The enemy ships exhausted their bombs an hour since, leaving the streets in an orange glow from buildings burning like torches. Crews fought with mechanized pumps to suck the oxygen from the fires, depriving them of sustenance, but the city continued to burn.

When at last the dancer’s shadows faded into the darkness, Doctor Faust strolled the aisle up the broken pews, to the ancient altar, thick with dust and tarnish. There, he had laid out Wilhelm’s body, nearly in pieces, held together by thin tendrils of flesh. They’d stripped him of his gray, tunic uniform, to be recycled and given to a new soldier.

“Forgive me, son,” he spoke to the vapid flesh. “Tell me you forgive me, my son. I must know.”

The lips refused to spin. The eyelids declined to part. The body looked right somehow, sans animation, as if life was the aberration. Death was the goal, the cure from this sickness. Still, Doctor Faust would infect him.

He lifted the body in his arms, carried him as he had a sleeping child to his bed. He rolled out the body onto the back of the pipe organ. In his previous work, shut down by the Ministry, he’d fused the keys with gold electrodes. They alternated in negative and positive charge.

The crown of pipes rose overhead from the organ belly, climbing two stories, shrinking in diameter as the pipes reached the higher rows, feeding through the stone walls. He’d welded lodestones to the pipes, fed iron powder into the bellows below. Beneath the organ in the church crypts, a machine waited all these years, a generator designed to harness and enhance magnetic fields at specific frequencies, to match those in the body, the brain.

The Ministry had deemed his work a perversion of nature, and he had recanted as any good son seeking the love of his father. Then the Preacher began this war, and the doctor understood. Government desired to be the only body to hold power over life and death.

He understood the pragmatic condition of matter called life, its secrets, the fields and electrons that composed it in specific equation. Life was his. Life was ragtime.

He examined his son’s body. The lung would be easy to replace, either with a pristine organ or one of his machines. Pumps were simple. The bone in the hip could be crafted from plaster. He could replace the eyes with lenses, improve the boy’s sight. He’d waited to examine the head. The fine wires of the brain resisted duplication and could never be replaced precisely. The back of the Wilhelm’s head hung like a flap from his neck. He turned the body over, prodded around inside the head with a poker. The medulla was smashed beyond repair. Bits of the cerebellum still clung to the sides. The frontal lobe looked intact. The primitive parts of the brain could be replaced. As long as the frontal lobe had not been damaged, his son, everything that he ever was, ever could be, could return to this world.

“I will rebuild you,” he said. He threw a switch on the wall. It sparked, and electric lighting illuminated the shelves behind the altar at the head of the cathedral. An array of devices, all spilling out tubes and wires, enlivened, demonstrating his work. The mechanized legs danced and kicked. The hearts pounded in silver skin and rising airbladders. The arms waved. The special model even loaded a rifle and pointed it, which it repeated as part of the demonstration. Less animated were the brain components that could replace the inner mechanisms. He’d not perfected them, and the machines though tiny still required a connection to a boiler to power them.

It wouldn’t do. So much of his son’s brain had been left in the trenches, food for foxes. To replace all the mechanisms, his son would need to be attached to a substation, a steam engine. He’d be allowed no mobility, and thinking through metal and wire and steam impaired the mind. Though the brain functioned, the personal essence was lost.

Doctor Faust could replace the parts with fresh components, flesh components. He couldn’t go to the Ministry though, to harvest the parts of dead soldiers. They’d deem it desecration of the dead.

No. He’d have to go out into the world, to harvest and borrow and replace. He loathed the idea of mutilating the healthy. The Ministry would surely burn him alive if he was caught. But would anyone notice? The city bled with injured. Bricks and glass buried people, hiding their bodies. It must be done. His son deserved his freedom.

He carried his son’s body down to the crypt, opened his ammonium freezer. He wrapped the body in a blanket and slid him inside, among the ice and slowed time. He laid atop the icebox and tossed and turned through the night, tomorrow’s grim work heavy on his mind.

***

Doctor Faust banged on the backdoor to the Pink Chipmunk. On the third knock, Poison Sumac answered, wearing a pink satin robe with frills along the neck and a pair of black panties beneath, showing through the sheer garment.

“You come late,” she said, inviting him in.

“Just a little to clear my head,” he said. “A little of that old ragtime. I have grave work ahead. I’m selling my soul.”

She led him through the back passages behind the stage, into her temple. She’d set a wrought iron table, adorned with metal sculpted roses and two chairs. The ragtime alembic waited, already setup and boiling.

She waited at her chair. He pulled it forward, and she sat, crossing her bare leg over her thigh. She lit an ersatz cigarette.

“Men are such fools,” she said. “You no longer have a soul to sell. You’re full of ragtime now, better than a soul. A soul is a debt from God. Cast it off. You’ll be free.”

She held out her hand.

“Sans a soul, I’ve only my body to sell.”

He dug for his wallet, fetched some notes and proffered her the money.

“Oh no, darling,” she said. “That won’t do it all.”

“It’s all the money I have.”

Her lip curled into a grin.

“There are other ways to compensate. You have a thriving business.”

“Never,” he said.

He found his top hat, got up from the table. His legs filled with cement. He couldn’t lift them to walk out of the dismal pit. He couldn’t face the daylight, especially with the task ahead.

“I can sell you a few shares,” he said.

“No darling. The whole thing if you please.”

“It’s all I have,” he said. His head bowed.

The alembic popped, gurgled. He heard it like a siren song. A hole ripped in his body, in his deeps, a black hole expanding, tearing the fabric of space-time. He needed the key on his back wound like a clockwork toy.

“What does it matter?” she said. “Your son will come back to you, and you can leave all this behind.”

“I had a premonition last night that this will be my end.”

“In either case, what does your company matter then?”

He hesitated, trying to push his legs again but failing. He sat back down.

“I have a contract already drawn up.”

She held out a fountain pen and slid the paper forward across the table. He signed then snapped the pen between his thumb and pointer finger. She smothered him with the silver mask, the ersatz face that fits all faces.

***

Doctor Faust waved the nation’s flag as he walked behind the throngs. People massed on the sidewalks, waving their flags and cheering the parade of fresh soldiers marching down Main Street, marching to war.

A red palm adorned the white flags, the Preacher’s symbol, the heart of their nameless nation, of the empty people. The conscripted children marched in rows of six, carrying their rifles over their shoulders, dressed in red tunics studded with silver buttons. Each face appeared uniform. The emotion had been sucked out of them, making them tools for the Preacher’s will.

He searched the right candidate, someone whose absence wouldn’t be conspicuous. He searched for the lonely, someone who’d come to watch the parade by themselves, with no one to share it with. He hurried, the ragtime euphoria already thinning. After observing the crowd for sometime, he found an obese woman, her shoulders pouring out of her blouse’s sleeves. Her hand never reached to touch the people around her. She wobbled a bit, fighting to keep her balance. He sniffed the cloud of liquor floating from her breath.

He took out the capacitor cell from his inside, jacket pocket. He spun the crank on it till his fingers numbed, charging the device. He sensed the act’s immorality, but it felt like a dream, beyond his control. He’d numbed himself with ragtime, acted without rational thought, his need made manifest. Like a frog catching a fly with a quick tongue, he pressed the capacitor to her bulbous neck. She dropped into his arms. He nearly went down with her, struggling to keep her up.

“You’ll excuse my wife,” he said to the curious crowd. “My wife celebrates a little too much. I just need to get her home.”

The soldiers marching down the street were replaced by steamtanks. They chugged down the road, vapor shooting from their mufflers. They crawled down the road like hungry beetles, their stubby limbs rowing them forward. The buildings shivered from the vibration from the anthropoid vehicles, the mammoth tanks off to murder and main.

For the next time he’d bring a cart to deliver them to his cathedral. He dropped her three times on the trip home, struggling to drag her down back alleys.

Finally home, he laid her out on the altar and rolled out his tool belt. He’d adjusted the pipe organ into an air pump, and he fed a tube down her throat into her lungs. The bellows on the organ sighed and wheezed, alternating between intake and output.

He gripped his chisel and hammer and aimed at the side of her skull. He cracked the bone in one strike, then he used his pliers to chip away the cracked shell. He sliced away the bits of brain he needed, just part of the medulla. He didn’t dare take all the required brain matter. Someone might notice and inform the Ministry. No. His work was far from done this day.

He dropped the brain matter into an ethyl solution, then he inserted a device to replace it. He pushed the walnut machine into her brain and attached a tube to the input valve. He cut away a portion of the bone fragment to make room for the tube, then glued it back onto her skull.

“You’ll be right as rain,” he said to her, kissing her forehead. “I bet you won’t even notice the contraption in your head.”

He connected the tube end to a portable boiler, equipped with its own handle and wheels like a wheel barrel. He fed the boiler several coal chunks and lit a fire from his lighter. After several minutes, steam whistled from the muffler at the top. Her eyes shot open.

“I’m so glad you’re awake, my dear. You’ve had a bit of an accident, but you’ll be fine. I’ve patched you up good as new, better than new.”

“Accident?” she repeated, studying him with glazed eyes.

“Let me help you to your feet, careful though. You might be a bit dizzy.”

“Feet?”

“You just need to make sure your boiler has plenty of coal and that you fill the water tank every morning. Isn’t science grand? Look at the marvels we can perform.”

He led her to the cathedral gate, pushing the boiler in front of them.

“Musical demon,” she sang in monotone. “Set my honey a’dreaming. Won’t you play me some rag.”

He walked her back to the parade and left her alone to push the boiler herself, attached to it until the end of her days. He searched for more donors, anxious to finish the grim work before the ragtime dissipated in his system. He heard her humming the soulless melody as he merged into the crowd.

***

The stained glass windows on the western wall blew out. Shards rained down inside the cathedral, blown out by a nearby explosion. Doctor Faust wrapped a handkerchief around his mouth to filter the ashy air, the reek of burning chemicals, the unique odor of crispy flesh that fried and cooked and burned to carbon.

He fused the neurons to the various, purloined brain matter, rebuilding his son’s automated nervous system, restoring to his body basic life functions. He worked with a thick magnifying glass lashed to his head with a leather band.

At last he finished. With a hand drill, he bored holes into his son’s skull then fed copper filaments into them. He attached the wires to the electrodes on the keyboard. He injected the revitalizing solution with a brass syringe, stabbing him deep in the heart and pushing the plunger.

“Aqua Vitae,” he said.

The building across the way exploded, showering the cathedral with brick shards and steel fragments. The old church shook most of it off, and he continued preparing. When it came time, he sat on the bench before the pipe organ, ready to play the electrodes, to harmonize the magnetic fields, aligning them to the precise frequency of life.

He leaned forward and whispered into his son’s hollow ear:

“Forgive your father.”

The steam generator chugged beneath him in the crypt. He could sense it shaking the floor, vibrations suffusing through his body. He set his hands to play but couldn’t command them to press a single key.

He wept, tears diluting the grease smearing his face. He fetched his coat and ran into the night, dragging his mechanical leg in the street, not caring to dodge falling bombs. When he reached the Pink Chipmunk, after several close calls, Sumac waited him at the front door.

“Come for the final dose of my beloved ragtime?” she said.

“Don’t waste my time with questions you already know the answer to,” he snapped.

“Business as usual then,” she said, leading him through the empty cabaret. Marlena again kept them company, playing counterpoint with the screeching bombs pulverizing the city. She wore her black gown once again, must have been the only dress in the drag queen’s repertoire. She’d already setup the apparatus.

“Why do you live like this? You must have a fortune.”

“I am content to live in squalor. I give all the money and property away.”

“I’d hate you, but I no longer feel hate,” he said.

She giggled, clapping her hands.

“The price has gone up,” she said. “But fret no more. This is the last dose. After tonight, you’ll no longer need my medicine.”

He studied the pipes of the alembic, curious as to its operation; perhaps, he could build one himself and obtain the narcotic’s ingredients. Though he didn’t have her connections—all her lovely boys.

“I have the deed to my property. The land itself is worth a fortune, especially after the war ends when the Ministry will look to rebuild.”

“This war will never end,” she said, overlooking the deed. “Our beloved leader lives for war, depends on it.”

“Everything ends,” he said.

She hooked up the metal mask.

“Is your son dancing in the moonlight?” she said.

“I can’t do it. Wake him.”

She nodded, pulling a cigarette from between her bra cups. He offered her a light.

“Your property will not cover the bill.”

“This is all I have,” he said, grabbing her arm, tugging on it. She pulled away.

“For the third hit, the standard fee is the first born child, signed over to me, subject to my will and whims.”

He shot up from his chair, raised his arm to shatter the alembic, knock the pipes and valves and boilers from the table into the wall.

“Evil bitch.”

She grinned, her upper lip twisting over, revealing the white membrane in her mouth.

He lowered his arm.

“I have no choice,” he said.

“What does it matter? Your son will be alive. I’ll keep him for awhile, have my fun. I’ll soon get bored and release him to the streets. Better than the alternative. And it won’t be dull. Never dull.”

She growled like a mythical tiger, her eyes flaring, targeting Doctor Faust. A jet of steam shot from his mechanical leg.

“All my lovely, lovely boys,” she said.

He nodded. She slammed the silver mask to his face. As the ragtime flowed, infusing through his lungs, he felt a counterforce, a current, sucking him down the tube to fill the vacuum of released gas. It licked at his soul like a wolf lapping up blood.

“Mine, all mine,” she said.

***

At dawn, Doctor Faust played the electrodes, his fingers tingling from the current until they numbed. He knew each key, all the combinations and symphonies to generate the precise frequency of the magnetic fields, the secrets of life.

The pipe organ hummed and chanted, each pipe a singer in the choir, playing alto, tenor and soprano, weaving the electromagnetic mysteries of the cosmos—but mysteries no more. He’d liberated the knowledge from the gods and would give it to the people, end their mortality and know their praises through all time, loved more than their beloved Preacher.

The wires, diodes, lodestones draped and fused along the pipes buzzed and sparked. The organ radiated an aureate field, a nascent star igniting to life, warm against his skin.

All the hate fled from his heart. Ragtime had cut out his soul, gutted him like a fish and fused itself to his body. You cannot hate sans soul. Sweet, wonderful ragtime. No more did he require gods to worship. He’d been drained hollow and become a vessel for love, his debt to the divine invalidated.

His son’s hand twitched.

“Ja,” he said. “Come home to me. Come back to the bright world. Follow the music.”

His eyelids peeled back revealing milky eyes, vapid of life yet watching. His son turned his head, scanning his father, a perplexed look on his face. Crimson flooded his etiolated flesh.

“I’ve returned you to life,” Doctor Faust said. “I know the secret now. Ragtime. Nectar of the gods.”

Doctor Faust banged on the keys. His fingertips cracked and bled on the white electrodes. He knew the rage that was coming, his son’s first reaction after returning to the world. So numbed, he merely went through the motions, a robot made of gears and springs. He perfunctorily played the keys, waiting for the circuit to complete, for the inevitable to occur.

“Sweet melody,” his son whispered through petrified lips.

Tears streamed down the Doctor’s numb face.

“Forgive me, my son,” he said.

His son, still waking, still thawing, getting used to his muscles again but learning quickly, struggled to lift his arms. They flopped around like a fish dropped in a boat, not managing to hit their mark. Then the muscle memory renewed, and he moved his arms with purpose, aim. He clenched Doctor Faust’s throat, pushing his thumbs into his arteries.

Doctor Faust didn’t struggle, didn’t pull away from his son’s hold. His son drove his fingernails into the flesh, cracking his trachea. The doctor’s head slumped forward. The son released his grip then scanned the derelict cathedral.

Poison Sumac twirled at the gate. Her twirled in a white dress like dove feathers and silk gloves to match her outfit. She danced in the nascent light, graceful as a dove, her shadow caressing the weeping boy still clutching the neck of his father. She wiggled her pointer finger, beckoning Wilhelm forward.

“Happy birthday, darling,” she said. “Come to mother now.”

The Buntline Special

The Mississippi River separates the budding United States of America from the untamed riches that lie out West. Indian medicine men like Geronimo hold powerful magic over the land, preventing the expansion of the young nation. On behalf of and funded by the American government, Thomas Edison sets up shop in Tombstone, Arizona. His mission is to discover a means to neutralize the spiritual hold the Apache wizard holds on the land. With the help of Ned Buntline’s creative genius, the town is soon bustling with Edison’s horseless stagecoaches and gasless street lights. But it is Geronimo’s direct threat on their lives which brings chaos to Tombstone.

These storied characters have been portrayed many times throughout literature and film, but Resnick has let them loose in a Steampunk environment and given the reader a chance to think what if. Sure there is the familiar – the Earps are fixed with heroic resolve and the bad guys are stifled with clichéd lawlessness. But this time around, Bat Masterson is burdened with a curse to suit his name and the notorious Johnny Ringo raises from the dead as a zombie with guns loaded for vengeance. Not to be outshined, it is the charismatic vice ridden character of Doc Holliday who bursts from the pages. Whether it is his knowledge of his own mortality at the hands of tuberculosis or his card playing love for chance, the casual persona of a man who knows more than he lets on keeps the reader glued to every word, wanting more.

The spiritual magic and clever inventions woven throughout this wild time in American history is the core of The Buntline Special plot. The gambit of classic characters we’ve heard and read about brings it all together. But it is Mike Resnick’s artistic ability to paint Doc Holliday as a faulted hero who can comfortably fit in the Steampunk world that actually makes this book a success.

Agatha H and the Airship City

The character of Agatha Clay is a bumbling student at Transylvania Polygnostic University. What she doesn’t realize is that she has something called the “spark” in her, the element of Mad Science within one which gives them the ability to create fantastic things. Her character is fun to follow as she gradually discovers new things about herself.

Agatha is working as a lab assistant at the university when it is overthrown by the Tyrant Baron Klaus Wulfenbach in an attempt to control those who possess the spark and use them in his quest to expand his power. Forced to live aboard the colossal airship Castle Wulfenbach, Agatha begins to feel a connection with the Baron’s son Gilgamesh. With conflicting emotions, the action and mystery is in full swing as she tries to escape.

The cover art by Tom Kidd gives Agatha more of a sexy librarian look rather than a confused lab girl. But seeing how this story is based on the long running Girl Genius series, the exaggerated imagery makes sense. It undoubtedly helps sell both products, but the literary value of this book is much more impressive than the over the top graphic version because it allows the reader to experience more credible or acceptable images. Sure the comics are well done, but the reader would obviously get more out of the novelization if he or she is allowed to explore the book first to prevent any preconceptions.

Phil & Kaja Foglio have clearly made their mark in the Steampunk comic arena, but there is still plenty of room for them to expand further into the literary field if they so choose. Full of extraordinary characters, the storyline in Agatha H and the Airship City is crisp, well established and teases the reader just enough to demand more. Let’s hope there are plenty more books to follow.

So if you’re interested in introducing Steampunk to your table top adventures where do you start? One thing that we’ve been blessed with as far as RPGs go is variety.  Everything from Weird West to Colonialism in Space and right on to Supernatural Horror is possible with the sheer number of options to choose from.  Below is a short list of some of the better known and more intriguing options available to you.  By all means not a comprehensive list, this is just to get you thinking about what kind of game you’d like to run.

Deadlands Reloaded – While technically a Weird West game, Deadlands has been adopted by many for its strong Steampunk approach.  Set in a world that is pre-apocalypse thanks to the machinations of demons bent on bringing Hell to Earth, Deadlands has always had a Steamy feel thanks to portable Gatling guns, automatons and insane forms of travel.  A definite Western feel, the creation system still offers a wide variety of options that has even recently included adding some Far East flavor to the game.  Asians were, after all, a very integral part of winning the West.

Currently Deadlands uses Savage Worlds, a rather easy-to-learn system.  While you do have to pick up two books, the core rules are thankfully very inexpensive at only $10 with the Player’s and Marshal’s Handbooks coming in at $44.98 combined; a bit steep but still one of my favorite games out there.  An enjoyable aspect of the game is the use of cards and Poker as a means of determining magic.  Classic and D20 versions of the game are available in PDF format.

GURPS: Steampunk – Generic Universal Role Player System has been out for years and is designed to make new settings easy to apply.  Co-written by Stephen Jackson, well known for games such as Munchkin and Illuminati, GURPS Steampunk is one of the oldest books out there.  Flexible and easy to work with, it offers suggestions for a setting but leaves enough room for creating your own.  The separate Steampunk book gives you all the details you need to know to add Steam to your campaign.

To play along you’ll need to pick up the GURPS Basic Set which gives you all the information you need to know on running the game in the first place.  The set goes for $34.99 online for books and $24.99 for the PDF.  The Steampunk setting book is another $7.95 in PDF format and finding a hard copy will be somewhat difficult due to it being out of print.  Still, if you don’t mind using a computer and only printing out what you need, it’s a good bargain for a classic game.

Iron Kingdoms – A number of years ago Privateer Press unleashed a new Steampunk setting on the miniatures battle world called Warmachine.  Seeing a great deal of interest in the world, as well as the potential for a RPG to go along with it, they released Iron Kingdoms.  A brutal, fantasy world, the setting is great for those who want to add a bit of other-worldliness to their gaming and get away from the past.  Various races and creatures walk alongside the dominant humans and robots, with adventure available around every corner for those seeking it.

Iron Kingdoms is currently a D20 system though the new and revised rules are due to come out this summer.  Getting away from D20 and fixing other issues that cropped up, Privateer Press hope to make their RPG line as strong as their miniatures line.  Old versions of the books are still available in PDF format, though in this case I’d advise waiting for the revised rules.

Abney Park’s Airship Pirates – One of the newest games to come out, the band Abney Park leveraged their songs and familiarity to create one of the better post-apocalyptic settings for Steampunk.  Set in a world in which the band was able to travel back in time to try to stem the tide of colonialism and over-industrialization, everything went pear shaped.  Now, characters live in a world dominated by a single great Empire and try to survive in the now twisted and deadly ruins of a world long gone.  Its Mad Max meets Captain Robert’s imagination.

Airship Pirates uses the Heresy System created by Cubicle 7 for their Victoriana game.  It will be a system familiar to anyone who’s used to combining stats and skills in order to determine what you roll for.  You only need the book itself and several D6′s to get started.  The core book is currently sold out on the Abney Park website, so other online retailers are your best bet.  The game retailed originally for $49.99.

Space: 1889 – One of the grand-daddies of Steampunk RPG.  Using an alternate history in which Victorian Science Fiction becomes Science Fact, it literally is a game of Victorians in Space.  Created over twenty years ago, it helped shape and set the standard for many Steampunk ideas which have since come along.  In many cases, the setting of Colonialism in Space might seem a bit uncomfortable for some.  Done correctly, it can certainly lead to an enjoyable romp, replicating the marches of European explorers through the wilds of distant lands, facing off strange beasts and finding lost temples.  High adventure, and tea, for everyone.

A paperback version of the book is still purchasable for around $29.99 on some online retailers.  PDF format is also available and proves to be a little easier to get a hold of.  Space: 1889 uses a D6 system with the classic stats and skills being added together to determine dice pool and roll for successes.

The article’s author, Sam Anderson, is as sincere and devout a Dickensian reader as we might hope for when asking “Is it worth it?” Who better to advise us other than one who publicly claims:

“I am — like probably millions of readers spread over many different eras — actively in love with Charles Dickens, or at least with the version of his mind that survives in his writing.”

Anderson sums up his travels to Dickens World in such a way as to leave us still asking our question though. We don’t get a strong sense of his favoring the place, but neither are we advised to save our money. A great many people worked a great many hours to create Dickens World, expending a great deal of effort in the process. Our expectations may not be met, but that alone is not reason to dismiss the theme park out of hand. Although, Anderson reminds us, perhaps a stroll by the garden might suffice just as well.

The newly reprinted Lady Mechanika #’s 0,1 and 2 issues will feature redesigned cover dress and colors by series colorist Peter Steigerwald, but will include all the same content as the original printings. Aspen strongly encourages fans to check with their local retailer to secure their copy. The initial cutoff date for retailers to order copies of the reprinted Lady Mechanika issues is February 13^th using the following order codes:

DEC118184 E  LADY MECHANIKA #0 CVR H 4TH PTG (PP #1009)

DEC118185 E  LADY MECHANIKA #1 CVR G 3RD PTG (PP #1009)

DEC118186 E  LADY MECHANIKA #2 CVR G 2ND PTG (PP #1009)

Here are the brand-new covers for the re-release:

For more information on Aspen Comics please check www.aspencomics.com and www.aspenstore.com.

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“Fantastic!” she says happily, “I have two clasp options for you; the first is a basic ribbon that will adjust as you like; the second is a handmade ‘S-hook’ that will fasten it close to your neck.  Which would you like?”

After a few moments deliberation, you say “I’ll take the ‘s-hook’.”  She smiles and pulls out the silver piece for you, almost a piece of jewelry in and of itself.  After handing you the necklace, she points out a small box.

“Since you purchased one of our necklaces, you can pick out a charm or pendant if you like, for only five dollars.”

In the scene above, there are two examples of business savvy: adding value and upselling.  Both are important to any business, including businesses that are built around getting your art out rather than making a large profit.  If you are selling your art for a living, it is even more important; adding value gives your customers a reason to return, and upselling adds money to your till to pay those bills.

Adding value can be a simple thing; it can consist of offering several options for clasps, as our jeweler did in the example above, or it can be more extravagant, such as offering free pieces for people that purchase a certain amount.  When adding value, many times it is better to focus on the small things, as 1) adding value does cost money and usually generates no revenue (or income) as it is free, and 2) if your added value is too extravagant, the customer may think you sell cheap products.  Consider this TV Sales Ad:

This is the new, hand-crafted, Steampunk Lawn Gnome!  It comes with a pointed hat that can either be in brass, copper, or leather!  Goggles are hand crafted and can be placed over the eyes or up on the cap!  Fully articulated and made out of brass and wood! the Steampunk Lawn Gnome is a must for any workshop or aviary and can be yours today for only $19.95!  Start, by calling 1-800-4-STEAMPUNK.  But Wait!  Call in the next ten minutes, and we’ll include a handpainted Gauss Rifle for your Lawn Gnome, a $15.00 value, FREE!

It’s not hard to see the problem here.  First, it’s obvious that our hand crafted Lawn Gnome is actually Mass Produced, which means that if it is hand-crafted, it will probably be quick work. Even if it is excellent work, the maker is undoubtedly using Guilt Math^TM.  By throwing in a relatively expensive addition, he is reducing the value of his work by essentially saying each piece is worth about ten dollars.

In the example above, however, there is an instance of adding value that does work.  Offering options to your customers such as different hats, or styles of goggle, would be a relatively inexpensive set of options, and adds perceived value as it gives the customer the ability to choose exactly how they want their lawn gnome to look.  Let’s see how this product should likely be sold:

So I see you like the Steampunk Lawn Gnome!  It is hand-crafted and painted, and comes with a hat of your choice.  The goggles are also hand painted and can be moved so they are either on or off of the Gnome’s eyes.  He costs $40.  I also have some extras for him, like this Gauss Rifle that I’m selling for $15.  It’s a replica of the Man-Sized Gauss Rifle that Julien Harrison carries on the Steampunk Empire, fitted for this Gnome.  I’ll take $50 for both, if you’re interested.

In this example, the seller used three methods to ensure a good sale of a quality item.  First, he used Business Math^TM.  Second, he added value by offering several options for a hat for the Gnome’s head, and showed how the goggles were articulated.  Third, he tried to upsell the customer first by showing the accessory and telling the customer the price, then by offering a deal on both together.  By offering the $5 discount, the customer sees a perceived increase in value for cost and if you used your Business Math^TM, should have little effect on your ability to make more art.

How to Upsell

Unlike adding value, deciding how to upsell your customer can be tricky.  Many times, merchants will offer the customer a valuable item from their wares that may double the bill the customer pays; even more often the merchant will try to offload an unwanted good.

When trying to upsell your customer, offer them an item that relates to the original purchase.  For instance, in our Steampunk Lawn Gnome example, the Gauss Rifle is an accessory to the original work purchased.  So if you sell hand made wind chimes, offer your customer charms that can hang from the centre of the pipes.  Another example would be having a piece of work that is made of the same materials and has the same artistic style.

Any way you spin it, the customer above would be much more likely to buy a second hat for his Lawn Gnome rather than a steampunk dog collar.  So make sure your upsell attempts, when made, compliment their original purchase.  And if you don’t have anything that fits, try the closest item that costs less than half of the price of the first item.  Though you’ll get a lot of “nos”, eventually someone will say “yes.”

Sales is an incredibly diverse field, and although it is not your primary reason for having your business, it would behoove you to read up on some of its better features.  By becoming a good salesperson, you can increase your revenue, move your products, and continue making the art you love so much.  Educating yourself is the key to success and sales books can easily be purchased online or in your local bookstore.