If you watch a group of children play together, they are what they are. They don’t care what other kids look like, as long as they are all engaged in the game. When writing for a YA audience, keeping them engaged is the key. Steampunk is a great genre for YA readers. By its very nature it is filled with adventure, fantastic inventions, and strange mysteries. The YA audience loves this sort of story: witness the popularity of the Foglios’ Girl Genius series. If those stories, however, were all limited to a Eurocentric view and characters, or to cowboys...

Read more »

A gunshot shattered the silence of the night, followed by the bloodthirsty cries of the mob on her heels. Maria Chen heard her pulse pounding in her head in near-perfect time to the crash-crash-crashing of the mob  through the dense. Scrambling over rocks she could not feel, running through brush that tore at her legs and her silk clothes, panic overwhelming her.  She cleared the first ridge,slipping and sliding to the gully on the opposite side, and ran along the water course, the cold water splashing against her insensate legs.  The cold would not stop her, not with her...

Read more »

“It’s Icarus whom everyone remembers. But it was Daedalus who built the wings and escaped.” ~Aeryn Daring I Lady Aeryn Foxxe-Grace Tallhat, in which we meet our unlikely hero, a man with a pointy beard, a curly-haired boy, and a fine example of Pteropus frislandia “Damnation!” exclaimed Aeryn. It wasn’t something she would have been able to say at home—in her father’s house, that is—but when she was Aeryn Daring she could say whatever she pleased, and even Lord Tallhat wouldn’t dare speak against her. It was early May, in the year 1903, in the city of Darwin. Not,...

Read more »

1 – The Intruders’ Arrival Miriam, who was hiding under the settee in the large drawing room, looked up from the story she was reading. Furnace, the butler, was talking to the cook outside the door. “…and their room must be the largest bedchamber in the house, and it must face due South. They said that was very important.” “The largest room?” That was Mrs. Williams. Something serious was going on, then, if she had left her kitchen. “That could only mean-…” “The master’s room. I’m aware of that, Mrs. Williams,” Furnace replied calmly. Miriam put down the heavy...

Read more »

Liza Johnson could not stand the presence of gentlemen for more than a few minutes.  Men were all right, she was rather fond of those, but gentlemen would find her last nerve and play it like a badly-tuned violin.  After her parents’ deaths, the increasing number of suitors that appeared on her doorstep was creating an orchestra that threatened to drive Liza mad.  She presently found herself trying to show her current suitor the quickest way to the door.  The fact they were on a second-story balcony didn’t register as a real problem to her. He looks like a...

Read more »