Oh dear, I know - long time no post. I'm way down into working on Eirdon: Book Three of the Prophecy Series, and don't often come up for air - I also have a day job and a large pitbull/Rhodesian Ridgeback mix named Waldo who is very needy.
Just to say, I'm hoping to get a new Postcard From Mordania up over the long weekend. Possibly another couple of goodies. Once again I've been stymied in working on a novel by health issues, but the cause has been found (lousy dental work that led to the death of two teeth, serious infection and nine months of being poorly) and will be removed next week. Then I'm hoping for clear sailing for the next two books (Eirdon and The Light At The Top Of The World)!
Now, today's topic:
I can say without reservation the majority of reviews I get on Amazon and Goodreads are raves - 96% of them, in fact. So I shouldn't let it rattle me when someone gives a negative one. Usually, I don't. One person likened Weaving Man to "Snow White where the seven dwarfs are assassins and Doc is the main character" or something along those lines, which just made me laugh.
I'm a grown enough gal to know that everyone is not going to love my books. Heck, I'm well known for not liking a couple of incredibly popular fantasy series myself, even though I have read them and tried to keep an open mind (no, I'm not telling what they are.)
I can even wrap my head around the fact that some people consider giving a negative review means they should attack the author's intelligence or morals. That's the Internet for you - plenty of folks out there more than ready to turn anything into an ad hominem assault. It's a shame, but that is human nature these days. As an Internet veteran, I know this.
Still, when I read that my stories are "stupid", "ridiculous", that someone wishes something worse than a broken arm would happen to Katrin (bet they loved certain sections of Love and Sacrifice) and that Menders at the age of twenty is "a kid" (only in our Western civilization modern era is a twenty-year-old considered a child) - it makes me think.
I think two complaints that have come up in negative reviews deserve a little explanation. These are that the books aren't "steampunk" and they aren't "fantasy".
The "it isn't fantasy" argument is easy to dismiss. The books are set on a planet that doesn't exist, in a place that is Earthlike but also different, with countries that don't exist, a pantheon of gods that are alien to Earth, etc. No, there are no dragons, there are no elves, there are no fairies - but there are farlins, borags, felschats, langhurs and grundars. There are also social mores that are more advanced than ours on Earth at this time - there are social mores that are more in keeping with Prussia during the 19th century. There are ghosts and psychic communication. All "fantasy" really means is that a story is not based in our reality. I made up the society and situation of Eirdon entirely out of my head - that, by definition, is fantasy.
Now, "steampunk".
The term "steampunk" came up a while ago - the first known usage of the term was in 1987 and at the time it referenced writing that hearkened back to the novels of Jules Verne, with emphasis on steam technology but also utilizing the idea of a 19th century society having some technologies that in realtime history on Earth, were not available.
I never set out to write "steampunk" books. The original idea behind the books was a simple concept - what if people in a society similar to late 19th Century Europe were led by forward-seeing, intelligent and tolerant monarchs rather than by the inbred puppets and outright maniacs who were the monarchs of Earth's European countries in the lead-up to World War I? After all, World War I led directly to the constant warfare of the last 100 years or so, put major world powers on a permanent wartime basis, made war profiteering a lucrative industry and resulted in the deaths of millions. The people of Eirdon are at a similar point in their history - runaway nationalism, military might and war profiteering are running the show and there is a weapon invented that is cosmic in its power - and there are people in powerful positions who would think nothing of using it again and again.
So a short story was born and from that short story came the novels. When I originally came up with the storyline of The Prophecy Series, I had never even heard the term "steampunk". At the time, I was working on the stories with my ex-husband, who was the one who suggested the various technologies that are part of the books. He is an expert on the history of trains and aircraft and knows all the technical stuff I don't.
So how did Weaving Man and Love and Sacrifice end up consigned to the "steampunk" genre?
When you use Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program, you have to assign two genres to your book. To be honest, I knew almost nothing about book genres. I was that raw. I knew about fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, romance, fantasy, etc. - sure, I've been in libraries and bookstores. I had no notion of all the genres within these categories.
I was confronted with assigning Weaving Man to two genres. One I chose was "epic fantasy", which I think more appropriately describes a book that has been referred to as "genre-bending". Then I struggled with a choice for the other genre I had to select - and finally thought of the trains, airships and boats, as well as the advance of technology that is part of the novels - and chose steampunk. There are no detailed descriptions of machines, though as the series goes on, machines and technology do become more part of the story - but what drives the story are the people, not the technology.
In reality, a story came to me and I wrote it down. I didn't worry about having it fit a particular genre. I'd rather bend the genre/label rather than bend the story and the characters. People who know me in person are laughing right now because I've never fit into a category either!
When I think about it - if the original concept of steampunk included the postulation of people in the Victorian/Edwardian era having the ability to access technologies earlier than people in Earth did in our realtime history - I'd say a crude nuclear bomb would qualify. And that crude nuclear bomb was part of the original concept for the original short story that led to the Eirdon Books. That bomb and the reasons why the people of Eirdon were able to manufacture it at that point in their history are the deep-down backbone of the story that takes four books (and one ancillary book) to tell.
So there's the beef - how books that aren't classic "steampunk" got labeled as such. Considering how much folks love them and that they've been bestsellers in the Steampunk category almost from their original listing dates, I know the gripers are few and far between.
Time to get back to work!
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