Half-term again – already!
Posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2015 at 22:55
Time seems to be racing on me these days. Working on Ironmaster (which is looking good for an Easter release now) has once more had to draw to a stop as the kids are on their holidays.
This means I can’t get on my laptop in the daytime to draw the remaining few illustrations like:
This!
So I thought while I’ll be on a break I should show off some of the images I’ve knocked up so far…
My early readers should be able to see where each one is coming from – and I hope they’ll tempt a few folk into wanting to read the book when I launch.
A sort of steam-punk Bond vibe to this one I hope.
Ironmaster and Other Tales is my take on Steampunk. It should ring all the usual Steampunk bells – but I hope has enough completely original content to entertain a wide variety of readers, whether you are into Steampunk normally or have never worn goggles on a top-hat.
Due to my complete inability to write within a single genre, you’ll find the steam-punk cozies up to Action/Thrillers, Occult Detective Stories, Scientific-Romances (the original Steampunk and science-fiction), horror, fantasy, Welsh (and Salopian) folklore, and Dark Faery-tales (which I like, like my chocolate, dark indeed).
There are over 30 stories in the book, and later ones build on the earlier ones, some by way of a sequel.
That’s not a mech, that’s a Korean Battle suit, about to tear into Government house in Hong-Kong.
But others are less of a direct sequel, shedding new light on character’s we’ve met before. Or just advancing the over-reaching plot in some way. It means that you can skip a story or two (if you don’t like their style or content), and you should still be able to follow what’s going on, although I hope that you’ll enjoy all the blended goodness together in a cornucopia of brass, glass, steam and magick delights.
This story is close to the end and is the last cover I’ve finished…
So instead of work this week will mostly consist of feeding two growing boys (who really can eat) and trying to entertain them in a way that limits the number of fights they have over who gets to play “The Escapists” on my laptop and who has to play on the Wii U/PS3…
Oh yeah, and make pancakes on Tuesday…