Whassup???? And, Hugo Too

Hello, Blogosphere!


I've been away for, well, most of the month of November. Here's why: I was a participant in NaNoWriMo,  which stands for National Novel Writing Month. I and a gafrillion other people write 50,000 words each during November.


I'm back, and I missed you. Here's a present that I brought back from my mental travels:

What's inside? Cute kittens, sparkly baubles, a nose trimmer? You decide!

Moving on, I see that my own genre, Steampunk, took a hugestep in becoming main stream with the release of Hugo, the newest movie from Martin Scorsese. It's based on a novel by Brian Selznick, called "The Invention of Hugo Cabret." 


Part graphic novel, part flipbook, and a story of Coincidences, puzzles, lost keys, and a mystery, it's the kind of story that appeals to, well, me. I love adventure, I love inventions and mysteries; always have, since I picked up "Spiderweb for Two" in first grade.

The movie itself is moving into pure steampunk. There are huge gears, clockworks, and a very important automaton. There are children and a toymaker and a race through Paris. There's a hidden message. What's not to like?

All of this is pure joy for a steampunker like me. Now, back to NaNoWriMo; while I worked on my new book, called The Gramophone Society, I abandoned steampunk for something new: Dieselpunk. 

My new world is powered by diesel energy, since it is set during World War II during the London evacuations. I became fascinated by the tunnels built to hold people during air raids. They seemed like the perfect place for more adventure and mystery.

I wondered about the possibility of time travel. I didn't want to open a portal, so instead I imagined a set of stairs that usually went upstairs, and that suddenly led down instead: down to a set of mysterious tunnels and into the past.


As Hugo hangs off his huge clock hands like Harold Lloyd, my heroine, Julia, hung between the problems of her modern day world (eating disorders, divorce) and those of the past (displaced children and rationed food.) It was a manuscript that was a LOT of fun to write.

Enjoy Hugo now, and I do hope that you'll enjoy The Gramophone Society in the future...