(Sorry, no bit of the fictional world of the airship Steamed! and my role as sometimes thief stow-away turned engine-monkey. The past few weeks have gotten the best of me and I’m more than a little behind. Next time, though, I promise.)
For those of you who aren’t aware, Clockwork Mafia (aka “Badlands 2″) is coming out next spring from Carina Press. That story… took a while for various reasons. However, I really don’t want there to be a huge gap between number 2 and number 3 (or number 4 for that matter), so now that my schedule is clear for a minute, I’m trying to work on book 3 (which has no title, not even a working one, which makes me sad).
Since I just spent a decent chunk of August working on Clockwork Mafia edits, it would seem like it’d be easy to dive back into the world since I have all the characters and settings fresh in my mind. There’s only one problem with that: yes, I have the characters, but this new one is set almost entirely in a place I didn’t touch in the first two stories.
Which means I need to go into research mode. Now, I’m not the steampunk author who freaks out about getting every detail correct (it is an alternate history after all), but I need to get the feel right. This summer when we were on vacation, we were supposed to make a side trip so I could get some research in. Sadly, the presence of an infant and a two-year-old (nephews) killed that plan like a crossbow bolt through the eye. So, once again, I’m having to immerse myself in the world of the interwebs. If it gets too sticky, I may never make it out again.
But in, I shall go, to trudge through swamps and climb mountains and generally wish I was somewhere else. You see, each book in the series “belongs” to a different heroine. Book 3 belongs to Mahala, and neither one of us wants to go where it’s going to take us. But it’s her story, and it can only be told there.
Wish us luck.
