From Tourist to Native: A Pair Of Authors’ Journey Into A Sepia-Colored World

Today we welcome writing team E.C. Belikov and Elias Anderson!

Elias Anderson’s writing experience ranges from staff writer and reporter for the Coastal View News (Carpinteria, CA) to food critic, freelance copy writer, and editor. He has published poetry, articles, essays, and short stories.  His most recent work includes the novel Blood&Gasoline, and the short story compilation 13 Tales Of Abject Human Misery, both of which are available at http://www.elias-anderson.com.  He currently resides in Denver, CO, with his wife and children.

E.C. Belikov is a former MMA fighter with a record of 3-1, and full-fledged geek/gamer, who has been writing in one form or another pretty much all his life. Previous pieces of fiction include a collection of short horror stories titled FERAL and most years of his tax return forms (joking, please don’t audit me…again). He hopes to have his first full-length novel—a cyberpunk/sci-fi offering—completed by the end of the year. You can learn more about him at ecbelikov.com

Together E.C. and Elias have written Look Homeward, Clockwork Angel.  It is the first in a series of Steam Punk novellas and stories chronicling the harrowing post-apocalyptic adventures of the crew of the airship Masamune and the lives they touch along the way. You can find it on Amazon, for the Nook, and at Smashwords.

From Tourist to Native: A Pair Of Authors’ Journey Into A Sepia-Colored World

by E.C. Belikov and Elias Anderson

 

This whole process started out slowly…it began in each of us discovering that the other was a writer.  We’d give each other stuff to read over and E.C. did an edit on one of Elias’s books.  Throughout all this we found similar tastes in not only books but movies and music, and though it wasn’t something either of us had ever really had an interest in, we started kicking around the idea of working on a project together. Mostly it would be as an experiment, with neither of us expecting much from it.   Meanwhile, and unbeknownst to E.C., Elias had a clear image of a scene in his head about a woman walking into an obviously Old West-style saloon and being served drinks by a robot, then having a confrontation with a man that had (for lack of a better phrase) a bionic arm. 

 

Then E.C. said, ‘Let’s write an Alternative Western’. Though it was mostly a throw-away remark (who knows what ‘Alternative Western’ even means?) Elias kept thinking on it, and thinking about that scene in the bar, and how maybe the woman had gotten there in a giant airship like the ones in the Final Fantasy games he used to play on the SNES.  He brought the idea of the scene to E.C., who really dug the concept.  It really clicked for Elias one day when looking through some of Bjorn Hurri’s Star Wars art…Steampunk! THAT was the entry point we’d been looking for without really knowing we’d been looking for it. 

 

Elias had been a fan of the genre and had long been toying with the idea of writing something within it, but hadn’t come up with anything.  He brought the idea to E.C. and the project was propelled forward almost immediately. We dove further and further into the world of cogs and corsets, researching like crazy, coming to websites like this one for genre specific tips, all the while writing the first draft of an untitled piece with no clear conception of what it would turn out to be.  We used Elias’s bar scene as a jumping off point, not knowing even then that it would eventually be the actual beginning of the story.

 

We did know, at least, that we wanted a character driven story, with a strong plot. We weren’t writing Steampunk just to write Steampunk. We wanted a story that melded with the setting, not a story about the setting. Had we set out to write a story about Steampunks, rather than a story about people in a Steampunk world, we would have most certainly failed, and deserved it.

 

Immersing ourselves in the setting and source material as we did brought rapid change. For a time, everything was about Steampunk; we showed each other photos, passages from other writers, shared tips that we’d received. We think there’s a good bet we annoyed the crap out of the people around us. Well, except E.C.’s girlfriend who caught the bug too, and is gearing up to put together a costume for the next Denver Comic Con. Just about everyone else though probably found us insufferable and wanted to slap us.

 

But that’s okay, we forgive them. They’ve yet to dream in sepia.

 

Though we’d both been fans of the genre, one of us a little more than the other, but largely it was an outside, casual thing,.  We both dug the idea of an alternate history making a much different present and the opportunity to change that into a much different future…plus everything just looked cool!  We don’t think that writing this story brings us fully into the community…anyone can say (with varying results) “Add goggles to the main character and steam-ify this scene by 60%!”. 

 

For us, the community itself brought us into the community.  We’ve both been around the Internet long enough to know that most niches, especially when your primary entry-point is based online, can be tough to really become a part of.  It was such a pleasant and welcome surprise to find the across-the-board encouragement and acceptance that we have. More than airships and retro-fitted anachronistic future-tech, we think THAT is what Steampunk is really about, and we’d like to take this time to thank all of you for it.

~E.C. Belikov and Elias Anderson

www.theclockworksaga.blogspot.com
www.elias-anderson.com
www.ecbelikov.com