Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium

[DeVorn]

So, right. I've been working on a steampunk book for a little over a year; finding an artist, finding someone to help me pay for publishing, etc, so on, etc. And now, in the infinitely wise words of DBZ, it's go time. So, here it is:



     IN AN ERA of bygone anachronisms and steam-powered ambulatory engines, a sharp-witted street thief with a heart of semi-precious metal must match wits with a cryptic cryptozoologist, an amoral assassin, a masked menace, and a secret plot to bring the city she loves to its knees.

     Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium is both a cautionary tale against reckless mathematics and an accurate historical account all rolled up into one. In fact, the story is so accurate that you might consider it more a history lecture than an illustrated novel.

     Chapters are posted one by one every week on Monday until they’re all up; if you want to read the book before it’s completely online, we'll be soon making the physical copy of the book available for purchase.

Some images from the work in case you're curious (spoiler'd, because they're big!):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In addition to this, I'm working on a second project - Lucky Monday - which is an insane work of ultimate fanfiction written in the style of hard-boiled noir. Which means it might interest people here:



If I'm breeching some sort of forum etiquette by posting a link to my own steampunk work here (I'm fairly certain it's allowed - I didn't see anything in the rules against it?) then I humbly apologize and present myself for the savage forum flogging that I am no doubt deserving of. Otherwise, tally hoo, and thanks for reading!

[anno]

This certainly looks wonderful, and I shall give it a read at the weekend. Congratulations on getting it out there!

[DeVorn]

SO. RIGHT.

In case you (or anyone else!) happen to be curious, we've (finally!) opened preorders on the book; they're due to ship either early or mid-September. 288 pages, perfect binding, soft-cover - 30 chapters, 70,000 words, 13 grayscale illustrations with cover - with the overarching theme being best described as 'steampunk meets speculative history with a dash of mathematical terrorism'.

As mentioned in the post above, the notion is to post chapter after chapter online every week (on Mondays!) until the whole thing is available online; in the meanwhile, we'll be selling the book, too. We're up to Chapter 9, now, and still going strong.

Any and all interest - and references to friends (if you like what you see, of course) - are immensely appreciated!

[DeVorn]

The book is now available for purchase (has been for a month or so). We're up to chapter 17, if you're curious to read; chapter 18 will be going up tonight! Click here to begin!

[Ottens]

Good stuff! I'm glad to see that this is moving forward nicely. Congrats!

[DeVorn]

We're currently offering the Arcadia Snips novel for 12$ instead of 15$ up until Christmas Eve--in addition, work on the sequel is continuing (though we can't justify sending it to the printers without first selling a lot more of the first novel). We're up to chapter 25 online, with 5 more plus an epilogue to go--I'll probably post the first chapter (once I'm finished editing the crap out of it) here in another thread as a standalone story for anyone who's interested!

In addition, if you want to support us in non-financial ways, one excellent way to do so is read what's currently available on the website and offer a review at either at Amazon or The Web Fiction Guide. Positive reviews are lovely, but honest reviews are always best--on top of this, another way to support us is just to spread the word! Mention it on a blog, tell your friends, or forward the website to people who you think would be supremely interested in the story. And thanks!

[Rockula]

Just ordered it from Amazon.

[DeVorn]

Just ordered it from Amazon.

Awesome! I should note, though, that when people buy it from Amazon, we don't see a penny of the profits--thanks to the way that our publishing system works--that doesn't mean you shouldn't order it from Amazon, obviously (you can get free shipping, and might find a copy cheaper than what we're offering), but I thought I'd mention it here (part of the reason we dropped our price down to 12$ was to try and beat out Amazon's offer of $13.50). Still, books being read are books being read, and just because we don't see money immediately from the sale doesn't mean it doesn't benefit us (albeit more indirectly).

Edit: Also, apparently, if enough people do buy it from Amazon, we'll get picked up as a featured item and we will start seeing some of that money. I'm not entirely savvy on how this works, though (we're a two-man team--I handle the writing, a friend handles the finances/selling the books/shipping the books).

[DeVorn]

The entirety of Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium can now be found here, online! We've finished posting all thirty chapters along with the epilogue; in addition, we're offering the book for download in the form of a pdf here, or one act at a time (out of three): Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3.

If you enjoy the book, please consider purchasing it; the only way we'll get the sequel published is if we sell enough hard copies of the original. But barring that, if you download it, please consider making a token donation; we're relying very much on word-of-mouth in order to get things going.

Additionally, now that Arcadia Snips is finished, I'm starting to work both on the sequel and a secondary story, more in a dieselpunk vein--Lucky Monday. Fair warning, though--this story is far more coarse and involves a great deal of violence, unlike the lighter Arcadia Snips.

Thanks for reading and all your support!

[Rose Streiffe]

Sounds (and looks) delightful.  Congratulations!