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Earlier today, I posted my take on the charming Aether Powered by James T. Lambert, and now I’d like to share this Q&A with you. Lambert got me to work a little harder than most authors do, which was a fun twist for me. Hope you like this Q&A and check out his work! He’ll be back in a week or two for another Literary Local post, too.

The second question and answer are probably technically a spoiler for his novel so you may want to skim/avoid them. But I think we’re both safe enough that it won’t really ruin much for you.

All authors have more ideas running around in their head than they can possibly develop—what was it about this idea that made you commit to writing it? Was there something about it that led it to be the first one you published—is it something as simple as of those you’d finished, it was the most worthy of being polished up, or was it something about that particular story?
So this was my second (and a half) NaNo project. My first had some style problems I wanted to fix and wasn’t making fast progress on, so when someone asked me which of my project was closest to completion, I thought Aether Powered was. Even after finishing some of my other NaNo projects, this one still seemed like it needed the least work to get to publication. After having published Steam Opera and Proxies I think I was wrong and Proxies was probably in better shape, but at the time I was convinced it needed a major rewrite to start in a different spot.

So my first NaNo project was Steam Opera and I attempted to write a sequel about 8 months later. It kind of fell apart between real life drama (a tree crushed both my cars while I was writing a few feet away) and problems with lack of direction in the plot. Steam Opera was a great NaNo idea as it had a specific goal for the plot: Get to the moon. If the characters got to the moon or failed in an interesting way the plot worked. So every decision while writing was ‘what do they do next to get to the moon?’ But Aether Powered was a less clever idea in terms of daily writing. I started with an interesting concept: trunk full of inventions. But every day was ‘what happens next?’ I didn’t have a goal like Steam Opera. But I wanted to succeed at NaNo and get those 50,000 words written, so I stuck to it.

When it comes to a character like Carol—how difficult was it to maintain (and/or arrive at) a believably overbearing girlfriend, without making her into a monster? Is the key in the way you write her, or in how Joseph reacted to her?
At the base she wasn’t that bad a person. She had the assumption that since Joseph owned a house and had a trust fund, he was rich. She just never moved beyond that to realize he was just scraping by. I just kept her focused on ‘I want money’ and always pushing and that gave her some ugly motivation. Also the jealousy and suspicion. I may have gone overboard with the ‘I’ll ruin your dating life’ but maybe she meant it as a joke and it just came out wrong. But with those motivations for acting the way she did, and with Joseph’s easy-going attitude letting him get steamrollered, their relationship was doomed, but not over-the-top unbelievable. People get stuck in bad relationships that aren’t quite bad enough to end. An old friend once said “it may be a cold, wet mudhole, but it’s YOUR cold, wet mudhole.” There’s a certain amount of inertia in most people and overcoming that to get out of a bad situation can be hard. I think Joseph’s reactions to her probably sold it better than anything. He tried to be careful, say the right thing, not make waves, but that just got him in deeper instead of fixing things.

There are several aspects of this book that I’d love to do a deep dive into, but I’m going to keep myself to one other: the Seafair Pirates. They are such a fun group! Is anything about their part of the story (a group like them, the Seafair, anything) based in reality, or is this something you made up en toto? When do we get a novel about them (either as a semi-sequel to Aether Powered, or something unrelated)?
I wish I was clever enough to make them up. Seafair and the Seafair Pirates are totally real. I just lucked into finding the information about them when I needed him to get some help. Here’s the website for the event: https://www.seafair.org/ The Pirates also exist (or did when I wrote the book) and I found news footage of them coming ashore. http://www.seafairpirates.org/

The descriptions of them in costume were from videos and pictures I found online. I read a lot about what they did and tried to incorporate as much as I could, but ended up modeling individuals and group scenes (like the singing) around fan groups I’ve been in. I’ve got a recording of Where the Red Queen Reigns from the group Annwn and I’ve been in Filk circles singing like that at conventions. When I was in my Science Fiction club we had all kinds of interesting people who did interesting things, so I made it a lot like that. Same with the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) where you could find one of everything in the groups. Just as examples: Federal radio techs fixing Smoke jumper radios at NIFC (National Interagency Fire Center), Ham radio enthusiasts who dispatched ambulances during power outages, rocket scientists who programed Martian rovers. Those are all people I’ve met through fan stuff.

I’m thinking about a sequel to Aether Powered with another invention as the key point. I’d most likely bring in the pirates again. My current working title is Rogue Wave and would be about the rogue wave phenomenon of Tsunamis. I don’t have much else yet and want to get a solid plot for it before I start. Maybe late in 2023? Depends on all the things, lol.

Who are some of your major influences? (whether or not you think those influences can be seen in your work—you know they’re there)
All my favorite authors are influences, but I never feel like I get enough of them in there. Lois McMaster Bujold, Terry Pratchett, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Alan Dean Foster, John M. Ford, Charles Stross, and more.

More personal people would be Troy Lambert (no relation), Danielle Gilbert, David Farland, M. Todd Gallowglas, John M. Olsen, and more.

I learned a lot from the Writing Excuses podcast with Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Brandon Sanderson.

You’ve published SF and Steampunk so far (and non-fiction about SF)—are those your genres of choice for writing and reading? Is there a genre you particularly enjoy, but don’t think you could/would want to try—or, given time are you going to get around to them all?
I was a huge SF fan growing up and still am. I used to be a bigger fan of Fantasy too, but am less so now. I like Steampunk, but don’t read it as much as I used to a decade ago. Of course, I’m not reading in general quite as much now as then.

I will probably continue doing SF and Steampunk a lot, but I also like Urban Fantasy and have several short stories I’m planning on getting out that are UF. I’m working on a fantasy as well, so we’ll see how that goes.

I really like humor. I’m a huge Discworld fan and would love to be able to write funny/satirical stuff like that. Or like Keith Laumer’s Retief books (more SF) or Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s books. But I’m having trouble getting into writing it. I’ve got a plot idea for a humorous SF story, but it hasn’t risen to the top of the pile yet.

Let’s play “Online Bookstore Algorithm” (a game I made up for these Q&As). What are 3-5 books whose readers may like Aether Powered?
Ouch, I wish I knew, my advertising might be going better, lol. Seriously though… hmmm, that’s tough.

Flaming Zeppelins. It’s a Steampunk book. More crazy than mine.

City of Saints by DJ Butler. Another Steampunk book set in Utah in the late 1800s.

Rock Band Fights Evil by DJ Butler. A series that is exactly what it says. Again, I wish mine was as creative as this.

I am having some trouble finding books that would have crossover to mine. If you have suggestions, I love to hear it. I don’t seem to be good at that kind of matchup. My first thought when you asked was, Not Dressed by Matthew Hanover—if he was to write contemporary Steampunk, it’d be a lot like it Aether Powered (and Not Dressed is the closest match of his books). While reading the book, I thought of K.R.R. Lockhaven’s The Marauders, the Daughter, and the Dragon more than once (his pirates would love yours—and vice versa).

2022 has been a busy year for you, are you easing up on yourself soon? Can you tell us what’s coming up in ‘23?
I hope not! But didn’t have a great start, getting sick right at the end of NaNo. I’m shooting to keep up a three to four book a year pace, but it’s going to be tougher than it has been since I’m running out of written stuff that just needs rewrites and edits.

I know I’ve got Relics of War coming out in early 23, probably by February (I want it for the LTUE conference in February). Relics of War is a SF story set a few thousand years in the future after a devastating war with rouge AI warships set humanity back. A ship of privateers finds information that might lead to one of the warships from the AI wars, but they aren’t the only ones after it.

I was working on Dead Knowledge until I got sick, so I need to pick that up again and get that ready, hopefully in the Summer. It’s an idea I got when taking a class from Dave Farland where he said that Necromancers were never the good guys. So I have a story where one is. He’s a research necromancer who contacts the dead to answer questions and retrieve lost knowledge. Basically he’s a librarian and the dead are the internet.

I’ve got a bit done on a sequel to Steam Opera which just came out. Shadow Opera is a story of spies and spying. Think a little like Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. I may get that out next year.

I’ve got a story idea with a couple of scenes written I plan on calling IGLOW: InterGalactic Ladies Of Wrestling. Aliens are kidnapping lady wrestlers and pitting them against alien female wrestlers. I may work on that this coming year.

I’ve got a partially finished story I’m having some trouble with I might work on. Muse asks the question: If the Greek Muses were alive today, what would they be doing? A college student with severe writer’s block finds one playing guitar on a street corner and another holding a cardboard sign: Lost Home, Lost Hope, Please Help.

Oh, nearly forgot. I’ve got six short stories in a connected set I want to polish up and print in thin little booklets. As a group they are called Monster Marshals and they are about marshals working for a secret government organization that polices magic and monsters in our world. One of the stories made it into the Haunted Yuletide anthology. “’Twas the Fight Before Christmas” has two marshals sent to a Reindeer farm in Maine to stop animated snowmen from attacking it.
WOW. I’m tired just reading that—that’s ambitious.

Thanks for your time—and thanks for Aether Powered, I had a lot of fun with it and I hope you have plenty of success with it.