Coffee Hour in London - Fragment Friday, Stealth Owls and Shameless Sharing

Coffee Hour in London today, so grab your favorite cup of java and let's get to it.  Here's a picture from our trip last year. The first is a shot of the Westminster Palace / Houses of Parliament with St. Stephen's Tower (commonly known as Big Ben) taken from the London Eye: (as you can tell it was a sunny day)

 

and here's one of Nelson's lions in Trafalgar Square (and some cute girl in red.  ;D)

In other news, Kristy over at The Story Siren had in intriguing fragment of a book she read as part of a meme started by James over on Book Chic.  Well, I'm not going to bother with a video (because I'm lazy!) but I am reading a GREAT book right now that debuts in January.  It's XVI, by Julia Karr and trust me - you're going to love it!

Here's the fragment:  "Four guys approached us, lurching and swaying through the moving express.  They sat across the aisle, immediately crowding together in a knot.  A low buzz of unintelligible words, accompanied by the occasional rowdy snort, rose from their cluster.

"They're eighteen," Sandy whispered. "I bet it's that one in the middle's birthday. He's cute!"  She wriggled in her seat.

By the way he kept admiring the tattoo on his wrist and fingering the Band-Aid behind his ear, where his GPS had been, I knew she was right.  I involuntarily touched my own tracker. The tiny grain-sized pellet embedded beneath the skin barely registered on my fingertips.  What would it be like to be able to go someplace where you were untraceable?"

Awesome, huh?  It's out on shelves January 6, 2011 and at the beginning of November Julia will be stopping by to chat about her book on her 16 weeks to XVI blog tour.

On other topics, I subscribe to io9, which is this wild sci fi  website, and they had this great article on why owls are the perfect stealth machine, which I thought seemed like good fodder for a future book in one way or another. Check it out here.

Finally, I have a bit Shameless Sharing for you. After waiting so long to get my book out there, it is so exciting to be getting some feedback from early readers.  I received a wonderful blurb about THE FAERIE RING from Katie B., founder of Mundie Moms, that I wanted to share:

"The Faerie Ring is an intriguing, beautifully written, blend of historical fiction, mixed with the perfect dose of romance, mystery, and faerie lore, all set within the time period of Victorian London.  I was completely enraptured with the story that I couldn't devour this debut novel fast enough."

She posted a blurb on her site with a few comments, which you can read here. There is so much good stuff going on over there all the time, you should definitely check it out!

And that's it for my Friday Coffee Hour - what's new with you?

~Kiki

More Steampunk - Random Linkups

I've been puttering around the internet doing "research" on steampunk for my new book, ENIGMA, and it's sort of like trying to get your arms around a cloud nebula. It seems that steampunk is a very loosely defined genre that appears to be ever-evolving, not unlike the technology that is employed in these stories. It's quite fascinating to read about the different worlds that have been created and identified as steampunk: Some are futuristic, some anachronistic, some Victorian, others set in a completely different landscape. I found a fabulous article over on io9 that has pictures of steampunk projects. Take a look here. And there's another article that discusses steampunk novels and gives us a review of several current and upcoming works.

To give you a hint at just how popular steampunk is becoming, there's several pictures floating around the internet right now of a dystopian Disneyverse, which rumor has it, are from a game in development for Disney-owned Junction Point Studios. And yes, that appears to be the remains of Epcot Center...



Interesting stuff and certainly leaves the door open for new ideas. What are your thoughts on what makes a steampunk novel? Goggles and Gears? The future? The past? The future in the past?