Guest Post + Giveaway: A Riveting Affair A Steampunk Anthology by Candace Havens, Lily Lang and Patricia Eimer

A Riveting Affair

A Steampunk Anthology

Candace Havens, Lily Lang & Patricia Eimer

Entangled Ever After

March 25, 2013

Steampunk

Beauty and the Clockwork Beast

Rose Verney wants to fulfill her father’s dying request: to complete construction of the teleportation device he designed. Knowing just who can help her succeed, she seeks out Sebastian Cavendish, her father’s brilliant former student.Sebastian hasn’t left his home since he returned from the Civil War. He's a broken man, his prosthetics a reminder of the terrible destruction his inventions brought to the battlefield. He wants nothing to do with Rose and her father's masterpiece, but when she barges into his abandoned lab and begins construction, it’s everything he can do to resist getting involved. Especially when she charms her way into his monstrous heart.

Demon Express

Professor Maisy Clark, professional demon hunter, is on the trail of an evil scientist responsible for the deaths of hundreds. Julian is worse than the monsters he creates, but he's also obsessed with Maisy and willing to kill anyone who gets too close to her. Just when she thinks she has Julian cornered, the sexy marshall Jake Calloway insists the investigation is his, and everything goes to hell. Maisy came to Texas to corner the scientist whose macabre experiments have taken so many lives, and Calloway is just another distraction she doesn’t need. Julian is her responsibility, one she’s not about to share. Even if Calloway can help, Julian will know Maisy is falling for the marshall, and she's not willing to risk his life.

The Clockwork Bride

When engineer Aida Mulvaney attends a masquerade ball at the home of a staunch Luddite earl with a personal vendetta against her father’s company, she doesn’t expect to end the night married to the earl’s son Julian Capshaw, a brilliant engineer in his own right. The marriage will allow both of them to pursue their love of science, without interfering parents and ridiculous social stigmas. Though they escape to the Continent to start new lives, Julian’s father will have none of his heir’s disobedience. Before long, a marriage begun for the sake of convenience becomes a union of passion, but will it survive the machinations of an earl determined to destroy everything they love?

COSTUMING CHARACTERS

Rose and Sebastian are both inventors inventing things. They should have googles  and some serious leather aprons.

Despite messing with a war and the timeline of New York architectural history in Beauty and the Clockwork Beast, I really wanted to evoke the feeling of a specific age, and spent a lot of time looking at John Singer Sargent paintings of rich girls in pretty dresses, like Lady Agnew and the Wyndham Sisters. These women are high society ladies and not grubby inventors, of course, but the textures and richness of the materials really give a feel for how opulent the Gilded Age is. And of course, part of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale, even the Beaumont version, is that the Beast gives Beauty lavish clothing once he has her in his clutches. I always rather imagined that the dress Sebastian gives Rose is a less fussy version of Lady Agnew’s, and that after finishing their work on the teleportation device for the day, Rose puts it on to have dinner with him in his garden. Just because a girl is an inventor doesn’t mean she wants to wear cogs as a fashion accessory, does it? 

Okay, maybe it does. Because shoes. And boots. Not with the Lady Agnew dress, of course, but perhaps with a high-collared Victorian blouse and long skirt? Yes.

BEAUTY AND THE CLOCKWORK BEAST PLAYLIST 

I’m one of those totally bizarre people who requires absolute silence when I write, so I don’t really do book playlists. When I’m editing, I can maybe—maybe—listen to something classical without human voices, like Bach’s Brandenburg concertos. Still, it’s fun to think about stories and romances in terms of music. My top three songs for this book would probably be: 

Siouxie Sioux and Morrissey, Interlude. It’s kind of old but I still love it, definitely one of the finest collaborations of all time, all about that tentative moment when you’re falling in love but you’re not really sure. The lyrics describe an unreal quality to their love affair that I think (I hope) applies to the very unreal quality of Sebastian’s “enchanted castle” in the heart of Manhattan. (By the way, if someone wants to buy me a castle in Manhattan, enchanted or no, I’ll take it. Living in a 100 square foot studio gets really, really old.) 

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and the Beast Soundtrack, especially Something There and Beauty and the Beast. Cheating, I know, but this is my all-time favorite Disney movie and favorite musical and favorite everything, and also, it’s perfect. In general, and also for this book. (Also, Gaston is my favorite villain ever.) 

And because she’s the best, I have to pick an Alison Krauss song even if bluegrass is not so much with the steampunky. I don't care. Crazy Faith. Because Rose leaves. 

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Lily Lang lives in New York City, where she studies history, eats a lot of cookies, and may or may not dance on bars when the moon is full. To her dismay, she has no psychic powers.

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