I had a great day in great company at the Maldon Museum of Power yesterday at the fourth Steampunk Essextraordinaire! Hosted by Paul Adams and the League of Essextraordinary Gentlemen, I had the privilege of sharing my work alongside other steampunk authors, performing an interactive reading and spreading the legend of the Steam Highwayman even further afield.
This was a special day for me because exactly a year ago I attended the Essextraordinaire III in faith, with Steam Highwayman I: Smog and Ambuscade still crowdfunding on Kickstarter. Without any book to hand I was invited onto the writer’s panel alongside Toby Frost and Jon Green and had the chance to tell everyone about the project. To return with the book itself – and the promise of a second to come – has given a massive boost to my confidence and self-belief.
Another time I’ll give a write-up of Toby’s work, the Space Captain Smith series, but having bought, read and given the first book away last year, I invested some of my hard-earned takings into a full, signed set of Mr Frost’s comic adventures. If I’m quiet in the next few days, it’s probably because my head is in a steampunk space helmet fighting the Lemming Men…
The event reminded me how much I enjoy reading from Steam Highwayman and how well it influences my sales at any event. Honestly I’d say that despite the small audience, I gave one of my most engaging performances – but then the bar was very high, with Helen Bruce of Solstice Storytelling telling her steampunk’d traditional tales and Darren Gooding performing his excellent verse and one-man, three-charactered theatrical extracts.
I even bought a new waistcoat for my costume. The first one had a lovely orangey colour to contrast with my blue coat, but it was always far too small and my hurried alterations have come apart in the last year…
So I’m fairly confident that I’ll be back in Maldon next September – and already looking forward to it. How many books will I have on the stall by then?