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The Different Faces of Gunpowder Fantasy
Like every genre, Gunpowder Fantasy is a category with a lot of variation. From the level of technology, to the existence and power of the magic, every author will have his or her own take on Gunpowder Fantasy.
But like other sub-genre’s, Gunpowder Fantasy can be divided into a few simple groups: Flintlock Fantasy, Muskets and Magic, and Rifles and Railroads. As with anything, there will be some variation, but for the most part I think that these three categories can be based primarily on the level of technology used and secondarily on the amount of magic involved.
Flintlock Fantasy
Flintlock Fantasy covers worlds created with early gunpowder era technology: flintlock rifles, no steam power or telegraphs. These stories will also tend to use less magic or no magic at all.
Muskets and Magic
While not necessarily jumping far ahead of Flintlock Fantasy in their use of technology, worlds built of Muskets and Magic will tend to have a greater focus on the magical aspects of their worlds.
Rifles and Railroads
Rifles and Railroad novels fall on the higher end of the technology tree. Railroads are common, steam ships may be introduced and rifles are the primary weapon of choice. In some cases, repeating or revolving weapons will be used.
Obviously these sub-categories are only my interpretation of how Gunpowder Fantasy has developed, but I think it’s definitely a start to classifying this increasingly popular new area of fiction.
Moving Right Along
So a couple of big things happening this week with The Cerberus Rebellion!
First off, I found a possible narrator for the audiobook production. He’s working on the first chapter audition right now and is expecting to have it finished after this weekend so I’ll get a chance to have a listen hopefully by Monday.
Second, I crossed my 2,000 Views mark early this week. It’s a big milestone for me to reach in under a year. I’d like to thank all of my readers and all of my fellow bloggers who have helped with links and cross-posting.
And last, from my posts earlier this week, I’ve started a Kickstarter Campaign to get The Cerberus Rebellion into print. I’ve already got 6% of my modest goal of $500 pledged, so hopefully we’ll get that finished so I can expand the distribution of the novel.
So if you can spare a few dollars, swing by the Kickstarter page and pledge! There’s some awesome backer rewards including free copies of my other works, physical copies of The Cerberus Rebellion and even special edition printed maps!
Found Another One!
So, I’ve made it kind of a habit to Google “Gunpowder Fantasy” “Muskets and Magic” and “Flintlock Fantasy” every once in a while to see if there’s anyone else out there writing in this subgenre, or if there’s anyone out there looking for works of this nature.
The other day, I came across “Duckblood Soup” written by co-authors Frank and James Hofer. I reached out to them about the possibility of some cross-promotion and we’ll be seeing a guest post from Frank soon.
You can check out their site on the link above, their Facebook page here and their novel here
The Gunpowder Fantasy Review
In an effort to help raise awareness of other Gunpowder Fantasy/Muskets and Magic/Flintlock Fantasy authors, I’ll be reviewing their works and posting them here.
To facilitate the process, I’ll be using the following definition:
Gunpowder Fantasy: an alternate world story set in a world that uses gunpowder firearms (up to and including revolvers, but excluding magazine fed small arms or belt fed weapons), steam power (limited to rail transport and limited sea-going vessels) while also maintaining essential elements including some of the following elements: a fully-alternate world setting, magic, a feudal or semi-feudal setting, alternate races (including, but not limited to elves, dwarves, orc and other “traditional” fantasy races), and/or a broad-scale conflict.
Alternate History stories may be considered if they are of a sufficiently “alternate” nature and will be considered on a case by case basis.
Steampunk will not be considered for review.
I’m currently working up a list of stories to be featured, so if you have any suggestions please hit up the Contact link.
That Time of Year…
…when you don’t really get anything productive done.
This year, I’ll be working part-time at Best Buy (Black Friday was absolutely crazy) and working full-time at UPS for the Christmas Season.
Unfortunately, my writing is going to suffer and I’ll probably be posting very little.
However, I did manage to finish Battle for Broken Plains and I’m getting ready to send it to a couple of Beta Readers. It clocked in at just over 27,000 words, about twice as long as I originally expected.
My plan is to put Battle up for free across all of the major distributors and advertise it as much as possible to garner readers.
I’m going to try to get more work done on The Hydra Offensive, which is currently sitting at a sliver under 44,000, with the goal of having it completed and published before June. While 2 books a year isn’t the pace I’d like to keep, the rigors of life are such that it’s going to have to suffice.
Creating a Culture
When I decided to add Orcs to the world of Zaria, I decided immediately that they would be different from the stereotypical “hulk smash!” Orcs that are so common throughout most of the Fantasy genre.
I had already developed the concept of a group of city-states that had once been a republic. I knew that these city-states, or at least some of them, would be places of high culture that were also home to mercenary legions.
So when it came time to develop my Orcs, I decided that they would be the core to these city-states. But that wasn’t enough.
I decided to add a couple of wrinkles to the Orcs and so I created the colonies of Thayer and Galten across the Vast Sea, nestled in the mountains near the nation of Ansgar. But now I had another problem: these colonies would have been separated from their homeland for so long that they would have culture all their own.
Right now, I’m working on Battle for Broken Plains, the story of how Raedan Clyve came to be the Baron of Broken Plains, and as I write, I find myself creating the culture for different parts of my world that haven’t been explored as fully elsewhere.
The challenge is to create a culture that clearly descended from the established culture of the City States, but at the same time has its own aspects. The Orcish colonies have lived near the brutish Nordahrians for so long, they have picked up on some of their traditions.
It’s one of the things that I like so much about Fantasy: the worldbuilding of a culture that mixes mercenary instincts with fierce clan loyalty and a culture of marauding.
Now in Wider Distribution – The Cerberus Rebellion!
Good news for those of you without Kindles: The Cerberus Rebellion is now available in all e-reader formats from Smashwords. Hop on over and take a look here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/246079
From Smashwords, The Cerberus Rebellion will be distributed into all of the major ebook retailers.
Making Room
As I work on The Hydra Offensive, I’ve run into a problem. I originally had planned to have 6 total POV Characters, including return characters Raedan, Hadrian and Eadric from The Cerberus Rebellion and three new POVs. There would be 2 sets of 2 POVs that would follow basically the same plot lines and then 2 independent POVs with their own plot. Those 2 wouldn’t get a lot of time until mid-way through.
Well, one of the plot lines (2 POVs) has grown into a lot more than I originally planned for it to be. According to my initial outline, I should be at around chapter 12 or 13. I’m at Chapter 23. I’m finally approaching the point where the 2 independent POVs should start getting more time, but I’m beginning to worry about the end size of Hydra if I put them both in.
If I do put both of them in, I can see Hydra ballooning to over 120k words, and while that’s not as big of a concern as it may have been before, I’m more concerned with running into the George RR Martin problem of diluting the focus of the novel.
I’ve looked at it and I can reasonably push one of the subplots into the next novel, tenatively titled “The Centaur Campaign”, but if I do that, I worry that I’m going to run into the same problem until I run out of novels to push storylines to. Cutting the proposed storyline won’t either because this is a major character who features prominently in the series going forward.
Funny enough, and on a related note, I’m actually going back through my novella “Battle for Broken Plains” and adding in a new major POV. This character got some time later in the story, but I think that things will flow better, and avoid as much infodump, by adding the character in earlier in the piece and slowly introducing the content.
Have you ever had to push a character into the next book to make sure your novel doesn’t get fat?
Marketing From the Niche
When I was in the middle of world-building the Griffins & Gunpowder Universe, I ran into a dilemma. I had a solid idea of what I wanted to do with this universe: I wanted it to be an epic fantasy but I wanted to bring gunpowder technology into it. The problem was that I couldn’t for the life of me find very much in the way of previous examples of how this was best accomplished.
So I was debating dragging the whole universe back to the standard-fare medieval world, or taking it into a full-on Steampunk world. After some internal debate, some twitter chats with other authors and some googling, I decided to go ahead and make the world that I wanted to make in the first place.
Now that I’ve released The Cerberus Rebellion and plowed into the Gunpowder Fantasy subgenre full speed, I find that it’s rather difficult to find marketing venues for it. The Griffins & Gunpowder Universe is between two worlds; not quite Traditional Epic Fantasy but definitely not Steampunk.
So I’ve tried to reach out to the few other authors that write in the sub-genre and build a network of Gunpowder Fantasy authors.
A.S. Warwick’s Commonwealth Chronicles (his website is here) would definitely fall into my definition of Gunpowder Fantasy, though he doesn’t go quite as far down the gunpowder/steam technology path as I do. Where Griffins & Gunpowder is set in the mid-19th century with muskets being phased out, rifles common and the beginning emergence of cartridge-based revolvers, the Commonwealth Chronicles is set in a late 18th-century to early 19th-century setting. Muskets and smoothbore cannon are the dominant firearm in Mr Warwick’s world; rifles are rare, slow to reload and cumbersome.
Another author whose world falls into Gunpowder Fantasy, though again on the earlier stages of the technological tree, is William King. His Terrarch Chronicles make heavy use of muskets and, from what I’ve read so far, very much include heavy magic use.
The last author, and the one that I’ve had the most interaction and cross-promotion with, is Harry Vossen from A Way With Worlds, a world-building how-to. I had the chance to read some of his yet-to-be-released novel, Under a Burning Sky, and I was impressed. His work is definitely the furthest from my own; through the first few chapters (I haven’t had a chance to read through the full novel) Under a Burning Sky uses very little reference to gunpowder. In fact, Harry’s world is probably the closest of these selections to traditional Epic Fantasy. To the point I reached, muskets weren’t used and the only gunpowder weapons seemed to be cannons loaded aboard ships.
The point of this post is to say that no matter how small you think your subgenre is, with the expansive nature of the internet and the booming eBook market, there is likely to be someone else writing something similar enough to your own works that you can draw parallels between the two worlds and help each other through cross-promotion.
The Cerberus Rebellion – Last Free Run
Starting today, The Cerberus Rebellion will be starting it’s last KDP Select Free Run. It will be free until 10/10 (Wednesday) so if you’ve been looking to pick it up, now is your last chance. Download it here or click the cover below!
For those of you who don’t have a Kindle, I’ll be putting Cerberus up to the other major eBook vendors!
The Cerebrus Rebellion
One hundred years of peace and prosperity. War changes everything.
On the world of Zaria, Elves, magic and mythical beasts coexist beside rifles and railroads. The futures of two nations hang in the balance as rebels and revolutionaries trade gunfire with loyalists and tyrants.
Eadric Garrard was raised to believe that as the rightful King of Ansgar, his loyal nobles and fearful subjects answered to his every whim, no matter the cost or consequence. His decision to send his troops thousands of miles away will test that fear, and loyalty.
Raedan Clyve was ordinary until an Elven ritual involving a griffin’s heart turned him into something more. Twenty years later, he still struggles with the magics that rage through his body. His mentor holds him back from his full potential and he faces pressure to find a suitable wife and father an heir.
Hadrian Clyve has picked up where his father left off and works to expand his family’s influence amongst the Ansgari nobility. His aggressive negotiation of alliances and shrewd choice of marriage agreements has earned him respect, and resentment. When his King calls his troops to arms, Hadrian has other things in mind.
After a century of scheming and decades of preparation, Magnus Jarmann is ready to bring his family’s plans to fruition by launching a war of independence that will free his people and return his country to its rightful place among the nations of Zaria. The King’s call to arms creates an opportunity that Magnus cannot afford to miss.
In a war, little is held back; in a revolution, nothing is safe.
A Novel of approximately 90,000 words.
Gunpowder Fantasy 