dieselpunk | CW Hawes

8 Sentence Sunday On Dieselpunks #12

In today’s snippet of the forthcoming second Lady Dru novel, The Golden Fleece Affair, we get her reaction to learning that not only is the mythical Golden Fleece real, but media mogul Walter Ramsey Hall wants Dru and Karl to get it for him. He’s terminally ill and wants the fleece to cure his sickness and give him long life.

Dru and Karl were in the Soviet Union only last year (The Moscow Affair) and have no desire to go back. The country has descended into civil war and been invaded by Hitler and Mussolini, who are backing the Czarists.

Here are our 8 sentences for today:

Neither of us said anything. I, for one, had no desire to go back to Russia. Besides, everyone and his aunt and uncle wanted the damn thing. As sure as I love Karl and the sky is blue, there was going to be a lot of shooting and bloodletting over this hunk of wool. Not something I wanted to be in the middle of.

He looked at us, undoubtedly guessing we weren’t excited about the assignment. He simply said, “I won’t play hardball, Karl, Dru. I am asking you, as a friend, to do this for me.”

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8 Sentence Sunday on Dieselpunks #10

The zeppelin Argo is on the last leg of its journey to the country of Georgia, known in ancient times as Colchis. The land of the Golden Fleece. Lady Dru and company will land in Georgia and attempt to find and retrieve the Golden Fleece for Mr Walter Ramsey Hall.

However, the fun is only just beginning. In today’s snippet, the Argo is flying over Turkey and is attacked by two Soviet built biplanes. Dru and her friend Dunyasha run to their cabin to retrieve their pistols. While getting them we hear their conversation. Here is today’s snippet:

We heard more machine guns firing.
“Is this gas bag armed?” Dunyasha asked. “Because that wasn’t only the planes shooting.”
“Knowing Mr Hall, as I do, I’d say Argo is armed.”
“I love that man,” Dunyasha said with a huge smile on her face. “And those bastards better not hurt my champagne.”
We ran back to the lounge, opened a window on the starboard and looked out. Argo’s engines were roaring and she was on a steep climb.

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Out of Thin Air

It’s probably an occupational hazard. Every now and again I’m asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” I usually reply, “From life” or “Out of thin air”. Truth be told, I don’t know where my ideas come from really. Like manna, they fall out of the sky and I just pick them up.

In 1982, I read a story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine introducing a female cozy sleuth. The editor complained about the lack of female sleuths. There just weren’t enough of them. The story was “Meet Athalia Goode” by Raleigh Bond. The editor hoped we’d see more of Ms Goode. Unfortunately, I don’t think Mr Bond chronicled any further adventures. At least a Google search produced none.

What immediately popped into my mind was the name Athalia came from the Greek meaning “truth”. My mind drifted to Latin and in a flash Justinia Wright was born. Truth and Goodness. Justice and Right. One Greek. One Latin. For seven years I did nothing with Justinia Wright. Then one day I learned there were caves under Minneapolis. In a flash, that manna falling from heaven, I picked up a mystery involving my job at the welfare office, caves under Minneapolis, and my interest in Aztecs. I wrote the mystery and set it aside. Twenty-five years later, I rewrote the novel and published it last year as Festival of Death. Unlike Mr Bond, I wrote three more novellas featuring Miss Wright (Trio in Death-Sharp Minor) and have a second novel in progress.

The Rocheport Saga, my post-apocalyptic, libertarian, retro-futuristic quasi-steampunk series (Book Three coming out soon), began with a single sentence and eventually ended up over 2200 manuscript pages in length. That sentence? “Today I killed a man and a woman.” Where the heck that came from I don’t know. Out of thin air most likely.

Lady Drusilla Drummond Hurley-Drummond was inspired by the very real Lady Grace Hay Drummond-Hay, who wrote for the Hearst papers in the ‘20s and 30s. Why feminists haven’t written a biography of Lady Grace is beyond me. She was a truly remarkable and very modern woman.

Information is rather scarce about Lady Grace and I don’t pretend Lady Dru is anything like her inspiration. Lady Dru is more a superheroine figure, set in a dieselpunk alternative 1950s.

The Moscow Affair, her initial adventure, began life as a simple what if. Out of thin air I thought, what if World War 2 had never happened, and the Czarists tried to retake Russia upon Stalin’s death? And a novel was born.

All of these ideas just appeared. What’s more, they appear to everyone. Some of us just happen to see them as story ideas. Each of us has a talent. Some of us, can tell stories. Some of us can fix things. Others of us can sell, or do complex mathematics, or figure out problems. We need handymen, plumbers, electricians, mathematicians, engineers, and the like. The world would be a boring place with just storytellers. The handyman who fixed my broken chair looked at it and figured out how to fix it. Did the solution come to him out of thin air? Maybe. Sure seemed like it to me.

Each of us is unique and in our own ways, weave magic out of thin air. I’m glad we’re not all storytellers.

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8 Sentence Sunday on Dieselpunks #9

Today’s snippet is from my Lady Dru WIP. Our intrepid heroine, her companion, Karl, and Mr Hall’s Man Friday have boarded the airship and are waiting for takeoff. They meet the two ancient history professors who are accompanying them. Here is today’s snippet:

Karl and I joined the professors at their table. Franzen had his pipe in hand, unlit.

“Rather uncivilized not being able to smoke,” Franzen said.

“Better that then risking us all burning to death,” Doctor Rodman replied.

“Even with the German advancements in sealants and hydrogen purity, better safe than sorry,” I said.

“I suppose,” Franzen admitted.

“What do you make of the discovery?” Karl asked.

“Of course, we’ve only seen photographs and read a description,” Doctor Rodman said, “but we’re hopeful it is the genuine article.”

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8 Sentence Sunday on Dieselpunks #8

Today’s snippet comes from an early chapter in my forthcoming novel The Golden Fleece Affair. Here we see a little different side of Lady Dru. Having learned how to shoot a submachine gun when in the Soviet Union on her previous adventure, told in The Moscow Affair, she has occasion early on in her new adventure to use one again.

She, her partner, Karl, and Jake Branson, Mr Hall’s Man Friday, are being pursued by a mysterious black Hudson Hornet. Now, on a narrow and winding road, sandwiched between a semi and the Hornet, the big black mystery car tries to run them off the road. But Dru is ready. She cocks the submachine and sticks it out the window. Then the fun begins:

The Hudson hit us and kept accelerating. The jolt caused me to hit my head and see stars for a moment. Branson was struggling to keep us on the road. I saw a man lean out the passenger side of the Hornet. He had a gun. I pulled the trigger on the submachine gun.

The windscreen on the black sedan shattered and the wind blew the glass back into the car. The behemoth drifted over to the side of the road, up onto the angled cut through the earth, hit a boulder, flipped end over end, came back down onto the road, rolled over onto its roof, and burst into flames.

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8 Sentence Sunday on Dieselpunks #6

In today’s snippet, we find Lady Dru, Dunyasha, and Kit Somers (our intrepid Graham auto salesman turned secret agent) having been captured by the evil Count Neratoff and SS-Sturmbannführer Leiprecht. They are being held captive in a room deep underground beneath an old, abandoned church. Together, with Kit’s two knives hidden in his boot soles, they have cobbled together a desperate array of “weapons” to help them escape: a bucket, serving as a chamber pot, a couple handfuls of dirt scrapped from the dirt floor, and the length of electric cord for the light bulb. Now they need to figure out what to do. Kit has just said, “Our only chance will be when they open that door.” Here is the snippet:

“Yes,” Dunyasha agreed and added, “It would be be nice to know how many are out there.”

“When you roll the dice,” I said, “you have to play the numbers you get.”

“This isn’t backgammon, Dru,” Dunyasha replied.

“Close enough,” was my response.

We talked it over and concocted a plan. Probably half baked at best. But half baked was better than not baked at all. So we sat and waited; waited with our half baked plan of escape.

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Agent Carter

I love Agent Carter. Plain and simple. The show is Dieselpunk suspense and intrigue with a noir touch. And very well done, IMO.

We have the heroine, who is not unlike a hardboiled detective. She is gritty and not afraid to get dirty. And with her broken heart, she is not interested in love. We have the mysterious mastermind of evil and his or her minions. We have fantastic secret weapons and the perpetually dark atmosphere and surroundings. What is not to like?

Hayley Atwell does a superb job, IMO, playing Agent Carter. Her facial nuances convey so much of what Carter is thinking and doesn’t necessarily say. She brings Carter to life in a dynamic way, showing her intelligence and her ability to be long suffering when faced with the resurgent male chauvinism after the war. Peggy Carter now has to do even more what women have always done: think smarter and get the job done.

I love the scene where Carter is being patronized and when asked her name, says, “Agent.” That reply sums it up. She may be relegated to the position of office girl at the moment, but when she was needed she responded and did what the men did. She’s an Agent. As good as any of her peers, who are now getting the important jobs.

Agent Carter has fulfilled my expectations, at least thus far. I’m seriously thinking of buying the DVDs when available and of checking out the other Marvel shows. I do hope, though, we have not seen the last of Agent Peggy Carter. She is the woman.

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Dieselpunk or Decopunk?

I am a newcomer to the Dieselpunk world. I’ll admit that right up front. Many have paved the way before me. In order to understand the genre, I’ve read the fiction and I’ve read the discussions and attempted definitions.

From my reading, I gather there is no hard set definition as of yet. There is, however, a certain understanding of what is in-bounds and out-of-bounds. Having gotten that far, I was then thrown for a loop when I discovered the term “Decopunk” and even more puzzled when I learned “Decopunk” occupies the same time period as Dieselpunk. So what differentiates a story as Decopunk or Dieselpunk? Is it a simple case of authorial whim?

It seems the granddaddy of all the punk genres is cyberpunk. So what is cyberpunk? As near as I can tell, cyberpunk is set in the future, on earth, features advanced and invasive computerized information technology, and is dystopic. It has noir and hardboiled elements and is often nihilistic.

Writers, always looking for new turf to plow, began applying the punk characteristics of individualism and anti-establishmentarianism to the Victorian Era. An appropriate field to plow due to the rapid technological advances of the era, their vision of a high tech future, and the dark undercurrent which existed beneath the prim and proper and polite surface.

Steampunk, however, to my mind, seems to focus more on alternative history and the generally progressive mood of the Victorian Era. It does not seem to be overly dystopic in tone.

Dieselpunk is definitely grittier; incorporating to a greater degree the noir, hardboiled, and nihilistic elements of cyberpunk. There may be an optimistic note, but war and totalitarianism always seem to be lurking in the background.

So where does Decopunk fit in? How does it differ from Dieselpunk? Supposedly, Decopunk is sleeker and shinier that Dieselpunk. It is the chrome-plated version. It is the car, without the grease and oil covered mechanic nearby. Decopunk seems more focused on the art of the era: Art Deco and Streamline Moderne. Somewhat less of a technological emphasis in favor of an artistic one. Art rather than diesel. It might be a bit more positive as well, reflective of the art of the era.

As always, I look forward to your comments and opinions!

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8 Sentence Sunday on Dieselpunks #3

Thanks to the advice given previously by my friends on Dieselpunks.org, I’ve revised the first 8 sentences of my new Lady Dru novel. I’ve dumped the “info dump” in favor of showing Dru’s impish side. Let me know if this is an improvement, or if I need to go back to the drawing board. Here is the snippet:

I pushed the throttle and watched the speedo needle cross the one hundred miles per hour mark and pulled back on the stick. The nose of my Puss Moth rose and continued rising. Up, up, up we flew until we were upside down. I pushed the stick forward and down we came; pulled back and leveled off, completing the loop.

Karl started awake and I put my little baby into a displacement roll (something like a corkscrew); once, twice, thrice. Karl started screaming, “We’re going to crash!”

I brought the plane back to level just as Karl grabbed an airsick bag and threw up. I was laughing so hard, tears ran from my eyes.

If you are interested in dieselpunk and would like to check out the other posts, head on over to Dieselpunks.org.

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8 Sentence Sunday on Dieselpunks #2

Today’s snippet is from The Moscow Affair (published in November). In the novel the character Dunyasha is a Russian baroness, who has lived in America since a child to escape the Bolshevik Revolution. Now she is back in Russia trying to overthrow the Communists in the wake of Stalin’s death. Even though married to the Baron Bobrinsky, she and the Baron have a very open marriage and in fact don’t see much of each other. Dunyasha has fallen in love with Dru, but Dru doesn’t feel the same for Dunyasha. At this point in the novel, a young Czarist fighter, whom Dunyasha cares deeply about, died in a battle. He was a poet and the poem below is his last, which he had written for her but didn’t get the chance to give her:

Amongst the trees of this muddy spring
I sit foxhole deep and zeal fades away.
Again the rain so gently falls today
And to this gun, a babe to the breast, I cling.
We wait, listening for the word he brings
Which tells if we shall go or we shall stay.
And yet, it matters not. We just obey,
Day in, Day out, the orders of our King.
Foxhole deep in mud I sit thinking thoughts
Of her and all the choices wrong I made
Which put me here and left her, longing, there.
The things we do for love of king, I swear
We should think over again the things we were taught
And give our love to no one but a maid.

Tears were in my eyes by the time she finished the poem.

There are more snippets over on Dieselpunks.org. Check them out and if you are into dieselpunk, you might even want to join the fun!

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