Salt City Steamfest 2014

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 5, 2014

This weekend I donned my top-hat and goggles and went to Salt City Steamfest. This time around, I was a somewhat more active participant – I was involved in two panels with my publisher, Xchyler Publishing, and periodically assisted at the booth selling (and even signing!) books with other authors and editors.

I guess in spite of my software engineering background and heavy geekdom, I’m still kind of a people person. Getting to know (or know better) these folks was a lot of fun. In the picture above / to the right, that’s Candace Thomas (author of Vivatera and Conjectrix (Vivatera) (Volume 2), and also the short story The Hawkweed in Moments in Millennia: A Fantasy Anthology), Sarah Hunter Hyatt (author of the thriller short story Stunner in A Dash of Madness: A Thriller Anthology), myself (Dots, Dashes, and Deceit in Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology), Scott Tarbet – author of A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk who can also be found in Terra Mechanica, Alyson Grauer – with an upcoming novel this fall, and with Scott Taylor at the end can be found in Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology).

Whew. Lotsa books and authors. And a lot of fun.

But we did more than just, you know, work on things. There were things to do… like send a message to Obi-Wan through a Steampunk R2D2, as my wife demonstrated. We also got an authentic tintype photo taken of her.  Complete with the full four-second pose and everything.  That was really cool.  For the kids, there was a carnival – with cotton candy and prizes. And there were mermaids in the hotel pool.

There was plenty of swag in the three dealers’ rooms. If you are looking for a corset, or a dapper hat, goggles, painted nerf guns, books, art, canes, comics, jewelry, picture books about mechanical bustle racing, or just plain weird, cool stuff… there was plenty.

The panels ran the gamut. I was in two panels on writing & getting published  (run by my publisher, of course). My wife told Victorian ghost tales. There were panels on Victorian customs, etiquette, and really scary messed-up traditions and beliefs and culture. I guess that’s why Steampunk is idealized fantasy of the era rather than historical fiction. Again – it’s an alternative to medieval fantasy.

My wife has been dragging me out to do Victorian dancing, and our little group actually got to perform during the ball. That was admittedly kind of fun. And then there was the concern performed by Deus Ex Vapore Machina.  They were a fun experimental string quartet that sounds something like a string quartet mixed with industrial mixed with dubstep. I liked ’em, but they weren’t too easy to dance to.

We had a little bit of fun the first night when a bunch of us went to an Italian restaurant and when asked what event we were attending, we gave them weird looks and asked, “Event? Tell me, what year is it?” When we finally got them to answer, we’d say, “IT WORKED! We’re in the future!”

Yeah, we’re jerks at heart.

It was a really fun weekend though.

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