Penny Dreadful is one of the four musician characters in Tesla’s Stepdaughters. What was her inspiration?
In as far as the Ladybugs is an alternate world analogy of the Beatles…
Penny is a mixture of Lennon and McCartney, with a bit of Harrison. She’s a hard rocker and a large woman, a bit like Ann Wilson of Heart.
She’s the greatest guitar player of all time, and oh yeah, she’s a clone.
Read about her and the other Ladybugs in Tesla’s Stepdaughters.
Ep!phanee (pronounced Epiphany) or Piffy is one of the four musician characters in Tesla’s Stepdaughters. What was her inspiration?
In as far as the Ladybugs is an alternate world analogy of the Beatles…
Piffy is a mixture of Lennon and McCartney. Song writing style, she’s more Lennon. Management put her at odds with the other three band members: ala McCartney. And like McCartney, she’s always looking to “do it in the road.”
She’s a wild chick with a bit of Joan Jett in her and stylewise she’s a bit Lady Gaga too.
Read about her and the other Ladybugs in Tesla’s Stepdaughters.
The Voyage of the Minotaur is the story of a group of settlers founding a colony in a distant mysterious continent. It is a fantasy world and I could name the continents and countries anything that I wanted. I really don’t remember where some of the names came from now. Mallon is the continent in which the story takes place. I think of it geographically as Asia. The colony is set up in the country of Birmisia and there is another distant colony in Mallontah. I think of them as China and India, respectively. Physically, culturally, and socially, these lands are not anything like Asia, India, or China, but putting them in that frame helped me imagine how settlers from a continent similar to Europe might see them.
The series of books Senta and the Steel Dragon has a great many characters (something over 250), but it’s no surprise that the most important is character is Senta Bly. The series is really the story of her life, growing from a small child to become a powerful sorceress.
The Voyage of the Minotaur (Book 1) Senta begins the story as an eight year old orphan living in the great city of Brech. She is adopted by the mysterious sorceress Zurfina the Magnificent and is taken with her on a voyage to the distant land of Birmisia.
The Dark and Forbidding Land (Book 2) Senta and Zurfina have been living in Birmisia for almost two years as this book starts. She struggles to understand the magic that Zurfina tries to teach her, as she must face the terrors of their forest home.
The Sorceress’s Apprentice (Book 3) As a twelve year old apprentice sorceress, Senta has become well-known and, by some, feared. She struggles with the problems of adolescence along with her friends Hero and Hertzel and her boyfriend Graham.
The Young Sorceress (Book 4) On the eve of her fifteenth birthday, Senta finds herself being pulled in four different directions. Will she really have to split herself into four to deal with all her problems? And she may have a rival for Graham’s affections.
The Two Dragons (Book 5) War comes to Birmisia and Senta is right in the middle of it. As Freedonian forces and murderous lizzies threaten the city of Port Dechantagne, Senta must make a journey into the heart of unexplored territory to the lizzie city-state of Tsahloose.
The Sorceress and her Lovers (Book 6) Twenty-two year old sorceress Senta finishes her tour of Sumir and prepares to return to Birmisia with a new love interest and a new baby. Meanwhile an old acquaintance plans to use the sorceress’s magic for her own selfish purposes.
Tall and thin, with blond hair and blue eyes, Senta is intelligent and witty. As a child she is precocious. As an adult, she is clever and sharp tongued.
My novel The Voyage of the Minotaur and the subsequent books in the Senta and the Steel Dragon series are set in an alternate world based very loosely on our own Victorian/Edwardian age. I wrote a bit before about how I came up with the map. Let me now tell you a bit about how I came up with the concept. Originally I was thinking of creating a role-playing game setting. I had seen a few Steampunk campaigns, but none of them really fell in line with what I would have wanted to create. I want my campaigns to be unique. I invisioned a world that was so large that the age of exploration would have taken longer, and it would only be in the nineteenth century when people from Sumir (my Europe equivalent) would venture forth to discover the world. In the distant lands would be primitive tribes and savage civilizations. They would not be human, but other forms of intelligent life. The lower forms of life would match as well. There would be a continent with reptilian people and dinosaurs. There would be a continent with insectoid intelligences and giant monster insects. When the story came to me, and the world became the setting for the story rather than for a role-playing game, I kept the reptilians and dinosaurs and pushed everything else to the back burner.
Norar Remontar is the second person that Alexander Ashton meets in the world of Ecos, and the first Amatharian. Norar Remontar is the son of an overlord and is a knight. He carries an Amatharian sword, inhabited by one of the strange energy beings known as souls. This life-form empoweres the ordinary metal of the sword with fantastic power.
The Amatharian knight is typical of his people– tall and handsome with deep blue skin. He is brave and at least in the beginning, suspicious of Alexander.
The shrine took my breath away. Not because it was big, though it was that. Not because it was carefully inlaid with precious stones and highly polished gold and silver, though it was. It quite knocked the breath from my lungs because the symbol on the great shrine was an A. I don’t mean it was an Amatharian A. It was an honest to god, Greco-Roman, American English, Times font type A!
“That’s an A!” I shouted.
The entire population of the hall turned and looked at us.
“That’s an A.” I said.
“Show some respect, knight,” growled Vena Remontar. “Keep your voice down.”
“That’s an A,” I whispered.
“You are correct, knight.” A voice came from behind us.
We turned to see an older Amatharian man dressed in the brown robes of the templars, and wearing a large silver medallion with the letter A on it. Vena Remontar bowed low, and I followed suit.
“I am Kurar Ka Remiant Oldon Domintus,” said the man, identifying himself as an overlord.
“I am the High Templar.”
“It is an honor to meet you, I’m sure,” I said. “That is an A?”
“Yes, you are quite correct. That is an A.”
“Well. How did it get here?”
“Before we answer any of your questions,” the Overlord said. “you have a great many things to do for us.”
Oldon Domintus turned and led the two of us across the great hall to a doorway opposite that through which we had come. Beyond the chamber was a great long corridor. This hallway was lined with pictures painted in the bright colors: pictures of Amatharian knights engaged in battles, pictures of templars performing rituals in the great plaza, pictures of great buildings being constructed in Amathar. The High Templar maintained the image of a man showing friends around his home.
“Has Vena Remontar told you about our temple?”
“I’m afraid she has not yet had time.”
“This temple was built three hundred generations ago. Construction was begun under the direction of Amath himself. He envisioned a monument to his people where they could look for guidance. It was built here beside the Garden of Souls, so that those feeling the draw of their souls, could reflect.
“You felt no need to reflect before entering the garden?” he asked me.
“I’ve always been a pretty spontaneous fellow,” I replied.
“So it seems,”
One of the major characters in Senta and the Steel Dragon (Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur) & (Book 5: The Two Dragons) is Zeah Korlann. Zeah is the head butler of the Dechantagne family. As a member of the minority Zaeri, he has had to deal with prejudice his whole life. As Zeah leaves with the rest of the party for the strange and distant land of Birmisia, his life begins to change. As the colonists rely on his organizing skills, he becomes more and more important, and his status increases. At the same time, he becomes the object of interest for a fascinating young woman.
The United Kingdom of Greater Brechalon is the country from which most of the characters in Senta and the Steel Dragon come. It is a fantasy analog of Edwardian Great Britain, with a few steam punk elements thrown in. Magic exists and wizards are relatively common, though they are usually employed by the military or the police. Sorcerors are more scarce. Steam travel is common as are telegraphs and gas lighting.
The UK is made up of three large islands and several small ones and possesses the world’s most powerful navy. Its traditional enemies are the Kingdom of Freedonia and the Kingdom of Mirsanna.
Sumir is a continent that, though roughly the size of Africa, is never the less one of the smallest continents of the world of Senta and the Steel Dragon. It is the home of mankind. It is where the United Kingdom of Greater Brechalon, Freedonia, Mirsanna, and the other human countries can be found. From Sumir, humans have begun to reach out and colonize the rest of the world, including the continent of Mallon.
City of Amathar 