Making a Point…

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I told someone: “Jeremiah comes from a world where women’s liberation happened a century early, so, with twice as many brains working on problems, they’re more advanced in 1908 than we are today.” His response: “Oh, you’re making a point, aren’t you?”

Yes. Yes I am…

-the Centaur

Guest Post at Beauty’s Library!

Want to know more about the philosophy behind Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine? Check out my guest post at Beauty’s Library:

Jeremiah Willstone is a special novel for me, because the smallest of inspirations blossomed into a project that reflects my deepest values. I fell in love with steampunk at Dragon Con 2009, where I saw many amazing steampunk costumes, in particular a young woman with a steam-powered gatling gun. My training as a science fiction writer makes me pick at the loose threads of imagined worlds, so I started to wonder not just what technology could power that gun, but what social changes could have enabled a young woman to become a Victorian soldier.

I’ve been interested in women’s rights since I was a child…

To read the rest, take a look, or to find out more about Jeremiah, check out The Clockwork Time Machine wherever fine books are sold:

-the Centaur

Author Spotlight at Bell Bridge Books

Over at Bell Bridge Books, I talk about how I came to love steampunk and how Jeremiah Willstone came to be!

Alright, I’ll admit it: I didn’t start out liking steampunk. When The Difference Engine came out, I just didn’t get it. I mean, Charles Babbage’s Difference Engines actually working, much less changing Victorian society? I didn’t buy it. Looking back, I think I just didn’t like alternate history, as I found other, similar novels off-putting.

But as I grew, I watched the steampunk movement grow too, hand in hand with the burgeoning maker community. At the same time I started attending the Maker Faire and admiring all the amazing contraptions our modern independent inventors were coming up with, I started noticing more and more steampunk costumes expressing the same kind of gutsy do-it-yourself, throw-it-all-together flair.

It all came together for me at Dragon Con 2009 …

To read more, check it out at the Bell Bridge Books blog!

-the Centaur

JW&TCTM is HERE!

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At long last, Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine is OUT in the world! You can get it wherever fine books are sold:

The Clockwork Time Machine tells the story of Jeremiah Willstone, a female adventurer from an alternate world called Victoriana, where, because women’s liberation happened a century early and twice as many brains ended up working on hard problems, science has advanced more in 1908 than it has in our world today – but inadvertently, these scientific advances attracted the attention of aliens called Foreigners, who have come calling to make this world their own!

When Jeremiah’s treacherous uncle steals a dangerous alien weapon and secrets it away on an airship to a possibly hostile shore, Jeremiah leads a strike team to retrieve it – and finds herself chasing him across the seas of time itself, with her uncle just possibly aiming to upend the entire world order she holds dear! With time running out, Jeremiah must sacrifice everything she is to save everyone she loves.

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Enjoy!

-the Centaur

JW&TCTM Release: February 23rd, 2017

Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine will be out next week – February 23rd, 2017! Order it on Amazon, review it on Goodreads, or ask for it wherever fine books are sold!

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From an Epic Award winning author comes a sprawling tale of brass buttons, ray guns, and two-fisted adventure!

In an alternate empire filled with mechanical men, women scientists, and fantastic contraptions powered by steam, a high ranking officer in the Victoriana Defense League betrays his country when he steals an airship and awakens an alien weapon that will soon hatch into a walking factory of death.

Commander Jeremiah Willstone and her team must race through time in a desperate bid to stop the traitor’s plan to use the alien weapon to overthrow the world’s social order. With time running out, Jeremiah may have to sacrifice everything she is to save everyone she loves.

“Addictive, sassy, sexy, funny, intense, brilliant.” -Bitten By Books, on Frost Moon

Epic Award winner Anthony Francis writes the Dakota Frost, Skindancer series and the Jeremiah Willstone series while working on robots for “the Search Engine Which Starts with a ‘G’.”

Jeremiah Willstone

Senior Expeditionary Commander Jeremiah Willstone of the Victoriana Defense League didn’t start out the way she appears in Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine … her adventures began as a lowly cadet in Liberation Academy!

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Jeremiah grew up in a world where women’s liberation was a hundred years old, where aetheric blasters had been in use for half a century, rendering lethal warfare obsolete as of the War of Realignment that drove the American North back into the arms of the newly forged Victorian Empire … and where aliens called Foreigners started invading once we stopped killing each other!

In this world, Jeremiah followed her mother’s example and became a soldier – a third generation female soldier, trained in Edinburgh’s Liberation Academy to take part in a war for the Earth against the forces of the Outside! Her adventures in Academy are chronicled in the Plague of Gears storyline appearing in the anthologies Twelve Hours Later and Thirty Days Later (with major spoilers for Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine, because time travel).

Jeremiah graduated with highest honors and returned home to Boston to serve in the Eyrie, the Victoriana Defense League’s most elite site for defending the world against Foreign monsters; the first of her adventures here are chronicled in “A Choir of Demons” published in Aurora Wolf magazine and soon to be dramatized into radio theater.

After climbing the ranks to Senior Expeditionary Commander – the highest rank a commoner can hold in the Victoriana Defense League – Jeremiah led her forces in pursuit of her uncle, Lord Christopherson, who stole a Foreign egg from the Arsenal of Madness and took it – and the advanced airship the ZR-101 – to Newfoundland in stories chronicled in “The Sorting of the Secret Post” and Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine!

If you don’t mind spoilers on how that turned out, Jeremiah’s adventures continue in “Steampunk Fairy Chick” in the UnCONventional anthology, which, despite it being the very first Jeremiah story ever printed, is as of this writing currently the chronologically latest story in which Jeremiah appears.

Jeremiah’s smart, intelligent, feisty, and a little bit full of herself, though life often conspires to shave off some of the burrs. She studied as a mechanical engineer and later as a matahari (think a female Victorian James Bond) and as a soldier, but her real genius just might be as a Commander, if she’d ever pause long enough to let herself think.

For Jeremiah, it’s never a bad time for goggles; not only do they protect her eyes from the actinic rays of her beloved Kathodenstrahl blasters, they look quite fetching on her, if she does say so herself!

Prevail, Victoriana!

The Adventures of Jeremiah Willstone is Open for Business!

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Hail, fellow adventurers! Welcome to the Adventures of Jeremiah Willstone, the website chronicling the stories of a time-traveling female soldier from the world next door, Victoriana! Here you’ll find news about her adventures in print and in audio, kicking off with her first full-length adventure, Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine, available February 23rd, 2017 on Amazon – or, ask for it wherever fine books are sold! Jeremiah also appears in more than half a dozen stories scattered across nearly that many anthologies, so please feel free to look around the site, find out more about her, and pick up something to read!

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Jeremiah’s adventures are brought to you by Anthony Francis, AKA the Centaur

The Sorting of the Secret Post

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Currently available only as a SnapBook, Jeremiah Willstone and the Sorting of the Secret Post is a direct prequel to Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine! Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll find within:

On the dark, misty streets of Providence, the night dispatcher of the Secret Post at first thought he’d found an obsolete computer—her worn crinoline dress frayed to the point of tatters, her ill-fitting corset losing its ribbing, her aging vacuum-tube crown cracked and battered.

But as she staggered closer, her disheveled hair, her addled gaze—and the basket of illicit coca puffs crooked in her elbow—told the night dispatcher he’d found the perfect thing to warm his cold watch on the dockyards: a tube junkie desperate for her next fix.

Her next words did not disappoint: “Sweet treats to keep ya on your feet,” she cried, hefting her basket demonstratively as she approached the loading dock, her gaze flickering over the dispatcher and his two guards, her shifty eyes hungry for returned interest. “Sweet treats—”

“Well, aren’t you a sweet treat yourself,” said the younger guard, leaning in to look.

“Shove off, tubie,” snapped the elder guard, barring her way. “What are you after—”

“Oh, help us get a spark, love,” she said. “A girl just wants an honest livin’—oi!”

Pushing between the guards, the dispatcher darted a hand into the basket and popped a puff in his mouth. The fizz on his tongue quickly spread through his body—but the puffs were weak. “Oi yourself. Shillin’ puffs? You’ll never scratch together a spark sellin’ this lot.”

“A girl does what she has to,” she said, leaning towards him—smelling of faded perfume, not grime. Her hair was greying, but a few gleaming copper threads still poked out of the thick mass, and the face beneath it, while dirty, was not too lined—pretty, for a worn street beggar.

“Does she? We’ll buy the lot,” he said, lifting her basket out of her arms. Not hearing him at first, her hands went after the basket, her eyes going wild—then her face turned crafty when he said, “And no worries, love, I’ll see you get a full charge. Search her.”

The computer laughed as the older guard took her arm, wobbling unsteadily on her feet as the younger swept a coil-wand over her. It zzowed as it swept over her corset and crown, but other than that, the most metal she had on her body were her copper bracelets.

“Well, now,” she said, looking at the wand. “That’d get a girl’s attention—”

“You’re a feisty tart,” the younger guard said, popping a puff. “She’s clean.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” the older guard said, looking disgusted—but also popping a puff.

“Just keep your eyes out for the Expeditionaries—we’ve paid off the watch,” the dispatcher snapped, taking the computer’s arm and steering her inside. “No excuse for falling asleep on the job, not with that fizz in you. You need more, come in and get some.”

The guards laughed. The laughter continued inside the Secret Post’s warehouse, even when the dispatcher gave the basket of fizzy stimulants to the men guarding the pyramid of wooden crates. “Stay sharp! The delivery gets loaded five minutes after the boat arrives!”

To read more, visit Anthony at conventions, or ask for it from Thinking Ink Press!

Doorways to Extra Time

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Wondering how the Clockwork Time Machine came to be? Get tantalizing clues in “The Doorway to Extra Time”, a Jeremiah Willstone universe story featuring Jeremiah’s more scientifically-minded cousin, Doctor Jackson Truthsayer!

Buy Doorways to Extra Time on Amazon or ask for it wherever fine books are sold!

“In our busy world of meetings and microwaves, car radios and cellphones, people always wish they could get an extra hour in the day. But what if they could? Doorways to Extra Time is an anthology that explores ways to get extra time (be it an hour, a day, or a decade) and the impact it would have–whether upon a single life, a family or an entire world.

Featuring stories by: Erica Cameron, Martin Feekins, Anthony Francis, L.M. Graham, R.E. Gofstein, Melina Gunnett, Walter H. Hunt, Betsy Miller, Susan Mittmann, Brenda Moguez, Jenny Moore, Ira Nayman, Errick A. Nunnally, Jody Lynn Nye, Kate Saturday, Gayle Schultz, Rich Storrs, Keshia Swaim, Aimee Weinstein and Trisha J. Wooldridge.”

UnCONventional

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Jeremiah Willstone’s very first published appearance was in “Steampunk Fairy Chick” in UnCONventional: Twenty-Two Tales of Paranormal Gatherings under the Guise of Conventions. There’s no other way to put this, folks: “Steampunk Fairy Chick” has MASSIVE spoilers for The Clockwork Time Machine, so be advised!

Buy UnCONventional on Amazon or ask for it wherever fine books are sold!

“The con’s not the real reason we’re here–that’s just the cover story. Alien ascensions in hotel ballrooms. Mermaids on cruise ships.Werewolves in dog shows. Steampunk fairy time travelers. A teenage superhero hitching a ride with a supervillain. Comic books that absorb their readers. Magical filk… and much more.

With stories by: LJ Berger, Vikki Ciaffone, Daniel Cohen, Gordon Dupuis, Anthony G. Francis, Jr., Justine Graykin, Randy O. Green, Melina Gunnett, Kate Kaynak, Danielle M. LeFevre, Kimberley Long-Ewing, Lauren Marrero, Will Morton, Linda Murphy, Ira Nayman, KT Pinto, Jennifer Allis Provost, Patricia Puckett, Keshia Swaim, Sherry Thompson, Pamela van Hylckama Vlieg, and Trisha Wooldridge.

This con’s about to get weird… okay, weirder.”