In anticipation of this Friday’s release of the Steampunk action/adventure A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk, we offer this interview of its author, Scott E. Tarbet.
The X: Tell us a little about yourself.
Tarbet: The #1 thing to know about me is that I am easily bored. That makes me an adventurer and an omnivorous reader. I love arcane knowledge; finding someone willing to keep playing the ‘80’s board game Trivial Pursuit with me was a real challenge.
Being a lover of the arcana of humankind makes me an ardent reader of history, and being a student of history makes me keenly aware of the turning points in history, albeit past, present, or future. A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk (AMNS) centers around one of those turning points.
How did you come up with the concept for A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk?
In Shakespeare’s beloved play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the tradesmen who put on a play for the Duke are called ‘rude mechanicals’, i.e., they work with their hands. The concept for AMNS was a quick and easily growth from the question, “What if the ‘rude mechanicals’ were actually ‘mechanical’ in the sense we use it today?”
Why Shakespeare?
To say I’m a big Shakespeare fan is a huge understatement. My Jewels and I share a passion for the work of the Bard, as embodied in our wedding garb. We honeymooned at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and go as often as we can.
Why Steampunk?
I’ve been a sci-fi fan my entire reading life, and only tapered off reading it when its bleeding edge became the dark and brooding ‘cyberpunk’. I was ecstatic when that faded away and the brighter, more optimistic and inventive ‘steampunk’ came along. And because of the relative youth of the subgenre it’s a fertile field for quality writing.
The cosplay is also a big draw (see those pics again—we had those wedding clothes custom-made), as is the creative immersive content at the cons.
What was your writing process?
Because I’m so easily bored I have to approach it like a job: I get out of bed and to the computer each morning with a defined goal in mind. The days I have to go out and do my ‘day job’, or when I’m at my opera ‘night job’, I take along an iPad and keep right on plugging.
That doesn’t mean I don’t get distracted. I’ve recently discovered and embraced the term ‘laterally productive’, meaning I’m doing meaningful stuff all the time (well . . . most of the time), but it isn’t always the stuff I assigned myself when I got out of bed. The business side of my writing ‘small business’ is very distracting, including the marketing side.
What character did you have the most fun writing?
I loved writing all my characters, even the bad guys. Each of them had their own charm and therapeutic value for me as a writer. But the mechs (micro-, mech, and mega-) were the most entertaining to write. It was intriguing and exciting to sit down to write each day and find out what they were going to do next.
That process is still going on, by the way, as I write out the short story version of one of the character’s back-story.
What is the most difficult part of creating a spinoff/adaptation?
Worrying about the fans of the Bard. I worried constantly what my Shakespeare-oriented friends would think. But as you can see by the quote on the cover from my friend Fred Adams, founder of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, people who love Shakespeare are attracted to Shakespeare partly because of his adaptability. We love seeing his tales told in new frameworks. Otherwise there would be no Shakespeare festivals. And there would certainly be no A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk.
What was your inspiration for this book?
I was actually inspired by the concept itself. What if the ‘rude mechanicals’ were actually mechanical? Mechanizing them, making them Cockney tradesmen from the East End of London, kicked off a creative process that rapidly filled the rest of the roles in the play. Of course to history buffs you can’t say “Bethnal Green” (a very Cockney area of the East End) without thinking “Jack the Ripper”, and that connection took on a life of its own.
The geopolitical plot line came from my understanding of just how pivotal this period was to the future: the 20th Century. If someone had taken Kaiser Wilhelm firmly in hand when he came prematurely to the thrones of Germany and Prussia, would the millions who died in the First and Second World Wars and the Holocaust have survived? Would Communism have overcome Russia, and would the millions that perished in the gulags have survived and thrived in a world made more equitable by benevolent monarchies?
We’ll never know. But I think it’s safe to say the world would be a very different place today if Wilhelm’s grandmother Queen Victoria, and her daughter the Dowager Empress of Germany, had managed to get him in line. It was my pleasure to give them mech help to get it done.
What kept you up at night?
Deadlines, both self-imposed and from my publisher. I wanted to get this story out there and let others enjoy it as much as I do, and I knew that sticking closely to deadlines would help it happen.
That said, the entire process was a great joy to me. I wouldn’t trade a minute of it for the world, and I look forward to lots more to come.
Scott Tarbet writes enthusiastically in several genres, sings opera, was married in full Elizabethan regalia, loves Steampunk waltzes, and slow-smokes thousands of pounds of Texas-style barbeque. An avid skier, hiker, golfer, and tandem kayaker, he makes his home in the mountains of Utah. His short story, “Tombstone”, was released in Shades and Shadows: a Paranormal Anthology to excellent reviews.
Join Tarbet and all The X Team at the launch party for A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk on Friday, November 29, 2013, on its Facebook event page.