A
Midsummer Night’s Mechanical
Sensibility
Grey Series of Steampunk Suspense Book 3
Kirsten
Weiss
Genre: Steampunk/suspense * Publisher: Misterio Press
Date of Publication: May 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-944767-00-6 * ASIN: B01DOKO6CA
Number of pages: 224 * Word Count: 69,000
Cover Artist: Kirsten Weiss
Book Description:
A
Midsummer Murder
The
California Territory, 1849
Blamed for burning down the San
Francisco wharf, clockwork inventor, Sensibility Grey has spent the last three
months in hiding. Now all she wants is to depart the gold-crazy boomtown for a
new life in the East. So when the owner of a traveling theater offers her work
embellishing his mechanical stage, she turns him down. Then he turns up dead on
her doorstep along with his enigmatic stage.
An explorer of the mysteries of
aether, Sensibility has her own secrets to keep, and adversaries who’ll stop at
nothing to learn them. Is the mechanical stage a part of a bigger game? Or the
key to unlocking her true, magical potential?
A
Midsummer Night’s Mechanical is book three in the Sensibility Grey series of
steampunk suspense.
Excerpt:
CHAPTER
ONE
San
Francisco, California Territory, June 1849.
Sensibility sat
cross-legged upon her bed and tried not to think. She tried not to think of the
ache where her stays pinched her back. She tried not to think of tomorrow’s
journey across the American wilderness. She tried not to think about the clamor
of banging drums and tootling fifes and—
“Oh, good gad!”
She clenched her fist, pieces of quartz crystal biting into her flesh.
Sensibility sprang from the bed and threw open the boarding house window.
Oppressive heat, acrid from the nearby outhouse, rolled into the room.
Wrinkling her nose, she leaned out over the fenced back yard and craned her
neck. The afternoon sun streamed through the laundry, hanging limp on the line.
From her position, she couldn’t see the street procession. But neither could
she avoid hearing their blasted parade.
Something scuttled
near her elbow, and she jerked away, slamming her head on the window frame.
White pain arced through her skull.
A baby raccoon,
not much larger than the palm of her hand, cowered on the other end of the
narrow sill. It scrabbled, hunching into a tight ball, trapped on the high
ledge.
“Ow.” She winced,
rubbing her throbbing head and glad her chignon had taken the brunt of the
blow. “How on earth did you get up here?”
The raccoon
mewled.
“You shall have to
make your own way home, for you cannot come inside. Mrs. Watson has a strict
rule about animals inside her boarding house.”
Gently, so as not
to disturb the creature, she shut the window. The raccoon peered over the ledge
then looked at her, his expression plaintive.
Attempting to
ignore the animal, she paced the denuded room, her brown skirts swishing.
They had ample
space to swish. Nearly all her belongings lay compressed into a single
carpetbag, set before the empty wardrobe. The bedroom had an air of
abandonment.
Unsettled,
Sensibility rattled the quartz crystals in her hand and glanced to the window.
The animal stared
inside, forlorn.
She tugged at her
collar. It was such a small thing. But rules were rules. “You found your way
onto the ledge. You can find your own way down.”
Sensibility turned
to the journal open on the desk. Her sketch of an unworldly creature she’d once
encountered scowl from the page. Frowning, she slammed the book shut. It had
been careless of her to have left it open. Strange, she couldn’t remember
examining the journal before she’d gone downstairs to retrieve her luncheon.
The crystals
pressed into her palm. She was so close to a breakthrough in aether technology,
but the clues remained buried. Buried in the remains of her father’s last
journal. Hidden in a journal from a traveling occultist. Scattered throughout
her own notes and theories. One day soon, she would fit those pieces together.
It was madness to hope she could solve that problem today.
Sensibility opened
her hand and gazed at the quartz crystals. She’d mastered the use of aether to
power small devices. But aether had other applications, such as distance
control and distance vision. These applications eluded her. “There has to be a
way…”
She glanced at the
window.
The animal raised
itself on its hind legs and pressed its tiny black paws to the glass.
Sensibility
groaned. “I know I’ll regret this.” Pocketing the crystals, she opened the
window.
The raccoon
cowered.
“You,” she said,
“being a wild animal, will attempt to bite me if I rescue you. But I will have
none of it. I shall pick you up, I shall take you outside, and you shall
neither bite nor scratch. Do you understand?”
In a swift motion,
she grasped it by the scruff of the neck and lifted it inside. It writhed, and
her grasp on it loosened.
She gasped.
“Don’t….”
The raccoon
dropped to her desk and shook its head. Whiskers twitching, it scuttled to her
abandoned luncheon tray and made free with a bit of toast.
About
the Author:
Kirsten Weiss worked overseas for
nearly fourteen years, in the fringes of the former USSR and in South-east
Asia. Her experiences abroad sparked an
interest in the effects of mysticism and mythology, and how both are woven into
our daily lives.
Now based in San Mateo, CA, she
writes steampunk suspense and paranormal mysteries, blending her experiences
and imagination to create a vivid world of magic and mayhem. Kirsten has never
met a dessert she didn’t like, and her guilty pleasures are watching Ghost
Whisperer re-runs and drinking red wine.
Sign up for her newsletter to get a
free copy of the full length urban fantasy novel, The Alchemical Detective, and
updates on her latest work at: http://kirstenweiss.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/KirstenWeiss
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kirsten.weiss/
Tour
giveaway:
Grand prize: ebook copies of The Sensibility Grey Three-Book set, and the entire Riga Hayworth series of seven urban fantasy novels.
Second prize: ebook copies of The
Sensibility Grey Three-Book Set
Thanks for hosting me today, Sue!
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