David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

My story “Liasons Galantes: A Scientific Romance” is out today in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #108 (in HTML, PDF, PRC, EPUB, and Kindle formats).

In conjunction with the story, they’re giving away a signed copy of Ann VanderMeer’s new steampunk anthology Steampunk Revolution. Enter to win!

I’m intrigued that they describe this story as steampunk. When I was writing it I thought of it primarily as a romantic fantasy, set in a fantasy world reminiscent of Belle Epoque Paris in which relationships are visible as living things. The electrical gizmos in the story, I thought, were just props. But of course all of these elements do add up to something steampunkish, especially given that I subtitled it “a scientific romance.”

This isn’t the first time I had no idea what kind of story I had written until it was published. I thought my story “Nucleon” was hard SF, an alternate-universe story about an atomic car. I even sent it to Analog. But it turns out it’s actually a fantasy, a variation on the well-known “mystery shop” trope, as David Hartwell pointed out when he bought it for Year’s Best Fantasy.

Just heading to the train station to pick up Laura Anne Gilman, AKA L.A. Kornetsky. She will be reading from her debut mystery Collared tonight, Thursday, November 15, at 7:00 p.m. at Murder by the Book on Hawthorne.

“In a departure from her fantasy series, written as Laura Anne Gilman, L.A. Kornetsky has begun a new series starring Ginny Mallard, the owner of a private concierge company in Seattle. With the help of a bartender friend and some four-legged, furry friends, she is on the case of a missing person.”