The Return of the Series

[ysabetwordsmith]

Serials used to be popular, particularly in periodicals during the 19th century. They began to fall out of fashion as publishing costs dropped, making it more feasible to publish entire books. The last peak was in the pulps; when those died out in the 1950s, so did the popularity of serials, which became rare. Newspaper and magazine publication has also gone down, especially in the last decade or two. So the old markets for serials have almost vanished.

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Poem: "The Steamsmith"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the November 1, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from LJ user marina_bonomi, describing the main character and a steampunk background. It was sponsored by marina_bonomi too, and originally posted on LiveJournal. You can read more about The Steamsmith series on the Serial Poetry page.

The interesting thing about this is that it spawned, not just a poetic series, but an entire world. I spent weeks researching Victorian England, but also alchemy, the history of science, elemental systems, and global timelines. Nether-Earth is a place where the process of science still works, but the questions mostly have different answers. So the series is really historic science fiction with a steampunk flavor.

( Full steam ahead... )