Friday, 22 August 2025

A Steamy Interview with Diana Parrilla

Steampunk Sleuths will be released on the 30th of August (but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99). You can also add it today to your Goodreads bookshelf. To celebrate this anthology that perfectly aligns the gears that drive the genres of steampunk and mystery, we’re interviewing the contributing authors. Don your aviator goggles, but keep your magnifying glass close at hand, because these steamy puzzles won’t solve themselves!

Hi Diana,

There’s nothing quite as captivating as a great detective story, but what specifically is it about mystery in a steampunk world that gets your gears turning?

Steampunk, as a genre, blends Victorian-era aesthetics and technology with speculative, often anachronistic inventions powered by steam and clockwork. It’s not just a reimagining of the past or a vision of the future, it feels like stepping into another dimension altogether. This fusion of a bygone era with futuristic possibilities creates a world that’s both familiar and fantastical, which really fires up my imagination. For me, writing begins when something resonates—whether it’s a setting, an object, or a tune—anything that strikes a chord. That spark is all I need. I’m too easy.

Tell us about your protagonist. Is this the first puzzle your main character has solved?

My protagonist isn’t solving her first case, but that doesn’t automatically make her sharper or more confident. Every case is its own kind of challenge. She’s developed her own methods through experience, but she still makes mistakes. She’s human, after all. Human interaction is just as crucial to solving the mystery as it is distracting, sometimes causing her to overlook details or feel things when only a cool-headed approach should prevail. She’s not so different from the reader, because I, the writer who created her, am also a reader who enjoys mysteries.

It’s time for Show and Tell! What’s the most steampunk antique, item of clothing, book, game, or household item you have?

For my most steampunk item, I combined a few favorites that set the mood: a vintage-style notebook perfect for sketching secret plans, classic leather gloves, an ornate lamp that looks like it belongs in a foggy Victorian study, and a plastic revolver that adds a touch of airship adventure. I also included two books—The Moonstone and Persuasion—to bring a bit of mystery and period atmosphere to the scene. It’s not one single artifact, but together they capture the spirit of steampunk for me.

And since I’m also a gamer, I’ll add that I own Dishonored and Thief on Epic Games, not exactly traditional steampunk, but close enough in tone: moody cities, shadowy tech, and lots of morally ambiguous detectives. That counts, right?

Where can we find you online?

You can find me online pretty much everywhere I dare to show up. I’m on YouTube as a proud gamer, on Amazon Author Central under my real name, Diana Parrilla, and on X (Twitter). I’m a bit quieter on Instagram and Facebook, but I’m there too, everywhere under the alias buffyta17. Feel free to track me down wherever you like.

Thanks for playing along!

A moment from my playthrough of Thief (2014)

Saturday, 9 August 2025

A Steamy Interview with Cameron Trost

Steampunk Sleuths will be released on the 30th of August (but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99). You can also add it today to your Goodreads bookshelf. To celebrate this anthology that perfectly aligns the gears that drive the genres of steampunk and mystery, we’re interviewing the contributing authors. Don your aviator goggles, but keep your magnifying glass close at hand, because these steamy puzzles won’t solve themselves!

Hi Cameron,

There’s nothing quite as captivating as a great detective story, but what specifically is it about mystery in a steampunk world that gets your gears turning?

A great fair-play mystery story is built from a handful of essential nuts and bolts... and a few cogs! My contribution to the anthology is that most prized of puzzles; the locked-room mystery. What really got the little grey gears of my mind turning for this particular story, The Untimely Death of Clockmaster Tollsmead, was the prospect of conjuring a clockwork means of committing a murder in a locked room. Not only did I want the solution to fit perfectly with the setting in a Victorian clockwork society, but also to reflect present-day concerns the reader will be familiar with.  

Tell us about your protagonist. Is this the first puzzle your main character has solved?

This is only the second story (both locked-room mysteries) featuring my clockwork technician protagonist, Eardley Holborn. The first adventure is referenced within this story, so readers who enjoy this tale can do a little detective work of their own and track down the anthology featuring the first. Eardley isn't a professional detective or even really an amateur sleuth. This is simply the second time he has found himself in the right place at the right time to solve a crime. He is Chief Clockwork Artist at the Urseau Institute of Mechanical Theatrics, so his job is to create magic shows and edge-of-the-seat tricks for stage performances. Readers familiar with the British TV show Jonathan Creek might (rightly) guess from whence I drew part of my inspiration. 

It’s time for Show and Tell! What’s the most steampunk antique, item of clothing, book, game, or household item you have?

My pocket watch is without a doubt the item that best represents the atmosphere of this puzzle and Eardley Holborn's style. Eardley's appearances are never untimely.

Where can we find you online?

Everywhere! My official website is camerontrost.com but you can find my social media links at LinkTree.

Thanks for playing along!

Thanks for having me!

Wednesday, 6 August 2025

Twenty-Four Weird and Wonderful Books!

Let's take a moment to appreciate how much we've achieved since we started publishing quality mystery, suspense, horror, and post-apocalyptic fiction over a decade ago in 2013. Black Beacon Books has twenty-four titles either currently available or in the works. Thank you for being our passenger on this wild ride. Make sure you read all our titles! 


 

Monday, 4 August 2025

Digging Deeper into Wells

A guest post by David Turnbull

I'm proud to have a novella included in the upcoming Black Beacon Steampunk Sleuths anthology. It's set in the aftermath of the Victorian-era alien invasion depicted in HG Wells pioneering scifi classic, The War of the Worlds.
   I seem to have been aware of War of the Worlds for as far back as I can remember. My first exposure was watching the 1953 George Pal film version sometime back in the late 60s or early 70s. That led to my first reading of the novel in a paperback I borrowed from a school friend. The biggest revelation was that the Martian war machines had three legs, unlike the flying saucer design George Pal had come up with for the movie.
   I know for sure I reread the novel in 1978 when Jeff Wayne first released his War of the Worlds concept album. Since then I have been back to the novel a dozen or more times, as well as being an avid watcher of new film and television adaptations, and the whole gambit of War of the Worlds inspired alien invasion films and TV shows.
   Lately though I have found myself digging deeper into the life and works of HG Wells, who was born a couple of miles away from where I live in South East London. And this digging has been leading me to write and do quite a lot about him and his work.
   It started last summer when I was asked to devise a steampunk themed guided walk as part of the Vauxhall Victorian Day in South London. Vauxhall train station was the start point of the walk and that gave me the opportunity to point out the influence the South West Rail route to Waterloo from Woking had on the locations Wells has the Martian War machines destroy in the first part of the book. Wells was living in Woking at the time. The first Martian canister lands on nearby Horsell Common. The subsequent Martian progress towards London takes place at many of the towns and suburbs Wells would have passed on commuter journeys between Waterloo and Woking.
   Waterloo station and the area around it also play a pivotal role in the stories of both the narrator and his brother in the novel. I subsequently wrote a short blog about Waterloo in The War of the Worlds. https://lambethfantastical.blogspot.com/2024/09/lambeth-fantastical-september-2024.html
   Vauxhall Gardens was known as Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in the Regency era and, amongst other things, was famed for its public and often record break hot air balloon ascents. That gave me an opportunity to talk there about how early scifi writers like Wells, Jules Verne and George Griffiths depicted hot air balloons and airships in many of their works. This later evolved into a Substack article on the subject. https://dturnbull.substack.com/p/lambeth-fantastical-episode-thirteen
   Having looked into the locations in The War of the Worlds I decided to visit some of them with a train ride to Woking to follow the HG Wells Heritage Trail. The town really celebrates their Wells associations. There's a plaque on the house he lived in, a statue of him in the town centre and nearby a towering sculpture of a three legged Martian war machine. Inside the HG Wells pub there's sculpture of the Invisible Man with his trademark bandages and dark glasses. Wells also wrote the Invisible Man while residing in Woking. My review of the Heritage trail formed the basis of another Substack.
https://dturnbull.substack.com/p/lambeth-fantastical-episode-ten
   Once I had Woking under my belt I decided to try and visit other homes that Wells lived in. I'm not sure which writer holds the record for the most plaques but I reckon Wells is in with a good chance. There are many, from his birthplace on Bromley High Street, to his three house in Sandgate on the Kent coast, and the apartments on the edge of Regents Park where he died in 1946. This has led to an online talk called "HG Wells Lived Here" which I will be giving on the Rest Less platform very shortly.
   I've now designed the routes for a series of HG Wells guided walks which I am in the process of trying out. The first of which you can find on Eventbrite.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1377748716499?aff=oddtdtcreator
   The latest Wellsian well I have found myself digging into is the graphic novel interpretations of his work. Again there are many.
   In the 1940s Classic Comics launched their Illustrated Classics Illustrated series, which included graphic novelisations of the works of writers ranging from Jules Verne to Mark Twain, and even Shakespeare. The series ran for over 20 years and featured no less than 5 HG Wells works, including War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man.
   In the 70s Marvel had a similar series (Marvel Classics). This series was much more scifi focused and HG Wells again made 5 appearances. Another series ‘Great Illustrated Classics’ by the Waldman Publishing Corporation includes 3 Wells’ titles.
   The second book in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil is set during the War of the Worlds and also features the Invisible Man and Doctor Moreau. Scarlet Traces by Ian Edgington and the graphic artist D’Israeli recounts The War of the Worlds plot in Part 1 before visiting post invasion Edwardian society in Part 2 and steampunk style interplanetary warfare in Part 3.
Wells himself appears in the Stoker and Wells graphic novels by Stephen Peros and Barry Orkin where he teams up with Dracula author Bram Stoker to travel into the future in a stolen time machine. 
   Who knows how deep I will end up digging into this particular well and, equally, who knows what I might end up writing about or doing as a consequence.