Random Words

So it was finally announced today. My agent, Ginger Clark, sold the first two Sebastian Tweed books to Lou Anders at PYR. I’m thrilled to be working with Lou and PYR. They really do some of the coolest books around.

Here’s the blurb taken from the Curtis Brown catalog:

SEBASTIAN TWEED: THE LAZARUS MACHINE is the first book in this steampunk mystery-adventure that takes place in an alternate 1899. When seventeen-year-old Sebastian Tweed’s father is kidnapped by shady government officials, he teams up with information broker, Octavia Nightingale, to track him down. They soon discover more than they bargained for: a trail of death and deceit that reveals just how far people will go for immortality.

Tweed soon realizes that his father’s disappearance is just a tiny piece of a political conspiracy that could destroy the British Empire and plunge the whole world into a horrific war. Along the way, Tweed discovers a horrific secret that links him with the late, great Sherlock Holmes, a secret that will change his destiny forever. (Ages 14+)

Sebastian Tweed has been rattling around in my head since 2003, long before I came up with my last series, The Invisible Order. In fact, in some of the interviews I did about Rise of the Darklings, I mentioned that The Invisible Order series came about because in 2003 Julie Czerneda asked me to contribute a short story to an anthology she was editing. At the time I was busy doing research into Victorian London for another project, and it was that research that led to the birth of The Invisible Order.

That other project was Sebastian Tweed (although it wasn’t called Sebastian Tweed then, and it wasn’t Young Adult). The original idea was to be told from Watson’s POV. In fact, if I pull up my Onenote file I can see it was dated 6th of July 2003. And this was the first words I had written in the file.

“As a doctor I was fascinated by the triumph of science before me; as a religious man I was utterly horrified by it. An empty casing seated by the fireplace, able only to perform the simplest of ablutions and these seemingly by bodily instinct alone. This was not Holmes, my good friend, my mentor. What sat before me was no better – no, less! – than one of Babbage’s automata. At least the automata responded to instructions, even if they were trained to do so by the application of oiled punch cards

“How it pained me to see the visage of that once great man staring blankly into the flames, that vacant expression never before glimpsed on such features. I longed to end its life (for I could not bring myself to think of it as a ‘he’), to put the poor creature from its misery. But I could not. The Queen Herself had ordered me to instruct this being, to talk of old times and old cases and instill within it some of the spirit of Holmes. I knew it a hopeless task, as Holmes was so much more than the body that housed his mind. And yet, I could not suppress the flickering interest I had in the outcome. I knew of many people, religious and scientific, who would await the results of this informal experiment with baited breath.”

Hmm. A bit overwrought with the purple phrasing, but the core of the idea is still there. Over the years, while I was writing The Invisible Order, I was jotting down ideas and notes for Tweed on the side. And now I can finally go ahead. Tweed and Nightingale are gong to be great fun to write.