Mari Fee is a trooper. It seems like years ago that I lured her into doing an interview for the Scribbling Ninjas blog. She (unsuspecting and innocent) said yes. We did the interview—see below. I (unsuspecting and innocent) asked her what she wanted for her MS Paint artwork. Oh nothing much, she assured me. Just a steampunk octopus fighting bears with archeology tools while wearing boots on an airship…
Yeah. Not exactly simple.
It took me forever to finish drawing this. I kept pushing it back. I’d work on it a little, get frustrated because it sucked, and tried to pretend it didn’t exist. Tried to pretend Mari Fee didn’t exist. Suffered guilt. Couldn’t sleep. Starting drinking. I mean, starting drinking more. Life became exceedingly busy. I had edits to do. I had to shave my cat. I had to buy a barbeque. And THEN assemble it. It was easy to put off drawing that thrice-accursed airship. The airship that mocks me, even now, with its uninspired mediocrity, cementing in my mind forever the fact that I will always be a substandard MS Paint artist, and even angry bears cannot save the entire work from reeking of the banal.
But aside from that, everything’s peachy. Please read on and enjoy the interview with the wonderful Mari Fee. Info on her novella follows the interview. And you should seriously consider picking it up, because it’s good stuff.
Anyway, here’s the art. Don’t judge me. I’ve done that enough for the both of us.
(It’s a bit huge. Too large for this template. I’d click to see it in better detail.)
And here is a closer shot of the octopus and bears. Just because.
Keith Melton: (loaded question alert!) First off, why steampunk?
Mari Fee: Why not steampunk? Do you have something against it? :( Steampunk likes you, you know.
Keith: I have nothing against it. Steampunk and me—we go waaaay back. At least six months. Which is 10,000,000 times my usual attention span. So anyway, will you be writing more steampunk? What do we have to look forward to?
Mari Fee: I have plans for a steampunk-archaeology mash-up in Egypt, with airships and archaeologists and hieroglyphics and possibly mules. It’s not quite ready to start writing yet, though. But when it is, it will be glorious.
Keith: Do you own custom goggles? (I was going to ask about corsets, but I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. I know how uncomfortable I get when people ask about my custom corsets…)
Mari Fee: My fiancé courted me by buying me a pair of mass produced welder’s goggles from a gas station. <3 As for custom corsets, I’m rather envious that you have one and I don’t. So is the fiancé.
Keith: When did you start reading steampunk? Do you remember your first contact with the genre?
Mari Fee: Oddly enough, I do! About 10 years ago I picked up this totally rad book by Martha Wells called Death of the Necromancer, and it turned out to be a pseudo-Victorian fantasy mystery adventure with dead fairies and pistols and explosions. TOTALLY AWESOME.
Other than that, I grew up with a well-thumbed copy of Journey to the Centre of the Earth and the complete Sherlock Holmes. Gotta have the basics.
Keith: Did you light something on fire when you received your Bluebeard’s Machine contract offer?
Mari Fee: No, although my fiancé did offer to buy fireworks. Basically anything is an excuse for fireworks.
Keith: You tend to write shorter stories, by your own admission. Do you have any plans to go novel length?
Mari Fee: Lots of words is scary! I’m having to retrain my brain to think in longer plots – my first instinct is tight and tidy stories. Chips and beer help sustain the imagination when the going gets tough – so yes, I’m currently attempting something novel length. So far it’s longer than Bluebeard’s Machine, which I count as a win.
Keith Melton Interviews People, Keith Uses Paint, Wicked Awesome
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