Hi!
Big surprise for me this morning – my author’s copies of the French edition of Liberator arrived in a huge parcel PLUS author’s copies of the German edition. I knew the French edition was neck-and-neck with the Australian, but I thought the German was a long way off. The UK edition won’t come out until July, and the US is due early in 2012.
Here’s a quick blurb on the book before we get to the competition —-
Liberator is the largest juggernaut in the world, 3 km long by 1 km wide, a vast mountain of metal rolling across land and sea. Unlike the Russian, French, Prussian and Austrian juggernauts, it has been freed by revolution, and the slave-class of Filthies are now in charge. They’ve even changed its name from Worldshaker to Liberator. But the other reactionary juggernauts see it as a threat to their world-domination, and, when Liberator calls in at the Botany Bay coaling-station, they converge to attack.
On board Liberator, fear and paranoia are building up day by day. Mysterious acts of sabotage and murder have turned the Filthies against the remaining members of the old ruling class, including Col Porpentine and his family and friends. Even Riff, the girl Filthy who seemed to care for Col, is now embarrassed to be seen with him. As extremism grows, a charismatic leader comes to the fore and a radical political coup launches a new kind of tyranny.
…… OK, that was actually my first attempt at a blurb, not the one that appears on the book.
Now for the COMPETITION! Since it’s a steampunk world, of course there have to be corsets in it.
(i) ONE FREE SIGNED COPY of LIBERATOR to the best entry on “My Favourite Corset” (no more than a couple of sentences/short pithy paragraph) You have to choose one out of the selection below and say why. The first three are male (men used to wear corsets, like Queen Victoria’s majordomo in Liberator) and the next three are female (and Lye, the charismatic leader in Liberator, has her own special reason for wearing a corset)
Enter by pasting in a comment. The corsets are
(A) MALE DASHING
(B) MALE CONSTRICTOR
(C) MALE BLACK
(D) FEMALE BLACK
(E) FEMALE: THE VIXEN
(F) FEMALE WITH RIBBONS
Go to it! Be inventive! Cross-dressing is allowed and encouraged (Queen Victoria wouldn’t mind). And when you’ve done with those images, there’s still ——
(ii) ANOTHER FREE GIVEAWAY COPY to anyone who comes up with the best description of “My Own Design of Corset, Much Superior than the Selection Above”.
Strap yourself in! Get waisted! Enter the competition by pasting in a comment.
What an enormous and mind-blowing shock it must be for you to see me here again so soon.
i) The vixen – because the girl looks the most gorgeous of the three*, and in steampunk corsets there is no higher calling**.
ii) My own, of course (which is on the right hand side of my blog home page) – but just imagine the skirt is black and the corset is forest green with black lacing.
*Possibly because (a) her head is in the shot (unfair advantage) and (b) She is in better focus than the other one.
**Unless the corset is rigged to blow up and/or transform into a spider robot. That’d be cool.
Now I feel sorry for the neglected male corsets – so I therefore vote first runner-up to the “male dashing” on the basis that men’s corsets should be as square as possible. A male friend of mine looked RATHER good in a corset which was designed to both make him look good and support an enormous pair of wings.
Louise Curtis (off to tell everyone I know about this contest. . . except my husband of course, because that would ruin the surprise)
The surprise? You mean, he hasn’t yet seen you in your corset, and you’re planning to blow his mind?
I’ve told everyone except him that “Liberator” is out. That’s the surprise.
Who do you think ties – and unties – my laces?
Louise Curtis
I think my hypothesis was more dramatic! But yes, I suppose there are practical things like laces, and someone has to tie and untie them.
“Has to”? No. “Wants to” yes.
There’s nothing practical about my own, real-life corset. (Except I suppose that it’s black, because black goes with everything and I could only afford one.)
Louise Curtis
Okay, I’ll have a go. Nice pics BTW. You could have included a sexier bloke though…
I’m a big fan of corsets — on other people. If I had to wear one myself I think I’d struggle, HOWEVER, after perusing some of your pics with a keen eye, I think I’ve come up with a way to look both dashing *and* sexy.
Firstly, to eliminate that annoying ring of fat that’s settled around my midriff since the age of around 35 (and has refused all my entreaties to go find some other poor sap to pester), I strap on the “male dashing”. Sure I have a few of those inconvenient “internal organ” thingies, but it’s nothing a little surgery can’t fix.
So the “male dashing” is firmly in place, but the fat hasn’t gone, it’s just been forced into my backside. Okay, Brazilian butts are in. Some people pay real money for this look. But not me. I pull the corset down. God it hurts but I suck it up. The fat wants to crush down into my thighs, but at the last second it bobbles up and gives me man boobs. AWESOME!
Some might say boobs on a guy aren’t that attractive, but they haven’t seen me in “the Vixen”. Oh yeah. So I’m wearing two corsets now and feeling pretty darn good about myself. Did I say dashing *and* sexy? I bet you thought I couldn’t pull it off. Admit it, you had doubts. Well if your mental picture is anything like mine right now — you’re eating your words.
I know you are…
I admit it, I had doubts. But now I’ve had a mental picture, and I’m eating my words (but not my dinner)
R
Sorry
Don’t apologise, Chris, this is excellently hilarious
(She types for the second time)
(Maybe this time the comment will stick)
Thoraiya
PS http://twittertales.wordpress.com for a view of the corset on my blog.
My Own Design of Corset – Far Superior:
I’m picturing a Juggernaut Corset, myself. Those sprawling monstrosities need some reining in and what better way to do it? Imagine! A Juggernaut with a waistline! An Hourglass Juggernaut! Constructed of course from vast sheets of beaten steel, plenty of sexy rivets. Stylish yet functional clockwork mechanisms to manage the tree-trunk thick tightening cables. Hot!
The Juggernaut Corset! You should start up a production line – the demand would be huge! I mean, HUGE!
(Ah, I see you’re a rivet fetishist too! Rivetting!)
I have to say that the dashing men’s corset is my favourite. Not only does it provide good posture (one must be at one’s best for a high society engagement), but it also hides that unfortunate spread that one has been meaning to contain for some time, pushing it up to a broad, manly, chest, built to intimidate and impress.
A broad manly chest is a great thing, and there are no laws about what part of the body it comes from!
(Part the First):
The ‘Male Black’ definitely the best.
Both because I suspect that, in a moment, one will accuse the other of being a right guttersnipe and they’ll need to get those crossed – possibly golf clubs? – down from above that mirror and swing from chandeliers as they have at it(Also – are those spikes sticking up from the boots under the chair…? Is some sort of convoluted assassination attempt occurring here…?)
And, secondly, I like to think that these two likely lads will later get involved in fighting a dashing yet fearful Piratess of the Air and, whilst heroically swordfighting around the deck and/or above a perilous abyss, she will slash their bodices in a moment that will bring much-needed balance to the world of swashbuckling in general (Huzzah!)
(Part the Second):
The ideal corset (Patent Pending, naturally) would, of course, contain a pocket dimension to easily contain and perfectly conceal even the most formidable of blubberous mounds – and with space left over to contain, perhaps, a sandwich or two and maybe a small-to-medium howitzer for those moments when one finds oneself wishing for a pair of sandwiches and perhaps a small-to-medium howitzer (Huzzah!)
Indeed, you can expect the Dr. Wesson’s Reality Compression Posture Enforcer (Pat. Pending(C)(R)) to soon be a requirement of fashion for every Gentleman-about-Town.
(Huzzah!)
Oh jeez, I’m going to find it hard judging winners – mainly because I’m laughing too much!
My vote in the first instance goes to the Male black, because there is nothing more exciting to look at than a manly figure, (I hold to this statement regardless of the sex of the observer) and the beautiful straight lines of this corset will keep any wayward blubber in check without the poor bloke looking like a pansy (which, lets face it, a nipped waist just does on a man!)
As for my own design – far superior, it would be something between the Vixen and the ribbons…. A little bit more coverage and boning than the Vixen (and more support/ability to hide sins and enhance the bust through the strategic shifting of the muffin top upwards) but less of the frills and the ribbons – because to any practical woman, frills and ribbons just get in the way of (or caught in) the fun stuff – like machinery, or food….
Corsets and food – highly problematical. I mean, how do you eat when your digestive system is divided into two separate halves. Maybe some kind of timing apparatus to allow a small quantity of food to pass through every thirty minutes.
Wearing the male black and getting into female seduction is as much fun as purposefully crashing your car because you are wearing a seat belt
Oh. I thought that was half the fun of wearing a seatbelt.
(A) MALE DASHING
The corset to suit every equestrian’s needs! Sir, you cut a fine figure when mounted, but what of the completion of the hunt, when the fairer sex may very well be unimpressed by those saddlebags that can’t be removed? Keep (A) MALE DASHING corset in your stable for just such an occasion. Also handily located in the stable: a horse-brush and curry-comb for that dashing part in your hair! (SEE ILLUSTRATION)
Thoraiya
But, Madame, what does the horse think about this? Let us not ignore the equine point of view!
I was torn between telling my partner about this contest (thus ruining the surprise of producing the book out of thin air on his birthday) or letting him miss out on the chance to enter.
So I just asked him, in the implied context of my own steampunk novel, what would be an awesome alternative to the usual fictional corset.
His answer was as follows:
A corset in which the boning springs out like deadly spider arms!
His name is CJ.
A: male/style stiff
B: male or female/ tummy tuck
C: male/ buff up
D: female/ moulin rouge
E: female/ temptress tease
F: female or male/ domonatrix
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