Author Archives: Jeannie Lin

Asian Steampunkery: Part 1

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I love books. I love science and technology. And I LOVE crafting so when it was time to figure out a unique gift to create for the readers at my table for Barbara Vey’s reader luncheon, I had to combine all that geekery into making steampunk books inspired by my Gunpowder Chronicles series.

But not any steampunk books would do. Oh no. *tee hee*

First, after a round of Youtube and Pinterest research, I settled on a method of creating books that looked old and leatherbound. Now let me tell you, I didn’t just come to that conclusion in an afternoon. There was crumpled paper everywhere and prototypes and and afternoon where I hacked through an entire old book with an Exacto knife. Then decided that was probably overkill.

Now after that was settled, I bought a bunch of empty book boxes at Michael’s. But how to really make them fit the spirit of Opium War steampunk? My research focused a lot on the development of scientific thought and technology in Asia so, what would be better than to feature all those awesome books? (Many of which I couldn’t read, but I could still look at the diagrams…)

So here’s two of the samples. I’ll post the others as I get the descriptions completed:

The Fire Drake Manual

book_firedrake
AND…I also included illustrations from each book inside the box. Like this one for a Ming era fire arrow rocket launcher.

Fire_arrow_rocket_launcher

The Illustrated Compendium of Clever Devices

book_karakuri

Woodblock print from original book:

1184194

Are they the geekiest crafts in all of geek town, or what?

I have to go now, but will be back to post all the books. There were seven different books in all. Excuse my translations, these were done quickly so I could keep track of them while making the books:

book_labels_steampunk_books

Off Twitter

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Control room dude: “Luke, you’ve switched off your targeting computer. What’s wrong?”

Luke: “Nothing. I’m all right.”

Nothing bad happened to me. Nothing is wrong. I just decided it was time to get off Twitter.

 

But wait, if you’re really off Twitter, why keep an active account? Since I’ve used the @JeannieLin twitter handle, sometimes quite frequently, there’s some expectation that tweets coming from it are from me. I didn’t want to risk someone taking it over and being mistaken for me.

I’ll miss the little side conversations and all the mini-networking opportunities I’ve enjoyed via Twitter. I also know this makes it harder for me to get the word out when there’s Jeannie Lin news. If you’d like to get updates from me, please consider signing up for notification e-mails: Get Updates from Jeannie.

What if I want to keep in touch? I may perhaps blog more, but no promises. And I’m still wandering about on Facebook. Or hey, send me an e-mail via my contact form or come say hi if you happen to see me at a signing or a conference. I’m way better in person than I am online. I think….I hope.