by Anna Butler
Vapour—Steam
Vaporius—Steamy
Vaporium—Steam pipe
Vulcanised Rubber—natural rubber or related polymer converted to a more durable material via the addition of sulfur or other equivalent curatives
Water Closet—Lavatory. A toilet
Wireless Transmitter—Device for communication through the air, radio/receiver. See Marconi
Wireless Power Transmitter—Device designed to deliver electrical current to distant devices through the air; i.e., a Tesla coil
Wireless telegraph—Radio and receiver
Thank you for reading!
Thank you for reading my book. I hope you enjoyed it! I certainly enjoyed writing it. To my mind, there’s nothing more fun than handsome heroes running about shooting lasers, saving the planet, and getting into passionate scrapes with equally handsome space pilots. Or good-looking Victorian Aegyptologists getting entangled with gorgeous coffeehouse owners in a steampunk version of London.
If you share my love of old-school science fiction, read on for a little more information about my books.
Ebook versions are available from most online bookstores (Amazon, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, Smashwords and many smaller stores). Paperbacks are available from Amazon, or contact me for a signed copy.
The Taking Shield Series
In this space opera/military sci-fi series, Earth’s a dead planet, dark for thousands of years; lost for so long no one even knows where the solar system is. Her last known colony, Albion, has grown to be regional galactic power in its own right. But its drive to expand and found colonies of its own has threatened an alien race, the Maess, against whom Albion is now fighting a last-ditch battle for survival in a war that’s dragged on for generations.
Taking Shield charts the missions and adventures of Shield Captain Bennet, scion of a prominent military family. Bennet, also an analyst with the Military Strategy Unit, uncovers crucial data about the Maess to help with the war effort. Against the demands of his family's 'triple goddess' of Duty, Honour and Service, is set Bennet’s relationships with lovers and family—his difficult relationship with his long term partner, Joss; his estrangement from his father, Caeden, the commander of Fleet's First Flotilla; and Fleet Lieutenant Flynn, who, over the course of the series, develops into Bennet’s main love interest.
Over the Taking Shield arc, Bennet will see the extremes to which humanity’s enemies, and his own people, will go to win the war. Some days he isn’t able to tell friend from foe. Some days he doubts everything, including himself, as he strives to ensure Albion’s victory. And some days he isn’t sure, any longer, what victory looks like.
Taking Shield in reading order:
Taking Shield 01: Gyrfalcon
Taking Shield 02: Heart Scarab
Taking Shield 03: Makepeace – 2016 Rainbow Award Winner
Taking Shield 04: The Chains of Their Sins – 2017 Rainbow Award Winner
Taking Shield 5: Day of Wrath – 2018/19 Rainbow Award Winner
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The Lancaster’s Luck Series
A classic m/m romance with the added twist of a steampunk world where aeroships fill the skies of Victorian London and our hero uses pistols powered by luminferous aether and phlogiston.
When Captain Rafe Lancaster is invalided out of the Britannic Imperium’s Aero Corps after crashing his aerofighter during the Second Boer War, his eyesight is damaged permanently, and his career as a fighter pilot is over. Returning to London in late November 1899, hard up and looking for a new career, Rafe buys a coffeehouse close to the Britannic Imperium Museum in Bloomsbury where he meets love of his life, archaeologist and First Heir House Gallowglass, Ned Winter.
The Lancaster’s Luck series in order, available most online bookstores:
The Gilded Scarab - finalist in the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Awards, 2015
The Jackal’s House – 2018/19 Rainbow Award winner
The God’s Eye
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Passing Shadows
If you enjoyed the Taking Shield books, why not take a look at the series prequel, Passing Shadows? It tells the story of the destruction of Earth, ten thousand years before the events of Gyrfalcon and the following books, in a trilogy of short stories narrated by Li Liang, a pilot and first officer on a ship caught up in the destruction and the immediate aftermath as the few surviving humans run for their lives.
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FlashWired
A novella depicting an even earlier period in Earth’s history, as humanity first starts moving out to the stars, founding colonies on new planets. In it, scouts from a coloniser ship come across an alien society that has a disturbingly practical use for the other races it encounters.
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As for me, I live in the depths of the Nottinghamshire countryside with my husband and the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockapoo, who’s supported by Mavis the Assistant Editor, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several times bigger than she is but with no opinion at all on the placement of semi-colons.
Contact me at [email protected]
Website: http://www.annabutlerfiction.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anna.butler.9822 and The Butler’s Pantry: https://www.facebook.com/groups/584417195037925/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnnaButlerFic
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