Steampunk Tales, Volume 2

by Ren Cummins

Overview

What if Death wore a pretty black dress?

Everyone in Oldtown had heard talk of the Reapers. Even though nobody had seen one in years, everyone whispered the tales: flying from rooftop to rooftop, stealing the souls of the unwary, letting their undead beasts hunt through the streets for any member of the community too reckless or fearless to heed the nightly curfew ... mysterious and terrifying, most feared to even mention them by name, lest they appear and gather your spirit away.

For 11-year-old Romany, her greatest fears were less about the mythological Reapers and more about surviving a miserable life inside of Oldtown's solitary orphanage. Her stark white hair made her an obvious target for the bullies, and the cruel nickname of "Ratgirl" had followed her for years. But if Rom thought her troubles were behind her, being struck dead by a bolt of lightning would only open the door to an entire life of new ones.

Finding out that she herself is a Reaper was only the first step, and by far the easiest. But now she is faced with the dark prophecy which ties her existence to the possible destruction of her home and its defense against another Reaper, Artifice, who is determined to kill her.

Will Rom and her friends be reunited in time to help Oldtown-Against-the-Wall? What part do the ancient Machines play in their cities' past and future? And what darkness yet lies in wait for the citizens of Oldtown and Aesirium?

Find out in this second volume of Steampunk Tales, containing the novels "Reaper's Return", "Into the Blink" and "The Crook and the Blade".

Product Details

BN ID:	2940014682626
Publisher:	Renwritings
Publication date:	07/02/2012
Series:	Steampunk Tales , #2
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

I’m a writer. I tell stories. The adventure began around the time a few astronauts were nancing about on the moon. There may have been offroading, there may have been golf; but all I saw was one giant leap for mankind. I was reading comic books and dreaming of when I’d get to grow up to be Spiderman. The tales of heroes, old and new, infected my otherwise somber way of thinking, and what came out on the other side resolved itself into a love of adventure. I’ve embraced the tangents of my life as fodder for material, from such relatively mundane (and disassociated) occupational interruptions like working as a hotel manager, music studio engineer, Middle Eastern drummer for bellydancers, and a crisis response manager. I’ve even picked up a few foreign languages, which fed right back into my love of English.

One night, not too long ago, as I told my daughter a bedtime story – one she and I were making up – it just clicked for me. Her enthusiastic expression and engagement reminded me of the one commonality of all my experiences that had meant so much to me: storytelling. I returned to writing, to telling stories. What feats and adventures await me next? Whispers suggest a children's anthology, a contemporary paranormal horror series, a pair of follow-up additions to the Chronicles of Aesirium, and an assortment of stand-alone science fiction and fantasy novels. Astoundingly, with all that in motion, I still continue to play the piano and doumbek in my free time. Rumors persist that I may have invented some sort of time machine.

But… that’s another story for another time.