By Stephanie Tipple
For PotomacLocal.com
Two authors from Prince William County have made waves in the steampunk genre with their latest book, Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel.
This novel is the first collaborative work from, Tee Morris, 43, and Pip Ballantine, 40, and is set in Victorian era London. It follows the life and times of Eliza D. Braun, an agent for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, who is best described as “James Bond in a corset”.
In the book Braun goes on a hunt for answers to unsolved cases from the Ministry, alongside Archivist Agent Wellington Thornhill Books, and end up discovering a secret society that is bent on taking over and destroying the British Empire. This story is full of laughs, action and tense moments that keep a reader engaged and enthralled in the world of steampunk.
Steampunk, a genre that is a mixture of Victorian era classicism and styling, mixed with high tech gadgets and updates that combine 2011 with 1891, is a movement that has gained popularity in recent years. It has found a major foothold in the current culture, with many steampunk conventions being held yearly around the country.
Not only do they write steampunk, Morris and Ballantine fascinated by the genre. Both were established writers before Phoenix Rising, but came together while Ballantine was still a resident of New Zealand. Ballantine and Morris’ work started as podcast collaboration but grew into a series of novels and short stories that will continue to grow with the release of their next novel, The Janus Affair: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel.
While many writers relegate the steampunk genre to a “flavor of the month,” Morris and Ballantine disagree. “There’s a lot more to steampunk than just the aesthetic,” Morris said. “It’s a way to explore history, really. What attracted me to it is that you get the chance to mess around with a very interesting period of time,” said Ballantine.
The couple certainly didn’t expect the enthusiasm toward their first novel to be as great as their own, but the steampunk community has welcomed them with open arms.
Ballantine and Morris won a 2011 Airship Award for Best in Literature for the Phoenix Rising novel, awarded by steampunk fans and readers, and they show no signs of slowing down. They were also recently nominated for a 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards’ Best Science Fiction award, which will be awarded to a finalist in December.
Stephanie Tipple is a contributing writer for PotomacLocal.com.
