Grand opening!

Good morning, and welcome to Steam Trains and Ghosts!

The events that led up to the creation of this blog started in 2003. One day I had this idea that rat-herding would make for a pretty cool profession. I had a bunch of bits and scraps of other ideas, too. I knew that my great-grandmother's hair went gray when she was only 20, and that it would be pretty cool if goblins got to have speaking roles in a novel. I worked all these bits and scraps of ideas together into a novel that eventually became Grizelda. It was finished in 2006. After taking a break to work on another project, I polished it up, made up a list of agents who represented young adult fantasy and were actively seeking submissions, and sent it out. They didn't want it.

A friend pointed me to Podiobooks.com, and after looking it over, I've decided to podcast Grizelda. This is going to be something of an adventure, because I've never podcasted anything before. The purpose of this blog is going to be a place where I track my progress along this adventure, maybe add bits of backstory, and post anything else that happens to be of interest. I think Grizelda will be ready to go online in June, but there is a lot still to do. If this works out well, I have a couple more projects in the works that I will podcast when their time comes.

Why the name? A steam train plays only a small but important role in Grizelda, and there are a few characters who might be considered ghosts, but they aren't really. I chose those images because they represent the style I'm trying to achieve with my writing. I like steam-era technology, and I like weird, creepy little twists.