iPhone App: Steampunk Tales

It's a good start to the day. I'm very pleased to announce the launch of a brand new fiction magazine exclusively for the Apple iPhone: Steampunk Tales.

I'm fortunate to be part of this original, exciting venture. My story "A Grain of Sand" is one of the ten short fiction pieces featured in its inaugural issue, available now for $1.99 on the Apple iTunes App Store. It's humbling to be included alongside award-winning authors with decades of writing experience and hundreds of works in print.

What is steampunk, you ask? It can best be described as "a past that never was". Think of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Think of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, or The Island of Doctor Moreau. These are all predecessors of what has become known as steampunk. Most stories take place in the 1800s and very early 20th century, but fill them with science fiction technology and fantastical inventions. Some use historical settings, others create entire new worlds. It's a very broad genre with unlimited possbilities.

I love the genre, because it's essentially a giant "What if?" Very exciting stuff.

The full press release from the creator of Steampunk Tales:

>Steampulp Publishing LLC has released the world’s first electronic pulp fiction magazine created exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Emulating the style of the pulp adventure magazines of the 1920s and ’30s, Steampunk Tales #1 contains first-run and original fiction written by an A+ list of award-winning authors.

Issue #1 contains 10 short stories (between 4,300 and 11,000 words) for the unbelievably low price of $1.99. Authors contributing to Issue #1 include Jay Lake, Catherynne M. Valente, SatyrPhil Brucato and G.D. Falksen. The cover art was painted by popular artist Melita “Missmonster” Curphy. Steampunk Tales is distributed exclusively via the iPhone App Store and features the unique Steampunk Tales Reader, which renders the stories with a retro-futuristic Victorian flair never before seen in any eBook reader application.

“We stand at the beginning of a revolution in the distribution of print,” says John Sondericker III, founder of Steampulp Publishing. “The combination of low distribution costs and the potential for high volume sales allows us to provide an astounding value for the consumer. The timing is perfect to re-introduce the world to the ‘Penny Dreadfuls’, and the iPhone is a platform that can truly do them justice.”

Steampulp Publishing LLC is the first and only company to release a fiction magazine exclusively on the iPhone platform. New issues of Steampunk Tales will be released monthly. Steampunk Tales will be one of the first applications to implement several of the forthcoming iPhone 3.0 features, as 3.0 will allow readers to purchase back-issues as well as new content from within the Steampunk Tales Reader.