Tag: coming soon

Writing

Project Announcement: An Ingenious Mechanical Devices Short

Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

Hi everyone,

I have decided (now that I’m about halfway in) to announce that the first short companion story for my steampunk/historical fantasy series the Ingenious Mechanical Devices will be out by the end of the summer.

What is it?

The story will be roughly 5,000 words or so and will take place after the events of The Winter Garden (IMD #2). It will be a standalone, but obviously, it would make more sense if it was read along with the other Ingenious Mechanical Devices stories. The working title is “An Oxford Holiday,” the story revolves around Adam journeying to Oxford to visit Immanuel. Unfortunately, getting a little privacy and time together is more difficult than it seems. The story will be offered for free on all platforms when it is finished (Amazon may take a few days to catch up with the other ebook platforms).

Why do this?

It may seem odd for an author to post something so short and for free, but I’m thinking of this short story as a free sample, a bonus for being a loyal reader or an incentive for new readers to give my work a try. I also know that it will take me a while to finish writing The Earl and the Artificer, so by releasing a short story, I’ll hopefully keep my readers interested between the two books. Recently, I have been reading K. J. Charles’s A Charm of Magpies series, and one of the things I love about them is that she writes short stories to go along with her books. It’s a great little teaser between stories, and I devour them just as I do her full-length novels. It’ll just be a light, fun story, but it will hopefully add a bit to the series and give a hint as to what will happen in book four when Adam and Immanuel reappear.

Additional Information

If you get the chance, please drop by my Progress and Projects page at the menu bar. Every few days I’ll be updating my word count bars as I progress. You can also check out what I’m working on and what I’ll be tackling in the future. Stay tuned for more info about my projects, and hopefully in the coming weeks, I’ll have a date for the release of “An Oxford Holiday.”

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Writing

Projects, Projects, Projects

Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

Hi everyone,

This will be a short blog post before I run up to the university for the night.

You may have noticed the new banner at the top of my page.  I decided to go to Fiverr and get a logo made for the Ingenious Mechanical Devices series, which hopefully will be used in the future for t-shirts or mugs at events and down the line a table banner for when I do author events. Honestly, I love it. I have been gushing over it for the past two days and am dying to go to Cafepress and make up a t-shirt or something.  I’m easily excitable at times.

The second point I would like to mention is: The Winter Garden is still doing well on Amazon! The ebook and paperback launched last Sunday, and the response has been quite good. I have 4 reviews thus far, all 5s or 4s, and if you are interested in reading it, please check it out here. I’ll do a post about the reviews after I get a few more, so in a week or two.

On to the next: I have finished my thesis proposal! It is done! All I need to do is finish the bibliography, which I’m just too lazy to compile because it’s time consuming and I’m waiting for two books to come in the mail.  In a few weeks, I will turn it in and wait for the committee to hopefully approve it. The project will be book #3 of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices series, but if you want a little hint as to what I am up to, you can check out the Pinterest board for it here. With school and miscellaneous projects, it has been a slow go, but in a month or two, my writing should pick up.

My final piece of mind vomit is, projects! I feel like as soon as I half-think of one project, another one pops up in my mind.  If you are a fan of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices series, I can already let you know that there will be a third book (Eilian and Hadley), a fourth book (Emmeline, Immanuel, Adam), and a book in between, which will contain two novellas (Adam and Immanuel and one focusing on Emmeline) and possibly a few short stories that will fall somewhere between books two and four.  Stay tuned for more news down the line.  I hope you all are as excited as I am.

Writing

Series Introduction: The Ingenious Mechanical Devices

Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

As I was trying to figure out what to write for my next blog post, I realized I never introduced the series The Earl of Brass and The Winter Garden are part of. The title of the series, The Ingenious Mechanical Devices, was taken from the name of a book by Al-Jazali called The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices.  The book was written in 1206 and describes over fifty automaton devices, such as mechanical clocks, pistons, programmable robots, automatic gates, and many other inventions.

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While I was researching automaton devices for The Earl of Brass, I came across Al-Jazali and was immediately fascinated.  I don’t think many people realize how far back these robotic devices were being invented, I know I didn’t.  As someone who can barely put together an Ikea shelf, I am always fascinated by people who are able to create works of art that are not only beautiful but functional.  This book of automaton creatures and machines went perfectly with the aesthetic of steampunk as well as Eilian Sorrell’s love of Middle Eastern culture.  With each story in the series, there is a machine or creation that features in each book.  In The Earl of Brass, it is Eilian’s mechanical arm, and in The Winter Garden, there is an electric machine that can steal or deposit souls.  What the device will be in book three, I do not know yet. Continue reading “Series Introduction: The Ingenious Mechanical Devices” →

Writing

The Winter Garden: Book Two of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices

Kara JorgensenLeave a comment

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The Winter Garden: Book Two of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices is only chapters away from completion (apart from editing), so I decided it was time to post the blurb and hopefully build up some hype.  Here is it:

Emmeline Jardine and Immanuel Winter are only months away from achieving their dreams, she will enter debutant society and he will receive a degree from Oxford, but a day at the Thames transforms their lives forever, intertwining their souls and putting them into the path of a predator.

Ripped from the comfort of the world they know, Emmeline and Immanuel are thrust into a struggle for their survival. Even though they escape, Immanuel is forever altered by his time in captivity. Gradually he begins to settle into a normal life as the coroner’s assistant until he comes face to face with the man who nearly destroyed him.

Unaware of what he is capable of, Emmeline is infatuated with the dashing madman and follows him deeper into a world of corrupt mediums. When a murderer masquerading as a monster begins to hunt beautiful Spiritualists, Immanuel knows the key to stopping him lies within the girl who shares his soul.

Continue reading “The Winter Garden: Book Two of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices” →