Behind the Scenes: Clockwork Phantom
June 30, 2019
If you’ve been following my career for a while, you’ll know this book has had a couple of identities and a few covers. It was originally titled Light Fantastique and looked like this:
Then it looked like this:
Then I read Chris Fox’s book Relaunch Your Backlist and realized that although Light Fantastique has meaning for me, it doesn’t to the average reader who may want to pick it up. Light refers to the interesting properties of aether that my crew figures out during this book. Fantastique refers both to Marie St. Jean’s stage name and to my favorite piece of music, Hector Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique.
Backing up a little, I originally came up with the idea for this book when I finished Eros Element, and during an email exchange, my editor challenged me to write a steampunk version of Phantom of the Opera. I was of course familiar with the musical – what artsy teenager of the 1990’s wasn’t? – and I had enjoyed the book. I had also done a paper on Susan Kay’s prequel/retelling/follow-up Phantom in college. The paper had something to do with psychology, but I don’t remember what it was, specifically. That was many computers ago, so I don’t still have access to it.
College is also when I first heard the Symphonie Fantastique, probably as part of a music history or appreciation class. It comes from my favorite musical period, the Romantic one, and tells the story of a young man who falls in love with a young woman, and it goes badly. The fifth movement, which involves a witch’s dance and the Dies Irae, is particularly fun to listen to.
In Clockwork Phantom, Marie has refused to take the stage because she loses part of her soul to each role she plays. Johann Bledsoe is hiding from his past and his gambling debts. When a mysterious figure offers Marie freedom in exchange for allowing him to dig through her memories, she finds the bargain irresistible and more dangerous than she expects.
Here’s the official blurb:
Everyone wears a mask. But the deadliest secrets hide in plain sight.
Marie St. Jean’s supreme acting talent comes with a price: Every spellbinding performance extracts a piece of her soul. When she reluctantly steps into a role abandoned by another leading lady, she encounters the ghostly spirit that caused the other woman to flee in terror. And who promises to fix Marie’s affliction – for a price.
Marie’s other problem – her attraction to alluring violinist, Johann Bledsoe, a temptation she dares not explore. However, with the Prussians surrounding Paris, she is well and truly trapped.
Johann left disgrace and his gambling debt behind in England, but a murder outside the Théâtre Bohème makes him fear he’s been exposed. He’d love nothing more than to claim Marie as his own, but after the siege is over, his past will catch up to him again.
Under the baleful eye of steam-powered ravens, more murders drive Marie and Johann closer to the truth of what really lurks below the stage, and what dangers hang over their heads. Their only hope could lie in exposing their darkest secrets—and surrendering to the Eros Element in a way that could push them irretrievably close to the edge of madness.
Learn more about Clockwork Phantom, see some reviews, and read an excerpt at its page on this site.
You can get Clockwork Phantom on the following platforms:
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