Luna Novella is finally here, and we are thrilled to announce that M.E. Rodman has joined the Luna family with the novella, Clockwork Sister.
On the 15th of April, we opened submissions to novellas, for the first time. From this, six talented authors have emerged and have joined the Luna family: today we are delighted to introduce you to M.E. Rodman. Our new series will be available in digital format and also in the pocket-size print edition so that they can journey with you!
M.E. Rodman writes LGBT+ fantasy with a dark edge and occasional stories of horror and the uncanny. Their short fiction has appeared in Anthologies; Airship Shape and Bristol Fashion, The Dark Half of the Year, Goddesses of the Sea and A Picture’s Worth and online at Expanded Horizons and Zetetic, a Record of Unusual Inquiry. They have reviewed books for Vector, Prism and www.thebookbag.co.uk. A short story ‘The Selkie; A Tale of Love, Obsession and the Sea,’ was adapted and performed as a live radio play for the Sanctum Project in 2015.
They have an MA in Creative Writing from Edinburgh Napier and are a current guest editor for Fantasia Divinity Publishing. They live near Glasgow, with their partner, child, a dog the size of a cat, and a cat the size of the dog.
Clockwork Sister is a LGBT+ clockpunk fantasy featuring robot doppelgangers, clockwork zombies and airships.
Aeon was created to protect the eighth princess of the Tamyin Empire. Now her princess is dead, Aeon must make a new life in the dregs of the clockwork city. When another sudden death embroils Aeon in murder, kidnapping and treason, she is drawn back to her old life in ways she could never have imagined.
M.E. said about the novella:
"I’ve always loved the idea of magical robots and not just because they are cool. There is a challenge to combining genres, balancing the necessary elements of multiple tropes and expectations so that they fit together like clockwork. Clockwork Sister itself uses a crime engine to drive a robot protagonist through a clockpunk world of metal and gears. Aeon and her ilk may not be robots in the strictest sense (they’re more like cyborgs), but like most artificially constructed intelligences in fiction they are programmed to serve, struggle with autonomy and are considered dangerous outsiders.
At the heart of Clockwork Sister is family, particularly found family, the family you build through shared experiences and mutual support that has nothing to do with blood. As a queer writer there are some themes that are constant in my work, I play with gender roles and gender identity, creating worlds where the prejudices and social norms associated with our primary world simply do not exist. Found families have always been a big part of this; I’m a sucker for a group of emotionally involved adventurers who have each other’s back.
Clockwork Sister was written in three months and was entirely unplanned. When I started writing I barely had a protagonist and by the end I had magic and zombies, murder and airships in a world I constructed piecemeal as I went along. It constantly surprised me which made it a joy to write and it’s a world I will definitely be visiting again."
M.E. Rodman's Clockwork Sister, will be released in 2021, as part of the Luna Novella series.
For Luna Novella 2021: Dilman Dila, John Dodd, Joanna Corrance, Andrew Wallace, Terry Grimwood, M.E. Rodman.
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