Part of Series
On a dark evening in 1824, a lady is offered a ride home in the carriage of a dark and mysterious stranger and a boy is conceived, to the strains of Beethoven's brand-new setting to the Ode to Joy. Groomed from childhood to become a perfect British hero, young Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax proceeds uncertainly through public school, a career in the navy, mutiny and court-martial before discovering his true place in life. There is, in Whitehall, a comfortable and slightly shabby club called Redking's. Downstairs from Redking's, however, is concealed the London headquarters of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society... a centuries-old fraternity devoted to the development of what its members call Technologia. Their goal is to bring about a Utopian paradise of science, through the manipulation of men and governments. Edward, as one of their agents, sets off on an odyssey across 19th-century Europe, encountering on the way flying machines, self-propelled carriages, and an Underground Galvanic Railway... and learns that the Society, in its various disguises, is everywhere. Cover art by J.K. Potter
Author
Born June 10, 1952, in Hollywood, California, and grew up there and in Pismo Beach, present home. Spent 12 years in assorted navy blue uniforms obtaining a good parochial school education and numerous emotional scars. Rapier wit developed as defense mechanism to deflect rage of larger and more powerful children who took offense at abrasive, condescending and arrogant personality in a sickly eight-year-old. Family: 2 parents, 6 siblings, 4 nieces, 2 nephews. Husbands: 0. Children: 0. Prior occupations: graphic artist and mural painter, several lower clerical positions which could in no way be construed as a career, and (over a period of years for the Living History Centre) playwright, bit player, director, teacher of Elizabethan English for the stage, stage manager and educational program assistant coordinator. Presently reengaged in the above-listed capacities for the LHC's triumphant reincarnation, AS YOU LIKE IT PRODUCTIONS. 20 years of total immersion research in Elizabethan as well as other historical periods has paid off handsomely in a working knowledge of period speech and details. In spare time (ha) reads: any old sea stories by Marryat, the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brien, the Hornblower books, ANYTHING by Robert Louis Stevenson, Raymond Chandler, Thorne Smith, Herman Melville (except Pierre, or the Ambiguities, which stinks) Somerset Maugham, George MacDonald Frasier. Now happily settled in beautiful Pismo Beach, Clam Capital of the World, in charming seaside flat which is unfortunately not haunted by ghost of dashing sea captain. Avid gardener, birdwatcher, spinster aunt and Jethro Tull fan. http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/rip-kage-...
