Dogs of S.T.E.A.M.

For those of you following the Paws & Claws saga, you'll be glad (or chagrined) to learn that Dogs of S.T.E.A.M., fifth book in the series, is available, both in print and e-book formats. Rather than tell you about the story, I wanted to share something about how the book came into being.

The first four books

Back in 2012, I wrote Paws & Claws: A Three Dog Mystery, first book in what was to become a series. At the time, however, I had no real intention of writing more about Levi, Sunny, Yoda and the Three Dog Detective Agency. It was something I had discussed often with Levi, and something I had put off for one reason or another. After writing and, ultimately, publishing it, I decided I did not want to let it end there. As I often did with short stories, I sat down and wrote a dozen or so titles which I thought might lend themselves to stories. The first book was based on true events (yes, even the spider money), but my fidelity to real events decreased with each succeeding book. The second (Flight of Raptors) was more fact than not; the third (K-9 Blues) was maybe 50/50; and the fourth (The Death & Life of an American Dog) was quite a bit more fiction than fact, though I always included real places, real dogs and cats, and illustrated the books with photographs rather than drawings. With the fifth book, which because of the title had to include steampunk, Victorian London, time travel and alternate universes, I realized I would have to reply more on fiction than actual events. After all, my dogs have never traveled into the past, journeyed into alternate dimensions or saved the British Empire...as far as I know. They don't tell me everything. Be that as it may, I still wanted to illustrate the book with photos, use real Chula Vista-area locales, and include some of the animals that fans e-mailed me, a group I call "animals of character." I had four animals of character to work into the story to greater or lesser degrees. 

The first of these was June (r), a dog nominated by artist Jason Thompson. I was taken when I saw his picture of his little hunter up a tree. The only real change I had to make was to take out the leash which kept her from running after her heart's desire. It was a fairly easy matter. With Kelsey (l-front) and Sammy (l-rear), two Shih Tzu dogs nominated by Mike and Jenny Meyers, it was a little more complicated. I had two separate photos of the dogs which I needed to combine into a single photo. Since, within the plot, one of the Dogs of S.T.E.A.M. is drawn to their home because it resembles the dog's own Victorian Age, I took the two dogs and put them into a more appropriate setting. To make it look a little more authentic, I turned it into a sepia tone (for the e-book edition only) to give it the appearance of  being a daguerreotype. All in all, I think both photos work well in their own ways. The fourth dog was a Gordon Setter named Artemus Gordon (thanks to Lester Doyle), but because his appearance became much more than a cameo, and he was present at some of the events also represented by photos, I decided to forgo the usual photo of him.

This is the first book in the series where I used locales in addition to Chula Vista. I also included scenes set in South San Diego and in Otay, an unincorporated area a little south of Chula Vista. In addition to contemporary locations, however, some of the action took place in London of 1887, one of which was the London Gasworks, where the Dogs of S.T.E.A.M. raid one of the secret lairs of the sinister and nefarious Lord Cerberus, a dog like no other on Earth. For the photo above, I combined a photo of the Gasworks with two others, a full moon and a night sky. Using a graphics program called GIMP, I filled the canals with mist, painted moonlight on some portions of the complex, and deepened some of the shadows. Lastly, I gave it a sepia cast (e-book edition) to make it seem more like an actual period photo.

Kindle Edition

Print Edition

This was the first book in the series to have two different covers, one for print and one for Kindle. The print edition uses a photo manipulated in GIMP. I inserted two dogs (the one wearing goggles was itself edited) into a public domain photo of London. I liked the photo, except it had a big boat in the background, which was not only distracting but had nothing to do with the story. I took it out. Change the composite photo to sepia tone again, and Bob's your uncle. For Kindle edition, I used the same photo, but cropped it to a vertical format using a graphics program called Irfan. For the actual composition of the crop, I have to thank the Wife, who provided aesthetic advice. Recently I discovered a design website called Canva,com, a great resource if you are working on a book cover, an album cover, a poster or even a Facebook banner and have a working budget to $0.00. I used their layout tools to size the photo, then their typography section to add author, title and series number. It addition to a lot of free stuff, it has a learning curve that is mostly flat, and even has design education segments for those who need tutelage in the subject. I recently used the site to redo the cover of the short story The Dog Who Loved Sherlock Holmes. The original cover is on the left, the re-done one on the right. I think it a big improvement.

Of course, the real question about Dogs of S.T.E.A.M. is:

"How did you come up with such a wild story? How did you plot a tale about some canine detectives from Chula Vista getting involved with a group of steampunk dogs from Victorian London, who then battle Lord Cerberus and his herald Lilith, not only for the fate of London and the British Empire, but for the destiny of myriad timelines, including ours?"

Actually, that was the easy part. I just wrote down everything the characters did and said. Yep, easy.

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Never Lost in London...as long as Queen Victoria reigns (or maybe Eddie)

It's all Gary Lovisi's fault...or so I tell myself.

Gary Lovisi is the publisher of Gryphon Books of Brooklyn, N.Y., avid collector of paperback books, and Sherlock Holmes expert. When it comes to paperback collecting, he wrote the book...no, really, he did write the book: the Antique Traders Collectible Paperback Price Guide. And when it comes to Sherlock Holmes, his knowledge is inexhaustible. And the books published by his own small press house are worth collecting themselves. If you have never visited his website, please do yourself a favor:

http://www.gryphonbooks.com/

But back to Gary Lovisi's culpability. After Gryphon Books published Sherlock Holmes: Adventure of the Ancient Gods, Gary suggested that, were I to write a sequel, he'd be interested in "first refusal." A sequel was far from my mind, but Gary had planted the seed, and eventually I wrote Sherlock Holmes and the Terror Out of Time and Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time. So, am I blaming Gary Lovisi for those books? No, not at all; I blame him for my fondness ("addiction" is such an ugly word) for London guidebooks.

Before ever I write a single line, I delve deep into a region's lore and history. Nothing unique about that. Many writers' yarns could be used as walkabout guides. Personally, I love stories with a strong sense of place. Sir Arthur's own tales document London with the accuracy of a camera; one of my favorite books pairs quotes from his stories with period photos. Other writers who have married fiction and geography include Raymond Chandler, HP Lovecraft, Steven Saylor and William Faulkner. I also read books about time periods, but I favor books from from those periods, particularly guidebooks.

This edition had a full-sized fold-out map of all London in the back.

I told myself I was tracking down various editions of Baedekers, Muirhead's, ABC Rail Guides and many others just so I could accurately trace my way through London and provide readers with a memorable and accurate visit to Baghdad on the Thames. Of course, after about a dozen acquisitions through EBay, estate sales and various booksellers, here and abroad, that excuse began to wear thin, even to me.

When a passing cab picked up India Jack Neville near the East India Docks it was equally important to me that all the streets and buildings were correct as it was that poor India Jack not get rooked by the driver. However, since the British tar did not live long enough to pay a fare, the amount was actually something of a moot point. Still, knowing how much it would cost for a hansom cab ride from Charing Cross to the Zoological Gardens, for example, is a nice thing to know. Like it might come in handy some day. Well, it might! All right, maybe not, but still nice to know.


Guidebooks of London from the Victorian and Edwardian eras are not really that difficult to find, nor need they be expensive. A great many came to me via the EBay auction site, which used to function like a global car boot sale or a million garage sales; unfortunately, the once-friendly site has been overrun by corporate entities, grifters and swindlers from the Far East. ABE Books was another good source, but, caution is always advised when buying a book online, even if a photo is supplied, and sellers found themselves peppered with queries. My favorite method of purchase was in person, and it really is surprising how often antique guidebooks show up at estate sales and charity shops. Regardless of how I came across them, I still had more books (Victorian, Edwardian, the VI Georgian and the II Elizabethan) than I could ever justify with any number of books and stories I could write set in London.

This was the cultural/economic heart of London; another book I have, The London of Oscar Wilde, discounts
entirely London's East End, averring there was no need for a gentleman to ever set foot there.

It's a little difficult to see in this scan, but some 19th Century London tourist annotated the map in pencil.

Despite its small size, the Zoological Gardens was a marvel of its time;
when an antiques dealer is killed nearby in the unpublished The Quest of the Copper Scrolls Scotland
Yard conveniently blames it on an escaped lion...that somehow found its way back in.

The previous owner of this copy of The Streets of London decided
to keep his book updated through tipped-in articles from and
letters to the London Times.
I love used books!

Augustus Hare's two-volume opus is strictly not a "guidebook",  but it one of my favorites; It is just
what the title claims...street by street...step by step...house by house...profusely illustrated.

One interesting thing about guidebooks of the past was they were often rife with advertisements. While most of the ads concerned hotels in London (none in the East End, of course) and in popular spots along the many rail lines, others were for charitable associations, house agents and purveyors of "personal" products. Here are a few examples:

"Temperance Hotel" -- Don't expect it to have a bar, American or otherwise.

Mystery writer Agatha Christie was born in Torquay in 1890, and it continued to play a part in her life
and fiction; when she and husband Max Mallowan bought a home there they would have used house agents
such as those who advertised in the various guidebooks of the times.

Rowland's Kalydor might protect and promote soft, delicate skin, but a little arsenic
will give the cultured lady of society that peaches-and-cream complexion so appealing to dukes and earls.
(Hint: Don't go overboard with the arsenic)

So, you see, I would not have any of these dozens of books had Gary Lovisi not asked for "first refusal" of books I had no intention of writing. Acquiring so many was just an outgrowth of my desire to provide readers with literary excursions that were as accurate as possible, a sense of verisimilitude that they could "take to the bank," so to speak; I'm sure I was just trying to follow the guidance of the great Isaac Asimov, who once said: "No one reads a story for scientific facts, but certainly no one reads it for errors." And I think the stories I wrote were the better for the cultural immersion of their author.

Croatian edition:  Coils of Time

German edition: Coils of Time

The new incarnation of "The Coils of
Time"...plus a few friends

On the other hand, while I might be able to pass off responsibility to another for my collection of London  guidebooks, street histories and books about the lore of London, it is, I admit, difficult to explain my affinity for Victorian novels, especially those of the sub-genre known as London shop girl stories...will the poor lass discover the truth about her inheritance...will she marry the duke who does not realize her lowly status in society...will she find happiness? I just have to know.