Steampunk Holmes Murder Mystery Game

You heard us right!  Noble Beast, publisher of Steampunk Holmes, is partnering with award winning Shot In The Dark Mysteries to bring you a murder mystery steampunk cosplay game!  The game will be released in 2013 and will be sold by Shot In The Dark Mysteries and Noble Beast Emporium.

What is a Murder Mystery Game? A Murder Mystery Game is a party style game that is played at someone's home. Murder Mystery Games are usually designed to be played with 2 to 20 (or more) of your friends.  During the game guests and the host will take on various roles of suspects and investigators as they attempt to solve the mystery by asking other guests questions.  Players are invited to attend the party dressed as, and ready to play the part of, one of the suspects in the game.  It can be played along with a dinner or cocktail party.  It's like Sleep No More, but steampunk, and at home.

So, now you won't have to wait for a CON to get dressed up in your steampunk regalia, you can throw a Murder Mystery Party specifically designed for the Steampunk fans!  How cool is that!  Stay tuned via Twitter and Facebook for more information in the coming months.

Steampunk Holmes: Audiobook Preview

We are hard at work editing the audiobook version of Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus and we wanted to share a rough draft of the first chapter. Please have a listen to the great performances of Gerald Price (Narrator and Dr. Watson), Shash Hira (Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade) and Nicky Barber (Mycroft Holmes) and let us know what you think.  Enjoy!

Announcing 'Steam Patriots'!

Eaglepus by Patrick Arrasmith

If you are a fan of Steampunk Holmes than you'll like a new product we are brining to market, STEAM PATRIOTS by authors Scott Wakefield and Rory Boyle!  Scott and Rory, fellow servicemen in the U.S. Coast Guard, wrote an incredible treatment for the series which just blew us away!  As if that is not enough we are also announcing that the artist for the series is the very talented Patrick Arrasmith whose vintage scratch board art has graced many book covers as well as editorials in many National magazines.  This is a creative team that can't be beat!

STEAM PATRIOTS  takes place in 1776 at the start of the American Revolutionary War and features, among other famous patriots, George Washington, General at War, Benedict Arnold, double agent, and Benjamin Franklin, a man who has fundamentally altered society with his fantastic steam-powered inventions.

STEAM PATRIOTS  chronicles the adventures of Felix, a young man with an unusual gift: a photographic memory.  Follow Felix through this alternative universe as he serves General Washington and apprentices to Benjamin Franklin in a American Revolution that is both familiar and alien.  With huge steam-powered tanks, and other devices the Founding Father's never imagined, Felix travels across the Colonies and through Europe in a clever, action-packed, and often funny bid to win America's freedom.

As is the case with our celebrated Steampunk Holmes series, STEAM PATRIOTS  will be released as a series of several novellas in multiple channels including eBooks, Web books, audiobooks, paper books, and fully interactive iPad books.  The first book of the series will be available as an eBook in the fourth quarter of 2012 - to be quickly followed by the Web book, paper book, audiobook, and interactive iPad book. 

As we did for Steampunk Holmes, we sill launch a Kickstarter Campaign to finance development of the first two books in the STEAM PATRIOTS series. The Kickstarter campaign launches on September 14th, 2012 and will end October 14th, 2012.  We have a lot to accomplish between now and then including developing our Kickstarter video, book trailer, and reward selections.

After our very successful Steampunk Holmes Kickstarter campaign we hope to have learned enough to run an even more successful STEAM PATRIOTS campaign.  We aim to raise enough money to support the development of all the artwork for at least the first two books in the series in addition to some more software development in order to create the book app, the web app, ebooks, and more.

Please help spread the word about STEAM PATRIOTS -- the more fans we have before we launch our Kickstarter campaign the more likely we are to succeed. Follow STEAM PATRIOTS  on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and tell your friends!

Steampunk Holmes: Looking for BETA Testers!

Development of the interactive iPad edition of Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus is coming along well. The ability to jump from section to section and to pop-up animated illustrations of gadgets and character portraits, among many other features, is in the works.

For example, when viewing the mechanical drawings of the Widowmakr, Sherlock Holmes motorcycle, the reader can animate various components of the vehical with the touch of a finger.  See top left for a composite video example (in the application only the component you touch will animate and it will do so until you tap again or several seconds have elapsed.)

The portraits are also animated. If you forget who a character is you can touch their name and a profile with a portrait pops up on the screen. The portraits are all lightly animated - each in its own way.  For example, the portrait Inspector Lestrade (top right) looks right and arches his eye brow every now and then.

The BETA, which launches in mid-August, will be limited to a few select individuals so that we can keep the BETA manageable. As soon as the BETA period is complete (when we've flushed out all the issues ) the full version of the Book App will be released to the App Store (no later than November of 2012).  If you are interested in being included in the BETA program, please send an email to MonsonHaefel@Gmail.com telling us which iPad device you own and, in one sentence, why you think you should be selected for the BETA program.

Steampunk Holmes: Frankenstein to be illustrated by Yun Ling!

Yun Ling, Random Paint, October 2011

Sometimes things happen for a reason.  As you know from this website, the art work that Daniel Cortes did for Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus is outstanding.  He is a fantastic artist, so we were really sad to discover that he wouldn't be able to do all the art for Steampunk Holmes: Frankenstein.  We had to find a new artist to do mechanicals and illustrations.

We looked at literally hundreds of artists, gave up for awhile, looked some more, gave up again, and finally we found exactly the right artist in the work of Yun Ling.  Ling is the Senior Concept Artist at Volta, a computer games company, and is originally from China.  His work is very well regarded and Daniel Cortes was absolutely thrilled that Ling will be picking up where he left off. So are we!

The second book in the series, Steampunk Holmes: Frankenstein, is a dark book about humanity, or our lack of it, and the art needed to reflect a certain darkness.  Yun Ling's style is a perfect mix of elements that are just downright scary. It's perfect - and having looked at the work of so many other very talented artists we were thrilled when Yun Ling agreed to join the project.

In addition to doing the big scenes, Yun Ling will also be doing the new mechanicals drawings. Some mechanicals will be familiar to readers (such as Watson's Arm and the Widowmakr) but there will also be a lot of new devices all rendered in Yun Ling's unique style. 

Yun Ling, Concept Art, Volta

For the portraits, Daniel Cortes will return to the project - the scope of that work is small enough that he can handle it in addition to all his other work.  We are thrilled to be working with Daniel again and to be working with Yun Ling for the first time.   Get ready this winter for Steampunk Homes: Frankenstein – it’s going to be fantastic!

An Update on All versions of Steampunk Holmes

Steampunk Holmes will be distributed in many formats this year: paper book, ebook, web book, audiobook, and iPad. The paper edition is at the printer right now and should be available to ship by the end of this month. You can pre-order it on Amazon.com.  The eBook has been available for a while on SmashWords, but now you can also buy it from Amazon.com.  The audiobook is just now getting ready for editing - it will probably be ready within a couple months but no promises on that yet.  We are still looking for a capable team to develop the Web book site, which will provide access to all the books as interactive web pages on an annual subscription basis.

Development of the iPad book app edition is going to take a while – four months at least – but the guys at Floodlight Software - that's the company programming that book app for us - are already off to a stellar start. 

This past week Floodlight Software delivered a portion of the functionality, which we used as a demo, at the BookExpo America (BEA) – the largest book fair in the United States.  Our Chief Marketing Officer, Julie Brannon, presented the demo of our iPad book app to more than 100 different publishers at the BookExpo and the response was overwhelmingly positive! The demo was rock solid, and although limited compared to the final product, it was of the highest quality. No unexpected error screens or hiccups during the dozens of demos Julie gave at the BookExpo. 

We'll continue to blog our progress with all the different editions of Steampunk Holmes. The goal is, and always has been, to release all five editions (i.e eBook, paper book, audiobook, iPad book app, and Web book) by the end of November.

The Paper Edition Available in June!

On Wednesday Noble Beast (the publisher of Steampunk Holmes) and MX Publishing sealed a deal that will bring the first paper edition of Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus to the world this June!  Thanks to the generous support our backers the paper edition of the book will be in your hands very soon!

We are really excited about partnering with MX Publishing, one of the largest Sherlock Holmes publishers in the World, to publish the paper edition. MX Publishing has dozens of new Sherlock Holmes novels, short stories, and biographies of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

Winners of the 2011 Howlett Literary Award (Sherlock Homes book of the year) for ‘The Norwood Author’, MX Publishing counts among its dozens of titles these best sellers:

• The Lost Stories of Sherlock Holmes
• Sherlock Holmes and The Whitechapel Vampire
• My Dear Watson
• The Secret Journal of Dr Watson
• Sherlock Holmes and The Plague of Dracula
•  Sherlock Holmes and The Lyme Regis Horror

For those backers who are not getting the paper book as an award you can pre-order the paper book directly from MX Publishing or Amazon UK.  The paper book should be available on Amazon USA within the next couple of weeks for pre-ordering as well.  I’ll send an update when its available. Other Amazon outlets should be quick to follow.

When we receive the printed copies for backers, we’ll have a Shipping Party to box up all 400+ copies to delivery to backers who pledged for them.  I’ll be sure to send out another update before we package books so that folks that have moved since our survey can give us their new addresses. 

Of course, the paper edition of the Steampunk Holmes book is only one of several different channels.  The book is already available as an eBook on Smashwords.com and soon on Amazon and we will have exciting news about the iPad, audiobook, and Web book editions for you in the coming weeks! 

Although important updates will be sent to you through Kickstarter emails, you can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more frequent news -- and to connect with others Steampunk Holmes backers.