A steampunk adventure series
In a world where the sun is a myth, dawn is coming.
This is a complete series of connected shorter works (novelette to novella length) steampunk adventure and romance stories set in a world without sun and stars and where clocks are treason. I may add additional stories to the story world, but they will stand alone.
Bertram Orren expected trouble with both the Time Keepers and faeries if he got caught in the faerie woods. He didn’t expect to get trapped in an abandoned faerie court deep underground while trying to save airship captain Marianna Bowditch from a will-o’-the-wisp. Nor did he expect he and Marianna to discover an ancient treasure that could help free the world from the Time King’s control, one that could bring back the people’s ability to navigate for themselves in a world where sun and moon, east and west are myths hidden by the faerie queen’s Star Veil. Even if Bertram and Marianna escape the caves, they’ve no way to navigate themselves to an airship port and safety, and if the Time Keepers find them, the world will never see the dawn.
DAWN BRINGER is clean steampunk adventure-romance novelette. It is book 1 of The Star Clock Chronicles, a collection of standalone, connected novelette- and novella-length stories telling of the defeat of the Time King and the coming of dawn.
You can listen to “Dawn Bringer” on the Finding Fantasy Reads Podcast here www.findingfantasyreads.com/podcast/dawn-bringer-by-ej-kitchens-1/ and https://www.findingfantasyreads.com/dawn-bringer-by-ej-kitchens-2.
Airship captain Davy Bowditch wants to build a Star Clock so man won’t be dependent on the Time King and his automaton navigators, but to do that, he’ll need the help of one very unusual woman—if he can convince her he didn’t kidnap her on purpose—and an airship pirate—if he can convince him he didn’t kill his son. But in a world where sun and stars are myths, the truth of their existence long hidden behind a faerie veil, trying to build a clock is tantamount to treason.
Former pirate Colin O’Connor swore never to return to his old ways, but when Davy Bowditch goes into hiding and tasks Colin with gaining the iron harpoons needed to destroy the faerie queen’s Star Veil, he’s forced to go to his smuggler cousins for help gaining the forbidden metal. But neither the smugglers nor the Time Keepers trust Colin now that he’s a Sky Keeper, so it’s no surprise when a mysterious stowaway warns him he’s walking into a trap. But Colin’s determined that either he gets the iron or dies trying.
Colin O’Connor may have escaped with the iron needed to destroy the Star Veil, but the Sky Keepers still don’t know where the Veil is. Colin heads back to Reydon to find out what he can, and maybe gain the help of the stowaway who saved him from the Time Keepers once before, but Vesper Vanon isn’t a typical stowaway—she’s a descendent of the Time King himself. Helping Colin could cost Vesper her life, and that’s a price Colin isn’t willing to let her pay.
Airship captain Kingsley Bowditch is dead. So the world thinks. A slave in the mines where the automaton navigators’ crystals grow, he’s doomed to labor for the Time King, the man he’d hoped to overthrow. But then Sky Keeper smuggler Caroline Lockley sneaks into the mines and asks for his help to find the crystal that will guide the Sky Keepers to the Star Veil to destroy it—before the Time King arrives for it. Getting the crystal might be easy, but getting it out—with guards, gates, and stray fey creatures between them and the sky—might not. Dusk is coming for the Time King’s rule or for the hopes of the Sky Keepers in this exciting conclusion to The Star Clock Chronicles.
THE STAR CLOCK CHRONICLES COLLECTION
All five stories are available in this collected edition in ebook, paperback, and hardback.
An orphan boy with a deadly secret must escape an orphanage and the city with the help of a mysterious man and his fey-touched hound.
The short story “Goggles and Tails” (set before the other stories) is available in the Wags, Woofs, and Wonders anthology.