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Welcome, Shelley, I am excited to have you here!

Thanks so much for inviting me, Deborah! Let’s make ourselves comfy here in the salon of Her Majesty’s Airship Athena. The steward will come and pour our tea as soon as the captain gives the order for lift. Would you like clotted cream with your scone?

I’ve never had scones or clotted cream, but I’m willing to try them, thank you.

You certainly have diverse talents and interests. Will you share with us about your rescued chickens?

Ten years ago, a little red hen walked into our garden and began laying eggs in the periwinkle plant, up against the fence. We adopted her, built her a coop, and then discovered that if you open yourself to chickens, they will come. I’ve gotten chickens from the animal shelter, from people who stop my husband in the road and ask him if we can take their birds … I even came out one Saturday morning to find a black hen in a box on my front porch! Last Thursday I rescued one who had been living in a city park for nine days, being fed by neighborhood kids (bless ’em). So when it came time to write the Magnificent Devices series, it seemed only natural to include chickens, since one of the themes of the books is family and how it’s created. A ragtag band of children and a misfit viscount’s daughter bond themselves into a flock … along with a red hen named Rosie.

Your website states you are a world traveler. Please tell us about some of the places you’ve been.

I’ve been to 27 countries, from Norway to Thailand. I think Austria is one of my favorites—dirndl, polka, and Sacher torte, oh my!—with England and Italy crowding close on its heels. The very first trip I took without my parents was to Jamaica when I was 19. I turned 21 in Paris, when a girlfriend and I were backpacking through Europe, so you can see that the travel bug bit early! My most recent trip was to London this past September, where Camy Tang and I stayed in a lovely B&B with ducks in the garden, and did walking tours of Mayfair and Belgravia as research for our books. I also did an afternoon walk called “Mudlarking on the Thames,” where we explored the waterway at low tide. I found a fossil of a starfish and a number of pipe stems from the 17th and 18th centuries. But mostly I got some really great pictures that would help me write about the environment of my “alley mice,” or street children, in alt-Victorian London.

Shelley, we’d love to hear about the newest book in the series, Brilliant Devices.

Brilliant Devices is the fourth book in the Magnificent Devices series, wrapping up the initial cycle of the adventures of 17-year-old Lady Claire Trevelyan, my protagonist. In the first book, she begins as a bit of a mouse, but when the bottom falls out of her world and she is tossed out on the mean streets of London, the resources that were a liability in her old life (a bent for engineering and a knack for explosives) become a lifesaving benefit in her new role as the leader of a South Bank gang. As she’s freeing a mad scientist from Bedlam, standing up to air pirates in the Americas, or doing her best to escape the engagement to a lord that she so foolishly entered, she grows and changes—and becomes a mother figure to the orphans she collects along the way. Brilliant Devices enlarges the canvas and puts her on the international stage, where she must foil a plot to murder one of the most brilliant engineers of the day—and discover how difficult it is when one’s head dictates the opposite of one’s heart in a choice between two worthy men.

What sparked your fascination with the steampunk genre?

I’ve always loved it, from back in the sixties when I’d watch Wild, Wild West with my dad. All the other kids in the neighborhood did, too, so each week we’d act out our own episodes in the woods behind our houses (needless to say, we weren’t a “playing house” kind of gang). I always got to be James West because I was the oldest, but secretly I wanted to be Artemus Gordon, inventing all the cool devices. I think it’s the combination of the Victorians’ wonder and belief in technology and the power of imagination that appeal to me. In steampunk, if you can dream it up, you can put it in a story. Want a ray gun? No problem. A chicken coop that stumps around the garden on mechanical legs? Go for it! It could have happened, right? And in the Devices universe, it does.

Aside from the hero and heroine, do you have another favorite character in this book (or any of the others in the series)?

I just adore the Mopsies—eleven-year-old twin girls who have been living on the streets since they were very small. Maggie and Lizzie are smart, quick on the uptake, slightly cynical about human nature … and can fleece a toff in less time than it takes to smile at him. The Mopsies are the scouts and watchers of the gang of children that Lady Claire takes under her wing. And in watching her, they learn what it means to really be a lady—to trust in themselves and make their own luck, while at the same time putting others first and helping those who are less fortunate. This ragtag group becomes a family over the course of the books … and it’s the Mopsies who feel that connection most deeply.

In the next book, A Lady of Resources, we’ll see the Mopsies at sixteen, on the verge of coming out in society … except that it’s terribly difficult to be a proper young lady when—besides literature, elocution, and mathematics—your only real skills are pickpocketing, scouting, and making bombs …

What is the takeaway value of these books?

In book one, Lady of Devices, Claire tells a young gentleman (with some asperity), “A lady of resources makes her own luck.” This is the theme that runs through all the books—that a young woman, no matter her background, can make a success of her life and find joy in the things she loves if she trusts the abilities she’s been given and … well, grows a spine. The books aren’t Christian fiction per se, but they do have a Christian worldview. Consequences happen for bad behavior. People make mistakes but are forgiven. Repentance leads to change. And joy can be found in the oddest people and the strangest places.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about these books?

The Devices books are based in as much reality as I can give them. I went up in one of only two Zeppelin airships on the continent, so I would be able to describe what it was like to fall up into the sky, or to descend and be tied up to a mooring mast, just like my characters. In London, I went to Wilton Crescent in Belgravia, and found the town house where Claire might have grown up, so that I could describe a Georgian crescent and an environment that reeks of money. I make the costumes that my characters wear, so I don’t make mistakes like having a lady in a bustle and corset relax back on the sofa (a feat that is physically impossible).

There are things in the books that never were—like the Civil War—and changes to history—Prince Albert doesn’t die young—but the nuts and bolts of living in this Victorian environment are as real as I can make them. And of course, half the fun of making a world is inviting people to play in it with me!

Where can readers find you on the Internet?

At www.shelleyadina.com, you’ll see I have more books planned in the Devices series (Claire’s story arc is a quartet, then one for each of the Mopsies five years hence, one for one of the other major female characters, and one for the youngest of the street children when he grows up). I’m also writing the Moonshell Bay series of sweet contemporary romance under the Shelley Adina name … and there might even be a Mennonite vampire novel in the mix, too.

Then, as Adina Senft at www.adinasenft.com, I’m writing Amish novels for FaithWords. The Tempted Soul, the third book in the Amish Quilt series, just came out, and I’ve just contracted for the Healing Grace trilogy, featuring a Dokterfraa, or herbal healer. So I’m a little like those trains in Europe that split and go in different directions. It’s still me, but the direction all depends on the experience the reader wants!

One more blended question, Shelley. On your website, you state, “I like bustle drapery and waltzes and new sheet music.” What exactly is bustle drapery, and do you do the waltz?

I’ve been a costumer since the age of five, when I made a Wild West Indian costume out of a burlap sack. In Victorian costume, the bustle is a foundation garment under your petticoat that creates the extension over the posterior that the Victorians found so attractive. But to accommodate that extension, the modistes had to find ways to add fabric to create enough slack to go over it. Hence the art of drapery—where pleats, folds, and swags of fabric are arranged in a pleasing way to accentuate the figure and create a waterfall effect when viewed from behind. Some very good examples are on the Truly Victorian website, where I get my patterns. For a stunning example of patternless draping, check this out.

And yes, I absolutely know how to waltz—I belong to the Bay Area English Regency Society, and learned the Viennese Waltz there. The bigger your dress, the prettier it looks in the turns! I also know the Rotary Waltz, but avoid it because it makes me dizzy, and I know a lovely musical confection called the Congress of Vienna, which is like watching moving art.

Wow, and I dared to think bustle drapery referred to some sort of window covering. LOL!

Thanks so much Shelley, for taking the time to visit. I’ve heard lots of good things about your books, and I pray you have continued success with them, as with all your future works.

Thanks so much, Deborah! And now it looks like we are coming in to our mooring mast. Let our captain hand you to the ground, won’t you—we’re still floating a couple of inches off the airfield. Au revoir!

If you would like to win a copy of Lady of Devices (we do want to start the series from the beginning, don’t we?) just use my Contact page, and type “drawing” in the comments box. The deadline to enter the drawing is May 24th.