Couple’s Literary Steampunk Adventure Continues

New Zealand’s first podcast novelist Pip Ballantine, co-author of the steampunk Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series, talks to the USA Today about her and husband Tee Morris’ most recent addition to the anthology, Dawn’s Early Light.

Wellington-born Ballantine, who now lives in Virginia in the United States, has been short-listed for the Parsec Awards, and she also won a Sir Julius Vogel award.

Ballantine says her inspiration for the series was from early episodes of the television show The X-Files.

“I loved the dynamic and attraction between Mulder and Scully. Although our series is a little more light-hearted, there is something about the banter between those two agents that is also found between [Ministry protagonists] Wellington and Eliza.”

Ballantine loves too the sense of adventure writing in the genre of steampunk.

“The Victorian age was one of almost reckless optimism,” she says. “They thought they could travel and discover everything. It was full of pirates, adventurers, scientists, all who thought the future was bright and shiny.”

Original article by Veronica Scott, USA Today, July 3, 2014.