Alistair Click, Itinerant Horologist

Hello, and thanks so much for having me back at Love Bytes! Today I want to talk about the hero of my latest book, Blood and Clockwork: Alistair Click. He was one of those characters who sprung to mind fully formed, almost as if by magic, when I saw the Less Than Three Press call for their Solitary Travelers collection. I’ve always wanted to write more steam and/or clockpunk–and this is the latter, as there’s no steam tech in Alistair’s world. But the language and manners of that world do smack of the 19th century, and the aesthetic is totally there.

Alistair isn’t just a solitary traveler but also a bit of a lonely one. He’s never felt he fits in, partly because he’s a bit of a genius know-it-all, partly because he’s fastidious about the company he keeps, but also, on occasion, because he’s asexual. Plus, he travels from town to town, trading his skills as a talented horologist for his daily bread and then moving on–which isn’t a lifestyle that facilitates deep friendships. Still, he’d rather have fewer friends than sub-par ones.

Asexuality features largely in the book due to Alistair’s budding relationship with his accidental companion, Marco, a boy from New Jersey. (Yes, that new New Jersey.) It’s important to me as an author to work more asexual spectrum characters into my romances, so I was pumped for the opportunity the Solitary Travelers collection presented in that respect. The previously mentioned potential stumbling block Alistair’s asexuality presents isn’t to friendship, obviously, but to romance. When Alistair flirts–or even expresses aesthetic appreciation of another person–it sets up certain expectations from allosexual people that don’t interest him. As a result, he assumes this lack of sexual interest will preclude any chance of romance.

Marco is a good listener, though. So who knows. Maybe love is around the corner… if Alistair and Marco can manage to make it through the Mad Prince’s maze of clockwork puzzles.

But that’s another story for another time.

Cover by Natasha Snow Designs

BLURB:

Blood and Clockwork: Alistair Click set out to lay to rest the superstitious fears about the Mad Prince’s clockwork tower. If that meant he might bring the ghost city of Avalonia back to economic life, connecting the western kingdoms once again, so much the better. So what if no adventurer who’d entered the tower in the last century of desolation had ever re-emerged? They didn’t have his skill and wit. He could do better.

The tower turns out to be far more than Alistair expected, however. Not only are there clockwork puzzles to open every door, but one of them drops a boy from a strange world into his lap—figuratively speaking, if only just. Marco Murphy was just gaming in his New Jersey apartment, and now he’s stuck in what feels like a never ending LARP nightmare.

The deeper they delve into the Mad Prince’s tower, the darker the secrets they uncover. They’re not entirely sure they’ll ever be able to get out again, either. It’ll take all Marco’s charm and Alistair’s cleverness, plus the strange bond growing between them, to get them out together… and alive.

LINKS:

Less Than Three Press

Amazon

All Romance eBooks

Katey Hawthorne is an avid reader and writer of superpowered romance, even though the only degree she holds is in the history of art. (Or, possibly, because the only degree she holds is in the history of art.) Originally from the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, she currently lives in Ohio. In her spare time she enjoys comic books, B-movies, loud music, Epiphones, and Bushmills. Find her at http://www.kateyhawthorne.com/

Author’s site: http://www.kateyhawthorne.com/p/one-shots.html