Mar 22 2021

Cover Reveal: Heather Massey’s ‘A Villainous Affair’ New Steampunk Series

Veronica: It’s my pleasure and honor to host the Exclusive Cover Reveal for the new series A Villainous Affair by Heather Massey. Heather was one of my first friends in the scifi romance community and has always been so supportive and helpful to me and to the SFR genre, so I was thrilled to have the chance to share her new covers and the details of the forthcoming books!

A fugitive man and woman stand back-to-back in a moonlit Victorian London. Airships fly above in the cloudy sky.

From Heather:

Series summary

Supervillains, steampunk, and social justice rebels collide in an epic adventure about an unlikely pair of thieves who join forces to battle mobs, evil scientists, and a fascist regime for control of a powerful aether invention. The outcome of their revolutionary mission will determine the fate of Victorian England—and beyond.

Meanwhile, this dynamic duo of the London underworld struggles to keep their fake marriage strictly professional at a time when they’re focused on achieving wide-scale social reform. But even their combined power of brains and brawn may not be enough to shield them from the siren’s call of love.

Heather Massey’s fantastical steampunk romance quartet mixes BIRDS OF PREY girl gang energy with the political panache of V FOR VENDETTA. It’s seasoned with high-octane action, fashion glow-ups, underworld intrigue, and infernal devices.

Inspired by lady supervillains, social justice movements, and the magic of science, A Villainous Affair will delight fans who love the worldbuilding prowess of Meljean Brook, the Victorian underworld characters of Sarah MacLean, and the resistance romances of Alyssa Cole.

A young, dapper man in a Victorian suit and top hat manipulates gears that are swirling in the air using the magical power of aether energy.

Description for A Tale of Two Thieves – A Villainous Affair #1

Welcome to the world of A Villainous Affair, a sensational steampunk romance saga about villains and heroes, rich and poor, science and justice, and the breathtaking power of love.

The tale begins with an unlikely pair of thieves who cross paths on one fateful day in a poverty-stricken metropolis….

Once upon a time in Victorian London, lowborn thief Ruby Darling rescues Nathan Harlow, a gentleman fugitive inventor on the run from his murderous uncle. Nathan must prevent his groundbreaking aether device from falling into the wrong hands, while Ruby craves wide-scale social reform to help the country’s destitute people. To ensure mutual success, they strike a deal—her protection in exchange for his technical wizardry to achieve her goal of conquering England.

But Ruby has one condition—their partnership will end as soon as they overthrow the Crown. With millions of lives at stake, she can’t let friendship or romance derail her mission. Nathan agrees even though he’s already hopelessly in love with her. A new identity will help shield him from the authorities, so he proposes a fake marriage. Impressed by his sensible idea, she agrees.

Ruby is dirt poor, so first they need to amass a fortune and build a criminal empire. Meanwhile, the League of Vigilance—a citizen anti-crime force led by the intrepid, poleaxe wielding Eleanor Marson—is on the hunt to capture Nathan and return him to his uncle’s evil clutches.

The stage is set for a thrilling adventure as Ruby and Nathan Darling embark on a fantastical journey to gain unrivaled power in the underworld and beyond. Yet navigating their unconventional relationship proves just as challenging as their wildly ambitious mission, with many treacherous waters ahead of them.

A Villainous Affair is a serial story in novel form with several point-of-view characters and best read in order. Books One-Three end with a cliffhanger. Happily Ever After guaranteed.

A dark-haired woman in a black and red day dress reclines on a settee in a luxurious Victorian room. She stares at the viewer with a sinister gaze.

A Victorian man and woman in a clinch make loving eye contact in front of Buckingham Palace. They’re wearing fancy clothes and the woman holds an aether pistol, ready for action.

Main tropes: friends-to-lovers, cross-class romance, grumpy-sunshine catnip, brains and brawn, unrequited love, found family

Release date for full series: April 30, 2021

About the Illustrator

Elizabeth Peiró is an illustrator from Barcelona. Obsessed with fantasy, she loves to create colorful art set in whimsical worlds. Her piece, “The Tinkerer,” won a spot in the book, Infected By Art, Vol. 9. Peiró is a mentee of renowned fantasy illustrator Donato Giancola.

View Elizabeth Peiró’s work at Art Station

Visit her on Instagram

Follow her on Twitter: @elizabethpeiro

Treat yourself to one of her prints at INPRNT

About the Author

Heather Massey (she/her) is a geek mom who’s the proud parent of a terrific daughter and married to the love of her life. Heather is best known for her sci-fi romance blog, The Galaxy Express.

Though she’s neither an award-winning nor bestselling author (thank you for not judging!), her stories provide quality entertainment by way of fantastical worlds, action-adventure, and larger-than-life characters who fall in love while battling evils such as classist jerks, corporate greed, the patriarchy, and corrupt politicians.

Website: heathermassey.com

Twitter: thgalaxyexpress

Blog: The Galaxy Express (Note: this blog has been retired, but it’s still a great resource of all things SFR.)

Jan 7 2015

One Hundred Years Hence 1880s Steam Style

I’ve been saving this little group of late Victorian era trade cards to share with you for the new year – they certainly had a lot of faith in steam power!

There was a whole group of these cards up on eBay last year (like the pair above) but I only captured two of them – spirited bidding went beyond my hard limit on the others. I’ll fill out today’s Wednesday Whimsy post with a couple of cards from the same general time, where baking soda was the propulsion! But first a French post card with a charming air taxi of the future (no idea what vintage the postcard may be)…

Aug 6 2014

She Went to Sea In A Sea Shell 1800s Cards

Continuing on with my new Wednesday Whimsy posts, here is a charming set of three Victorian trade cards that I thought had sort of an almost-steampunk feel – the ladies are so intrepid, setting out across the ocean in a shell or a bowl or on a banjo! (Yes, I do realize that other than binoculars there aren’t any specific steampunk elements.)

These are from a shoe and shoe repair store, “Repairing neatly done.”

I also liked that one lady brought along her cat and her dog, and a good book to read! I’d be too nervous to read, out there in the middle of the ocean, in a glass bowl so I admire her fortitude.

And then the third card in the series:

I also found the charming trade card below, which carries on the ladies at sea theme in a somewhat more alarming manner – three undersea bathing beauties have been caught in a net. This one is from a Parisian corset and lingerie maker!

Jul 3 2014

More Sizzling Steampunk for Summer

Over at USA Today Happily Ever After blog, I’m interviewing more steampunk authors for the SciFi Encounters column. I started with Susan Kaye Quinn, whose “bollypunk” novel Third Daughter really grabbed my attention and kept me reading nonstop. It’s the first part of a trilogy, although fully satisfying in its own right, so now I can’t wait for the next book. And then my friend PJ Schnyder turned me on to the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, a series by Pip Ballentine and Tee Morris. Dawn’s Early Light was the most recent releases in that series. So I had extra fun interviewing Pip and Tee. I LOVE the look of steampunk. I wish there were more and better movies featuring this genre. I let Pip and Tee do the movie-recommending for the SciFi column but before they weighed in with “Van Helsing”, I was thinking about “The Three Musketeers” of 2011, which featured “gearpunk” dirigibles built to DaVinci’s airship blueprints, stolen by Cardinal Richelieu’s agents of course. The tagline for the movie is “Every legend has a new beginning.” I enjoyed parts of that movie although I had to begin by disassociating it in my head from the actual Three Musketeers.

I’ve read and reread the novel by Alexandre Dumas any number of times and for me the definitive movie is always going to be the 1970’s version filmed by Richard Lester, with a screenplay by George MacDonald Fraser. I’m quite eager to see the latest BBC TV series based on the book, however. I’d been reading the weekly reviews at Den of Geek in England and was so jealous we couldn’t watch the show over here. But now BBC America is running the show. (Alas, opposite apocalyptic series “The Last Ship” but I’ll catch up on All The Things at some point.) I’m still assembling components for my costume for the steampunk dinner party at the Romance Writers of America conference later this month. Here are my two latest acquisitions, a cannon ring and COOL goggles:

Jun 19 2014

Steampunk Anyone?

Over at the USA Today Happily Ever After blog I’m interviewing two wonderful steampunk authors – Gail Carriger of The Parasol Protectorate series and Cindy Spencer Pape of The Gaslight Chronicles.

In fact, Cindy was the person who first got me interested in steampunk, when we met as Carina Press authors several years ago. She has a wonderful dog in her books, named George and she was kind enough to send me the magnet featuring him, which has stayed on my refrigerator for several years now (even though I’m a cat person LOL).

I thoroughly enjoyed the Gail Carriger series as well and especially the trip to Egypt in the last book, Timeless.

I LOVE the look of steampunk – the jewelry especially. I’m going to have an opportunity to attend a steampunk-themed costume dinner at the Romance Writers of America national conference in July and I’m giving my imagination free rein as far as the outfit and the accessories.

I’m sure there are many great sources for finding cool steampunk items to admire but one I regularly follow on Facebook and Twitter is Steampunk Tendencies. There are vehicles, cosplay, art…think Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, as if the realities they wrote about had become the actual world, using steam power, instead of going down the path of technology we did follow. The 1964 movie “First Men In The Moon” is a good example of how Mr. Wells thought the future might be. Disney’s 1954 version of Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” was another movie that attempted to bring the look and feel of that alternate technology to life, although I think mostly people remember Kirk Douglas fighting off the giant octopus more than anything else!