This site contains a serialized record of historical fiction of the near-great adventurers of Chief Inspector Erasmus L. Drake and Dr. "Sparky" L. McTrowell. To read their exploits from the beginning in chronological order, click here.
A new entry for The Adventures of Drake and McTrowell is provided each Monday (or so). The latest few entries are provided on this page in reverse chronological order. If you need to read further back than that, see the links below.
It seems like we barely get our “steampunk” attire clean and pressed before we need it again. The weekend after Wild West Fest, we were back in our D&McT duds for the local convention, Gaslight Gathering III. We stopped for a quick photo op under one of the many rose arbors that dot the grounds of the Town & Country Hotel.
It was hot…hot like a western, silver mining ghost town. Oh wait, it WAS a Western, silver mining ghost town. Calico to be precise. We popped up early on a Saturday morning to head out toward Barstow for the inaugural Wild West Fest at the Calico Ghost Town.
On the list of San Diego coolness is the Poway Midland Railroad in Old Poway Park. It’s like honey for steampunk bees. So on a warm, sunny weekend day, we put on our finery and headed east for a choo choo train ride! Who’s still five years old, huh?
If you’ve been following us on Facebook or attending any of our panels at conventions lately, you know that we’ve been talking about Krypton Radio for a few months now. Well, folks, this is the big announcement!
We’ll be interviewed on Event Horizon, Krypton’s on-air science fiction, fantasy and technology discussion panel on Saturday, May 18th at 5:00 PM PDT (8:00 PM EDT). The show repeats that same night at 9:00 PM PDT (midnight EDT) immediately following DJ Willow Leafstorm’s Steam Powered Cabaret, and again on Sunday, May 19th at 4:00 PM PDT (7:00 PM EDT).
But wait, there’s more! The Drake & McTrowell radio show premieres on Monday, May 20th at 3:00 AM PDT (6:00 AM EDT)! This means that our friends across the pond will hear it first (we’re talking to you Ickenham and Linköping). For those of you who keep more civilized hours, tune in at 11:00 AM PDT (2:00 PM EDT) that same day or 5:00 PM PDT (8:00 EDT) on Thursday, May 23rd. Coolest birthday present I ever got…except from Drake who purveys birthday gifts like no one else.
A new show will run in these same time slots for nine weeks until we’ve covered all of “London, Where it All Began.”
Perhaps you’re asking yourself, “Self, why should I tune in?” It will be egoboo for some local San Diego steampunks who lent their voice talents to our little enterprise (and a certain professor from Brunel). But mostly you should listen because it sounds like this!
Click the controls below to listen to the five and a half minute teaser: For details on Krypton Radio shows and air times, see their table of show times.
“I won’t come any faster, no matter how loud you pound.” Lieutenant Collins grabbed the shirt off his bed and shuffled to the door in his stocking feet. He shrugged into it as he progressed across his quarters, wondering what a man had to do to get a little peace with his breakfast. His head was just popping out the neck of the shirt as he opened the door. Damn! He should have recognized that the sharpness of the knocking meant his unexpected visitor was a woman and an unwelcome one at that. “Morning, Henrietta.” He couldn’t bring himself to say, “Good.” He was sure he could predict at least two thirds of the conversation he was about to have. And he was quite certain his breakfast would be stone cold and inedible before it was over. ... Click here to read the entire entry within the cyberserialized story ...
In near darkness, their circle of voices was gathered around the damaged crates. Erasmus introduced the tall shadow next to him as Edwin Llewellyn, the man that had saved him from living on the streets of London. The Chief Inspector continued by filling in the details of their escapade while he lit a nearby oil lamp. It illuminated the ring of amiable compatriots. Yin slipped off the apparatus over her eyes, squinting and blinking in the changed illumination. Erasmus continued his narrative with the convoluted set of stories that they had heard from their kidnappers, and the fact that they hadn’t believed any of it. He left out that he didn’t believe Edwin’s tale either, a fact that he planned to resolve the next time he could have a private conversation with his surrogate father. He finished with the detail that the Hawaiian named Keō was in restraints in one of the cabins. ... Click here to read the entire entry within the cyberserialized story ...
As soon as the rest of the company was out of sight, Fox pointed silently at an open wood grating in the main deck just a few yards ahead of them with a faint glow emanating from it. They approached silently and looked down. They could just barely discern the outlines of stacks of crates below them on the cargo deck. Wordlessly, they crouched down, grabbed the handles on the grating, and pulled as smoothly as they could manage. It was fortunate that no one else was about because the hinges were not well maintained, a fact that didn’t surprise Fox given what Corporal Ickenham had said about smugglers. It had been the sergeant’s experience that sailors of such low moral standing lacked proper respect for their vessels that was consistent with their lack of respect for the laws of civilized society. ... Click here to read the entire entry within the cyberserialized story ...
The mess hall was a fairly small and crowded room with a long table and benches with just enough space for walking single-file around it. These fixtures were fashioned of thick planks that had been smoothed by use. The table had been oiled some time in the recent past and washed down recently, but Erasmus didn’t think of it as clean in any real sense of the word. ... Click here to read the entire entry within the cyberserialized story ...
Erasmus looked up at the airship from which they had just disembarked. The hour and weather made it a black distended silhouette against an angry grey sky. It was tethered to the mooring post only by its nose, allowing it to be buffeted around like a weather vane in the vigorous wind. Erasmus knew that it was being abandoned, and that the flight crew, if they could be legitimately called that, was not leaving the craft properly sheltered. For good reason, he could not help but think that this was a living analogy for how these men would treat Edwin and him. It was a discomforting thought. ... Click here to read the entire entry within the cyberserialized story ...
Needless to say, the commotion had the collateral effect of waking the slumbering commanding officer in the next room. Bleary-eyed and disheveled, he shambled through the adjoining door while wrestling a dressing gown over his nightshirt.
“What is the meaning of this?” he barked.
Sergeant Fox snapped to attention and executed a crisp salute. “Sergeant J.B. Fox, on Her Majesty’s mission, sir!”
Colonel Morris missed the mastery of the sergeant’s martial maneuver because he’d managed to open his eyes enough to see his aide de camp crumpled in a heap, smallish though it was, on the floor.
True confession: I lived in Tucson for a decade and only went to Old Tucson once, and that was the version that burned down in 1995. So everything about the old western set was entirely new to both Drake and me when we arrived for Wild Wild West Con.
As promised in “Oh Hats!,” we premiered our new Drake-and-McTrowell-before-they-were-D&McT costumes. Luckily, Lady Amethyst was there to capture us in our new finery. (Thanks, yet again, for making us look good.)
