The Dissolution of Tal Stephens Preview
I am both a perfectionist and accepting that I will never be good enough. It's a unique space. So much about publishing, and about writing, involves both an acceptance that something is always already imperfect and having faith that it is good enough.
I cannot occupy that space and yet here I am.
Some of that is due to my wonderful friends and colleagues. Sinclair, I believe, is owed much of the credit for dragging me across the line. July was spent editing, crutch word editing (it really does make a difference!) and working on advertising and getting Tal up on Amazon (and maybe other retailers, if I can figure it out).
Pre-order is ready. (There should be a paperback option, I'm not sure why it's showing. I'm working on it. I'm imperfect) . Now I'm here to tell you why I love this book, why you maybe want to read it, and then offer Chapter One.
I love Tal's courage. I love playing in a world that is a steampunk Gilded Age, where I can merge my actual degree in 19th century America, and my love of future funky environments. I love Daniel's observations on what truth means and how lies are a currency. I love how Daniel is often born of bits of Garak from DS9 (and maybe some Dryden in LoA). I love Tal's sense of duty and compassion, and her refusal to let herself be knocked down. I love how her aunt insists on reproductive rights. I liked this little world where magic and science struggle for dominance and magic will not go quiet into the night. I love Ada's insistence that magic just is a misunderstood science and her brilliance and her faith in her own brilliance. I love Juliana's loyalty to her crafted family.
If you like Frankenstein or Edith Wharton, or A Marvellous Light, or a little bit of rebellious women, or if you like romance (I'd argue its a fantasy romance with a large suspense element (it's the Nora Roberts influence)), then you might like Tal.
Chapter One is linked below. Here is a preview:
New York City - 1897
The body on the morgue table could have easily been hers. A twenty-five year old woman, callused hands, ashy knees, and cropped hair. But this woman was a cold corpse whose scalp Tal was carefully stitching back together. Behind her, Remy St. Clair, doctor of forensic philosophy at Columbia, lectured grandly to a handful of other forensic philosophers about procedures that could have saved the woman’s life.
“With new aetheric technology increasing the power of spectrographs, we can more easily scan inside the skull to find cause of death,” he boasted, a near repeat of his latest paper that probably hadn’t been read by either of his interlocutors.
“A waste of money,” one scientist sneered.
“What further knowledge would that offer us to offset the cost?” another contested. They would be here all day, at this rate. Tal took a deep breath and adjusted the sheet covering the woman.
Katie Connolly, Tal’s magic told her, even if the intake form had not. The police had found her slumped on a stoop, dead, most likely from the blow to her head.
They had no reason to investigate the woman’s death, not without a bit of coin, but Tal couldn’t help it. Her uncanny always showed her someone’s life, a cinematograph that she never wanted to witness. Katie’s life had been a hard one. Too much work, too little pay. Her belly was full of corrupted brew, joints aching from a day of scrubbing floors, the promised wages not enough to secure a flop. She had missed the crack in the sidewalk and plowed into the corner of a building. The resulting pain and tacky blood had driven her into a doorway, into a sleep from which she would never wake.
If Tal were the praying sort, she might have offered something to the gods, but Katie’s memories would live in Tal forever and that would have to be prayer enough.
Keep reading by downloading a PDF of chapter one
The Dissolution of Tal Stephens will be out on September 29, 2026. It is currently available for pre-order on Amazon (and other places once I figure it out!)
