The Greek muse of heroic poetry is Calliope (kuh-LYE-o-pee). ‘Heroic poetry’ includes story-telling, like those stories that Homer fellow told.

Calliope is also the name of a musical instrument which blows steam through large whistles, such as you might have heard from a circus decades ago. It looks like an organ and gives a happy and very loud sound.

Finally, it’s also the name of a WW II rocket weapon – tubes for rockets mounted on a Sherman tank, which I guess resembled a circus calliope.

Steam, music, poetry – along with the whirring of gears and clanking of crankshafts! Because when steam is too dangerous, springs and gears deliver the power!

Our Calliope’s Gears is a steam-powered heroic story-telling machine, with Lindsay Petersen’s Kate Thomason exploring the era of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and the Orient Express. Lindsay Peet’s Jaf Daskal works his schemes in a different universe with Victorian and future technologies and maybe a hint of magic.

Kate and Jaf are both trying to get by, to get better, and to get satisfaction.

Small and clever and non-threatening, orphan Jaf Daskal is everybody’s friend, but nobody’s mate. When he finds his first job with a local mob boss and love suddenly walks into his life he reckons he’s got this adult thing nailed — even though his family is being torn apart because Jaf’s boss suspects his brother of stealing.

Jaf compartmentalizes his worlds, and when his new family – the syndicate – gets involved in politics he’s happy to go out, shaping opinions as needed. Youth and virility make for bad judgment and sure enough he steps over the line and ends up on the run from scary people.

Realizing he’s put himself and his first love at risk he races home to save her, the one person he knows he can count on, from the brutal lesson his betters mean to teach him.

When H. G. Wells’ time machine snatches Kate Thomason from and eight-handed massage in twenty-ninety-seven to his Victorian England bedroom, the inventor and author has no idea of the woman he’s turning loose on his stodgy friends and society.

Rescued from a loveless life, Kate determines she must find the tall, witty kilted man who woos her by a singing brook and beds her on downy heather in her dreams. Surely in this new world of tempting pleasures and hidden peril, she would recognize her dream lover when they meet.

Searching for her ideal man takes her down many sensual trails, to many erotic dead-ends, but she perseveres and learns, relying on the wisdom of her heart to guide her truly. She joins Wells’ expedition to Scotland hunting for the Loch Ness Monster, trusting that somehow true love will bring her and her kilted lover together.

A romantic steampunk adventure like no other, with humor and erotic detours. Join Kate, Wells, Nicola Tesla, a disgraced poet, a loudmouth American newspaperman, a master of disguise, a pair of French scientists, a stowaway and their exasperating guide on Jules Verne’s Nautilus submarine as they try to chase down the greatest mystery of their day – and satisfy a woman’s heart.