Greetings! Welcome to the web blog of Her Majesty’s Research Airship Flamel, a depository of arcane bits of information about history, Victoriana, 19th century science, and steampunk.
I began this blog in June, 2014 as I was finishing up my first novel To Rule the Skies, a steampunk adventure novel. The hero of the story is Professor Nicodemus Boffin, who commands Her Majesty’s Research Airship Flamel on a voyage of scientific discovery, mystery, and adventure.
In the process of writing and researching the book, I would come across a myriad of interesting facts, historical coincidences, and other bits of information that I thought too good not to share. So started this blog.
Who am I? I am a scientist, a chemist by training, who has always been interested in writing, although until recently this has been exclusively technical and non-fiction writing. One day back around the summer of 2012, I wrote the start of a story, a one-page teaser about a Victorian scientist and his airship being waylaid by airpirates. I showed it to my two then teenaged sons and asked them if they wanted to see what came next. Happily they did, and my first beta readers gave me the confidence I needed to continue writing.
A few months later, NaNoWriMo rolled around, and I took my 12,000-word manuscript and ran with it. At the end of November, my word count was nearing 65,000, and more importantly I had reached the end of the story as I had envisioned it. After a lot of editing, my debut novel was finished and published in September 2014. To Rule the Skies is available as an ebook and in paperback.
In May 2017, I launched my second novel, a prequel to To Rule the Skies titled The Secret Notebook of Michael Faraday. This book relates some of Nicodemus Boffin’s history as well as telling the story of a strange mineral specimen that Professor Faraday (Boffin’s mentor) receives to analyze, and what happens when the curious stone falls into the wrong hands.
I’ve just published the third book in the series, Mr. Darwin’s Dragon, which takes place in the interim between my first two books, and features Charles Darwin pondering the question of why cultures all over the world have stories of dragons.
While this would be the conclusion of the traditional trilogy, I can guarantee there will be at least one more book in the Airship Flamel Adventures series.
To keep tabs on what I’m up to, you can friend me on Facebook at Airship Flamel and follow me on Twitter @AirshipFlamel.
I can be contacted by email at michaeltierney@airshipflamel.com
Happy Reading!
Michael Tierney
Airship Flamel 
Love your story! How fantastic that your sons encourage your interest and pursuits.
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Quite fascinating:)
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Good day, sir! There are many unmedicated lunatics running loose on the internet. I can only offer my word that I am not one of them, although as a fellow independent author, I may qualify to a degree. In any case, amazon recommended your book while I was looking up another, and I thought I would make you an offer that could be of some benefit. Please, at your convenience, visit me at http://steampunkjack.weebly.com, my writers’ group at http://thesteampunkempire.com/group/scribblers-den, and the Punk Fiction Writers Guild at http://punkfiction.weebly.com.
I will not contact you again (though I do plan to buy your very intriguing book), but if you find anything at those sites that piques your interest, there are instructions on how to contact me, and I invite you to do so.
Wishing you good health, great success, and a long life, I remain your humble servant,
~ Jack “Blimprider” Tyler
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Hi Michael,
My site recently received a Sunshine Blogger Award, which is a bit like a chain letter. I look at it as a chance to shout out some bloggers I appreciate, and you are one of them. If you aren’t familiar with the “award” you are supposed to acknowledge on your own site and answer some questions, but no one enforces anything. You can ignore it altogether if you want to.
In fact, you might not even know you’ve been nominated, unless you follow the blogger who nominated you. That’s why I’m giving you a heads-up. On March 12 and 15, I will be saying some nice things about your site, and more particularly your novels, on A Writing Life. You can participate or not; its completely up to you. It is just that I’ve enjoyed your work and this gives me a chance to say so.
Syd Logsdon
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