Introduction
When my Book View Café friends thought of the idea for The Shadow Conspiracy steampunk stories, at first, I thought, steampunk? Oh, that’s Jim and Tim’s thing. I much prefer talking Swiftian horses in wigs and aliens addicted to curiously strong mints. But in my other life, I’m an artist. There are a number of interestingly dramatic Victorian-era artists, and few more astonishing, tragic and strange than mad British fairy painter Richard Dadd. After reading Dadd’s letters and learning about him, I came to understand that the shadowy Byron, formerly a man but now something terribly different, might well take too strong an interest to handsome young artist Richard Dadd. And of course... fairies will not like these automata taking over the world — not one bit!