Leigh Statham | Top Five Ways to Ruin Your Dress in a Steampunk Novel

5. Dance with a smithie

Known for their extremely large muscles and soul piercing eyes, smithies can be alluring, but also quite hazardous. Especially to the finest cloth from Paris. Their physique is largely due to all the time they spend working at the forge over smoldering fires with heavy tools. This also lends a general air of dirt and grime which can be hard to scrub out. Even when the boy wants to impress you, and will try his hardest, his hands will most likely still be black from gear oil and will leave incriminating evidence on your gown. Best to steer clear altogether.

4. Follow someone into a cellar

There can be many hidden wonders in a cellar. There can also be many creepy traps. Anyone you don't know very, very well who wants you to follow them into a cellar probably isn't worried about you ruining your dress. Plus, cobwebs, ew. Be very cautious.

3. Run away from home

It's generally best to run away from home in the middle of the night by cover of dark. This will prevent supervising adults from catching you and grounding you for all time and eternity or forcing you into a hasty marriage to an undesirable count. However, to avoid said count, you must also not bring a lamp, as strange lamps in the wilderness in the middle of the night tend to draw attention to themselves and give old ladies heart attacks. This will leave you stumbling around in the dark as your only option. If the way is clear, you will most likely run for fear of being caught, and you will also, most likely, fall and ruin your dress. If the way is under cover of bush and tree, you will then most likely catch your gown on said shrubberies and tear it anyway.

2. Get shot at

Guns have a very bad habit of leaving holes in things. Even if the said firearm does not kill you, but grazes your arm, it will make a nasty hole in your garment, thus leaving you bleeding and in a bad mood. This could also leave you with nothing suitable to wear to the next party without a fitting. Quite inconvenient.

1. 86 the sucker

Gowns, although elegant and quite flattering to the female figure, can also get
in the way of many necessary opportunities (see above). It is therefore advised
that you wad your gowns up and toss them in the rubbish heap. Dump them. Burn
them. Chuck them in the channel, feed them to the fowl, generally destroy them
in any way that seems fitting to your situation. This will, undoubtedly leave
you with a ruined dress, should you decide you need one after all. But we are
certain after trying a nice pair of aviation trousers, you will never go back to
the frothy, frilly ways of maidenhood again.

Giveaway

Readers, would you dare wear a dress in a steampunk novel? Leave a comment below to be entered to win an ebook copy of THE PERILOUS JOURNEY OF THE NOT-SO-INNOCUOUS GIRL. Three winners will be chosen; international entries allowed.

About THE PERILOUS JOURNEY OF THE NOT-SO-INNOCUOUS GIRL

Lady Marguerite lives a life most 17th century French girls can only dream of:
Money, designer dresses, suitors and a secure future. Except, she suspects her
heart may be falling for her best friend Claude, a common smithie in the
family's steam forge.

When Claude leaves for New France in search of a better life, Marguerite decides to follow him and test her suspicions of love. Only the trip proves to be more harrowing than she anticipated. Love, adventure and restitution await her, if she can survive the voyage.

About Leigh Statham

Leigh Statham was raised in the wilds of rural Idaho, but found her heart in New York City. She worked as a waitress, maid, artist, math teacher, nurse, web designer, art director, thirty-foot inflatable pig and mule wrangler before she settled down in the semi-quiet role of wife, mother and writer. She resides in North Carolina with her husband, four children, five chickens and two suspected serial killer cats. If the air is cool and the sun is just coming up over the horizon, you can find her running the streets of her small town, plotting her next novel with the sort of intensity that will one day get her hit by a car. Connect with the Author: Website |Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads