“Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate” Now Available in Chinese!


So, a while back I sold the Simplified Chinese translation rights for my novella “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate”–a deal that basically fell in my lap, and which I promptly put out of my head, as I was under the impression that it would be six months before the translation was ready. As it turns out, translating a short thing is much less arduous than translating a long thing.
Fact: Seeing your work in a language that you can’t even remotely comprehend–and realizing that there are now readers for whom this translation is *the* version of your story–will make you sort of woozy. Right now there are readers whose notions of Utah, Mormonism, and the American Civil War are being shaped by the misadventure of a drunk, a veterinarian, and a bunch of wind-up soldiers. I feel like I maybe owe someone an apology.
[If you happen to read Chinese and have *any idea* what the character in the top left of the textbox is, I’d love to know. It’s kinda been driving me bonkers.]
One business tip: I gave this novella an obtuse title (“Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate”) and beautiful, if somewhat foreboding and cryptic, cover art (see the lil Amazon thumbnail below?).

The Chinese publisher opted to re-title the work “Clockwork Dolls” and put a robo-sex scene on the cover (FYI, this art was originally an interior illustration from the US edition of the ebook). This, friends, is the difference between understanding book marketing, and being totally clueless about book marketing.
Here’s Google’s translation of the Chinese description of my book:

The story takes place in 1874 in Utah, tells the story of a group of civil war was abandoned clockwork dolls soldiers, in alcoholism veterans Mladic Tucker help efforts to integrate into the story of the human society. Mladic teach horseshoe nails, climb the ladder, dancing, soups, and even teach them like human sex. Clockwork dolls is a robot, but as much as possible to a real sense of human. In order to achieve this desire, they did seem absurd and ridiculous, but in reality moving, and even make you feel unexpected sadness.
This is a steampunk novel, although it occurs in the virtual world, but focus on the principle of equality of human society. Clockwork dolls, former Confederate veterans, the American Civil War, sex, alcohol, humor, volleyball and racism and other elements blend together, create a dapper novella.

I don’t recall any volleyball in my story, but I very much like the notion that I’ve created a dapper novella.
In related news, I’ll be doing a bunch of panels and workshops at the Up in the Aether steampunk convention in Dearborn, MI over Memorial Day weekend; if you make it out, totally give me a heads-up so we can high-five or something!