And the Winner of Seance in Sepia Is...

Congratulations to Carole Estby Dagg of Oregon! She has won a free copy of Seance in Sepia.

A big "thank you" to everyone who entered the drawing and wrote such thoughtful comments about Victoria Woodhull and the Free Love Movement of the 19th Century.

For those who are still interested in winning a free copy of Seance in Sepia, Goodreads will also be giving away a book, starting tomorrow, February 16 and ending March 1. Check the sidebar here for more information on how to enter.

The Strange World of Spirit Photography

Read more about Seance in Sepia here.

In my newest Victorian mystery novel, Séance in Sepia, I invite the reader to enter the strange world of spirit photography. This was a very real phenomenon that flourished during the second half of the Nineteenth Century and well into the early Twentieth.

The first commercial spirit photographer set up shop in Boston in the early 1860's. His name was William Mumler and his photographs were an instant sensation. He soon moved to New York to further his reputation and success. The massive loss of life during the Civil War spurred interest in making contact with the departed. Séances were more than a popular parlor entertainment. A large percentage of the population sincerely believed they could contact spirits of deceased loved ones using the services of a medium.

Mumler began to conduct séances in his photographic studio and, because the technology represented by the new invention of photography, his spirit photographs had added credibility.  Technology was scientific, and science couldn't lie, right? 

His most famous sitter was the recently widowed Mary Todd Lincoln whose portrait seems to show a spectral Abraham Lincoln standing behind her. There were doubters, of course. P.T. Barnum and others charged Mumler with fraud, claiming that some of his ghost images belonged to living persons. 

The May 8th, 1869, issue of Harper's Weekly Magazine reported, "If there is a trick in Mr. Mumler's process it has certainly not been detected as yet. To all appearances spiritual photography rests just where the rappings and table-turnings have rested for some years. Those who believe in it at all will respect no opposing arguments, and disbelievers will reject every favorable hypothesis or explanation. " 

More examples of Hope's spirit photos
can be viewed at How to be a Retronaut.

Mumler was acquitted, but his reputation was damaged by the charges. Spirit photography's most famous proponent was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. In 1925, he wrote "The Case for Spirit Photography." 

He also defended a contemporary spirit photographer of his named William Hope. Some of Hope's photos inspired my descriptions of spirit photographs in Seance in Sepia.

Read the first two chapters of Séance in Sepia by clicking here.

Available from Amazon.com.

What is a "Steampunk-Adjacent" Novel?

I have been involved in the burgeoning Steampunk movement for the past three years and when friends find out I have a newly released book, they immediately ask if it is a Steampunk novel.  I have to reluctantly sigh and say, “No, but I consider it to be ‘Steampunk adjacent.’”

Now some of you are undoubtedly asking right now, “What the heck is a Steampunk novel?” A shorthand answer is: Victorian science fiction. At least, that is the seminal idea that inspired the group and still sparks the fiction carrying this label.  Another interesting and more descriptive phrase is a Neo-Victorian Retro-Futurist Techno-Fantasy, but that is a lot hyphens to cope with. 

Buy it on Amazon

While Steampunk novels all tend to have a science fiction or fantasy element attached, I would like to make the case that the premise of SÉANCE IN SEPIA could and should be considered Steampunk, or at least a cousin of the genre, because its focus is spirit photography which represents, at its heart, the merging of two major obsessions of the Victorian era:  technology and the occult. 

With these two elements present in the novel, its sensibilities are definitely Steampunk in nature. However, since none of my novel is fantasy—all elements really happened or could have taken place—it probably does not qualify for the Steampunk moniker. Thus, I rely on calling my story “Steampunk adjacent.”

The novel begins in the present day with a woman named Flynn buying an old photograph at an estate sale. She takes it to an antique dealer who tells her he thinks it might be a “spirit photograph.” During the heyday of séances in the last half of the Nineteenth Century, some photographers claimed they could photograph the departed during a seance.

Flynn starts researching the history of the photo and learns that the three people pictured were involved in a notorious Chicago murder trial in 1875 that the press dubbed the “Free Love Murders.”  A young architect was accused of murdering his wife and his best friend in a love triangle gone very wrong.

Real life feminist, Free Love advocate, and practicing spiritualist, Victoria Woodhull, soon gets involved in the case when the husband asks her to conduct a séance to discover how his wife and friend really died.  Victoria quickly finds herself involved in a web of intrigue that will take much more than a séance to resolve and by the conclusion, both Victoria and Flynn find their views on love and life have changed.

If I have piqued your interest in Steampunk fiction, or better yet, Steampunk Adjacent fiction, you are invited to read the first two chapters of SÉANCE IN SEPIA found on my website: www.MichelleBlack.com

The Steampunk Heart of Victorian Spirit Photography

The cover image for SÉANCE IN SEPIA 

Spirit photography embodies the ultimate Steampunk conceit: it represents the nexus of two of the biggest Victorian obsessions--technology and the occult.


What was spirit photography? 


The first commercial spirit photographer set up shop in Boston in the early 1860's. His name was William Mumler and his photographs were an instant sensation. He soon moved to New York to further his reputation and success. The massive loss of life during the Civil War spurred interest in making contact with the departed. Séances were more than a popular parlor entertainment. A large percentage of the population sincerely believed they could contact spirits of deceased loved ones using the services of a medium.

Mumler began to conduct séances in his photographic studio and, because the technology represented by the new invention of photography, his spirit photographs had added credibility.  Technology was scientific and science couldn't lie, right? 


His most famous sitter was the recently widowed Mary Todd Lincoln whose portrait seems to show a spectral Abraham Lincoln standing behind her.

Harper's couldn't resist lampooning the Mumler trial in the cartoon

There were doubters, of course. P.T. Barnum and others charged Mumler with fraud, claiming that some of his ghost images belonged to living persons. The May 8th, 1869, issue of Harper's Weekly Magazine reported, "If there is a trick in Mr. Mumler's process it has certainly not been detected as yet. To all appearances spiritual photography rests just where the rappings  and table-turnings have rested for some years. Those who believe in it at all will respect no opposing arguments, and disbelievers will reject every favorable hypothesis or explanation. " 

Mumler was acquitted, but his reputation was damaged by the charges. Spirit photography's most famous proponent was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. In 1925, he wrote "The Case for Spirit Photography." 


A fascinating website is available from avid spirit photography collectors, Jack and Beverly of the BrightBytes Studio. They not only own an impressive collection of original spirit photographs, but offer a wealth of information and links to other sites on the subject.

In 2005, the Metropolitan Museum of Art created an exhibit on the subject of Spirit Photography.  A beautiful coffee table-sized book called "The Perfect Medium" was produced from the exhibition and is still available on Amazon.


My forthcoming novel, SÉANCE IN SEPIA, is a Victorian mystery delving into the world of spirit photography. Real life feminist Victoria Woodhull is featured as the protagonist in that, before she was the first female presidential candidate and the foremost proponent of Free Love and other radical causes, she was a spiritualist and even served as the president of the American Association of Spiritualists in the mid-1870's. (for more information on Victoria, please see my previous post here.)

Happy Birthday, Victoria Woodhull!

On this day in 1838, a woman was born who would change American history forever--Victoria C. Woodhull.  She would become the first woman to run for the U.S. presidency, but that is only one in a long list of "firsts" for this remarkable woman.


Born into poverty in Ohio and given little formal education, she married at fourteen and gave birth a year later to a handicapped son. Her new husband proved to be an alcoholic, incapable of supporting her, so she was forced at the tender age of fifteen to become the primary breadwinner for herself, her child, and even her husband, whenever he managed to be on the scene.


She supported herself as a spiritualist--a popular and lucrative career for a woman in the mid-Nineteenth Century when women's options were few.  Just after the Civil War, she met her future husband, James Blood, in St. Louis.  They fell madly in love, divorced their current spouses and quickly married.


Blood was an intellectual and a social radical. He tutored Victoria in all manner of political discourse of the day and recognized not only her astonishing intellect, but her amazing gift for oratory.  They moved to New York and together with Victoria's younger sister, Tennessee Claflin,  started a radical newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly.  They opened the first women's brokerage house on Wall Street.


Victoria began speaking out on women's issues, particularly suffrage, and was the first to address the Judiciary Committee of Congress on the issue of whether women were "persons" within the meaning of the newly passed Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the constitution. (A topic still inciting controversy to this very day.) She became famous--some would say, notorious-- for her advocacy of the notion of Free Love.  She knew through her own hard experiences in life what many women's rights advocates of her time did not: that women needed much more than the vote to achieve a fair and equal place in American society.  They needed a full bank of rights--liberalized divorce laws, fair property rights, in short--equal protection under all the laws.

Available on Amazon

This is just a short introduction to the life of this amazing woman.  I found her so fascinating, I included her as a character in my next novel, Séance in Sepia (coming in October 2011).  To learn more about Victoria, there are several good biographies available.  My favorite is: Notorious Victoria, by Mary Gabriel.


A comprehensive website to visit is http://www.victoria-woodhull.com/

Séance in Sepia

I have a new novel to announce:  Séance in Sepia is scheduled to be published in hard cover by Five Star Mysteries in October 2011.

The story begins in the present day when a woman buys an antique "spirit photograph" at an estate sale.  She doesn't know anything about spirit photography--all the rage in Victorian America--but when she puts the picture up for auction on Ebay and the bidding soars over a thousand dollars, she realizes she must find out more.

She soon learns that the three people pictured in the photo were the focus of a notorious murder case that rocked Chicago in 1875.  I will share more in the coming months but know that the working subtitle has always been:  Victoria Woodhull and the Free Love Murders.