Beth Cato on "A Future of Towers Made"

Guest Blog by Beth Cato

​There is something fantastical and delightful about flying on high in an airship. Landing, though, isn't embodied with quite as much romance, though it is certainly a necessity. After all, what goes up must come down, and it's best for that to not result in a hydrogen fireball as with the Hindenburg.

My heroine Rapunzel has resolved this tricky dilemma in my story "A Future of Towers Made." She's figured out that rather than trying to land directly on the ground, an airship can moor to a mast--a structure that resembles a radio tower or an old oil derrick. This is how airships were docked in our own history, and a technology I've also used in my two steampunk novels series from Harper Voyager.

In my story, though, the technological innovation isn't the resolution of the story. Rapunzel has her own landing to worry about--she's snared in an abusive marriage, and her husband has claimed all the credit for her mooring mast design. She wants to reclaim the rights to her own creation, and find the means to start her life anew, too.

This is an unabashedly feminist fairy tale retelling. There is a lot of symbolism around towers, airships, and landings, but the real soul of the story is about finding your own means to take flight. It's about resilience, friendship, and hope, a story that may be inspired by history but bears a message that is current and necessary.

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Nebula-nominated Beth Cato is the author of the Clockwork Dagger duology and the Blood of Earth trilogy from Harper Voyager. She’s a Hanford, California native transplanted to the Arizona desert, where she lives with her husband, son, and requisite cats. Follow her at BethCato.com and on Twitter at @BethCato.