Monthly Archives: June 2021

29Jun/21

Title Spotlight: Steam Patriots #1

Grab your musket, powder your wig, and oil your robot-horse. Silverline is on the march in the Steampunk world of Steam Patriots. That’s right, your favorite indy press has just released a hot and very steamy take on the landmark war between The Thirteen Colonies and The British Empire. It’s history but way cooler than it actually was!

Steam Patriots #1 just finished its Kickstarter campaign and will be available for purchase through Indy Planet soon. Stay tuned so that you don’t miss out!

Steam Patriots follows a young lad by the name of Felix Ward in Colonial America right as the War of Independence kicks off. Like every other American boy, Felix has his share of family drama. Only this family drama pits him in the center of the conflict that’s about to dominate the continent.

Felix finds himself at odds with his father over their involvement in the war. Perhaps unfortunately for both Felix and his father, a family friend of theirs is Benjamin Franklin. Only instead of just parlaying with the French Republic as he does in our timeline, Ben Franklin is also developing some pretty high-end weapons for the colonies.



In a world where the British Empire can mobilize by air, and Paul Revere makes his ride on a mechanized horse, the power of this weapon is going to be something, unlike anything we’ve seen before. That means that the gaze of the British Empire now rests on Felix and his Father.

In the first issue, Felix finds himself elevated to an unsuspecting level of importance. He has the special ability to recall precise details perfectly. When technology and schematics play heavily into each nation’s win conditions, Felix’s gift because priceless

We meet a wide array of different characters from history as Felix begins his journey to deliver the information stored in his head. Character’s whose fates are not already written in textbooks as this is not the American Revolution we were taught in school.


Steam Patriots is the brainchild of Co-creators Scott Wakefield (Left) and Rory Boyle (Right). Two U.S. coast guard veterans with a wide variety of historical costume jackets. This is the first comic and it is one knock-out punch of a debut. Be on the look for the rest of Steam Patriots and the stories coming from these lads in the future.

Colors and Letters are courtesy of Dan Hosek (Center). Dan worked in Marvel’s editorial department in the mid-’90s. There he fell in love with the collaborative aspect of comic making. If you’re a long-time comic reader, you’ve probably read something that received notes from him. Dan will be picking up more responsibilities on Steam Patriots as the series goes on, and we look forward to what all he decides to share with the Silverline family!

Illustration was provided by David Mims. Some of his other credits include All Hallow’s Eve and Neotheric.

What’s a Macaroni, anyway?

22Jun/21

Throwback: Silverline Live Issue #1

Hey there Silverline Family!

As we talked about at the start of the month, we’re now doing something a little different with the blog schedule. Something new, something old. Fresher content, and an exploration of what throwbacks we have sitting in our back issue box.

This week we’re throwing back to the start of our live show series. Our weekly live casts are the best way to stay up to date on Silverline news, get to know our creators or even let the creators get to know you. We also just upped our schedule to three shows a week. The first Tuesday show goes live tonight at 8 PST!

Be sure to swing by and pitch your idea of what the show should be called. If we like, your idea might just be the official name for this new show.

In the meantime, please enjoy Silverline Live Issue #1.

16Jun/21

Craft: Tim T.K. – History and Question to ask Yourself

Howdy and happy Wednesday Silverline Family! No, your notifications did not glitch out on you, this one is posted a day late. Turns out hard drive crashes are not great for maintaining digital content scheduling. Barring anymore catastrophic tech errors, this is the new craft post this week. I managed to get a hold of the writing/creator of upcoming Action-Espinoge thriller Wolf Hunter and the associate editor at Silverline. . . Me . . . It’s me. After over a year of craft entries from Silverline creators all around the world, I figured I’d put my two cents in.


History and Questions to Ask Yourself

Writing something set in real history poses a unique set of challenges. Those challenges can seem especially daunting if the setting is a period that is well documented. There’s a lot of details that are known hard facts. History enthusiasts also try to know as many of these facts as they can in regards to their favorite periods. It’s part of the fun, I’m one of those people too. The issue comes in balancing a story of fiction rooted in that history. To make a story that I wanted to write both as a spy nerd and as a history buff, I have to ask myself a lot of questions. These questions guided me to break the facts and rules in the right way.

I’m not saying you need to sell the part of the story of fiction as 100% truth, you just need to do enough to allow the reader to join with you in asking “What if?”

Is this something you need to worry about? Well, yes but maybe for not the reasons you’d think. Armchair historians aren’t going to nitpick your story simply because you took liberties. They’re going to nitpick it because the story is bad and they lost interest. The elements of your story that are fiction can’t just exist outside the history the makes up the rest of the setting.

To develop good fiction, I try to develop good characters. Good characters have history. Your characters are living breathing people in your story. They would have also impacted or be impacted by the world outside the story.

To develop the fiction in Wolf Hunter, I had to ask a series of questions to understand who my characters are. I needed to know who they were in the world during World War 2.

In a war story, that might seem a bit straightforward. What factions (if any) do they have allegiance to and what is their role in the war? But I still had to look at what politics looked like before the war. Who would go where to do what? How did people end up where they are now and thinking the way they do? What events would impact their philosophy? What were the major schools of thought in the world during this period?

Understanding the facts of history helps you skirt around them in just the right way, finding the way you need to write the story. Giving yourself the perimeter of operating within the facts, besides where you have broken them, also adds another dimension to the story and will force you to get very creative and smart with your writing and editing. In addition, it adds another layer of interest for the reader who likes historical accuracy in their fiction.

What I did for Wolf Hunter, to find the right place to skirt around the facts, is look for areas of that era that were less documented than others. I challenged myself to match up the details as much as I could to the actual records, but for these core conflicts it exists in an area where I can ask myself “What if my characters existed here?” and hope the reader asks the same question.

Then I researched the other events related to this central event that were better documented as well as other notable dates that same year. This created the second challenge, weaving the elements that were my creation into a life that existed within these events. It may seem like a lot to dig into, but even just a brief overview will give you a place to start distilling down your character’s essence.

08Jun/21

New Silverline Blog Schedule

Howdy Silverline Family!

Welcome back to the blog! You might have noticed last month was a little void of content. Unfortunately, due to increased demands on my schedule and prioritizing some other new exciting content *wink wink*, the blog slipped through the cracks and had to be placed on the back burner.

That’s changing now! Today! The very second you’re reading this! Whatever second that is!

We’re updating the schedule to allow for more time to be spent on the quality of each post as well as make use of our growing back-catalog of video content. It’s starting to get dusty in the back corners of our youtube channel, so we thought we’d open them back up. Get some airflow in there.

What this means going forward is that every other week, starting next week will be fresh, spanking, new content. On the off-weeks, we’ll be going through the back issues to find some of our favorite throwbacks to share with you. So, if you’re new to Silverline and haven’t experienced some of our older shows or content, it should be coming to your feed soon.

This new schedule will give us extra time to reach out to our creators across the continents and produce some really great quality Craft entries, Creator and Title spotlights, and blog One-Shots.

Our first piece of new content will be Craft returning next week. Be sure to check it out! If you’re hankering for a Silverline throwback from Year 1, be sure to check this feed in two weeks.

I hope you can forgive the lack of content last month and will stick with us as we begin working with this new schedule. Stay well, and Make Yours Silverline!