Clockwork Tea

In the mid-1800s, the first corporate spy chooses a dark, clockwork path to cope with his lonely deception.

My dark retelling of Pinnochio, “Clockwork Tea,” was released in 2021 in World Weaver Press’s anthology Clockwork, Curses and Coal: Steampunk and Gaslamp Fairy Tales, edited by Rhonda Parrish. Drawing on historical references of Robert Fortune’s corporate espionage to steal the secrets of tea from China, my story exaggerates some of the dark repercussions of imperialism.