I excitedly informed my wife this week that I had been invited to attend the Haworth Steampunk Weekend, which kicks off in the home of the Brontes tonight.

Her first response was: “Great!”

Her second response was: “Erm, you don’t have to dress up, do you?”

She was obviously thinking – as are you, dear reader, after recalling a previous column – of my rather sad attempt to dress up for Halloween, which involved wrapping two rolls of Andrex around my body and venturing out into the street dressed as an Egyptian mummy. People are still picking up wads of soaked tissue paper from their drives, I understand.

But no, I am not required to dress up, though if you are venturing into Haworth this weekend you will see lots of people who are. What is this “steampunk” of which I speak?

Well, it’s a fashion and creative movement that imagines the Victorian era but filtered through a science-fictiony lens. Think the goth scene, but with less black and more brown and lots more clockwork cogs.

The term steampunk was actually coined in the 1980s after a slew of novels started coming out which reimagined the Victorian era – think of the adventure and science fiction stories of the likes of HG Wells and Jules Verne, but with advanced (often steam-powered) technology.

From the literary movement grew the dressing-up and crafting side of things, and now people sell all kinds of steampunky gadgets and jewellery on the internet, and you’ll probably find a lot of them in Haworth this weekend.

So if I’m not dressing up, what am I doing there? Well, in my other life when I’m not slavishly bending over a keyboard bringing the readers of Bradford the finest in half-formed opinions, I can be found slavishly bending over a keyboard at home spinning even more fictional yarns.

One of these is out now, and lo and behold it is indeed a steampunk novel. You knew there was going to be a reason the organisers of the Haworth Steampunk Weekend had asked me to come along, didn’t you?

If you’re in the region of Haworth and wanted to come and say hello, I’ll be sitting somewhere in the Community Centre with a pile of my books, should they arrive from the publishers in time.

You’ll be able to spot me because I’ll probably be the only person not wearing a pair of breeches, a top hat and a pair of brass goggles with cogs stuck to them.

In fact, now that I think about it, I’m going to look somewhat out of place in my ordinary clothes.

Given that my steampunk book has airships and clockwork girls as you’d expect, but also Egyptian mummies... wonder if I can get away with the toilet rolls again..?