"potty licks"

"potty-licks" is a heartwarming comedy about greed and political ambition.
It is an adventure set in a different but recognisable world.
"If Grandad had heard of steampunk he wasn't telling anyone. All he knew was that he only had the third idea about electricity, but not the first two. Not the important ones. What it was and how to make it."
It is a tale told by a grandfather to his young granddaughter. The little girl doesn't get all the jokes or understand all the references but she is a good audience and she helps to shape Grandad's world and the people who inhabit it.
"Why aren't there any girls in the story, Grandad?"
"There is a girl," said Grandad, "but she doesn't appear until later."
"Then what is she doing right now."
A young man journeys to the capital where the future of the nation is to be debated.
"They say some are born to greatness, some acquire greatness and others have greatness thrust upon them. This may or may not be true. Walter dreamt of greatness to be sure but, like most of us, he was not born to it. His parents were poor, dishonest folk who stole what little the family possessed. Does this surprise you? That thieves and swindlers should be poor? Walter’s parents stole because they were poor although to be fair they were also lazy, uneducated and greedy."
Along the way Walter meets a troupe of travelling actors, a community of Meek - who are highly unlikely to inherit the earth, at least this time around - anarchists, monarchists, kleptocrats, democrats and would-be tyrants, all intent on gaining political power.
This book contains no gratuitous* sex, violence or bad language.
(*It is all essential for the plot.)