Coleen Kwan

In Darke London, my heroine, Nellie Barchester, is viciously assaulted by a hired thug. She survives the murder attempt, but is left with a mutilated hand. The hero, who is both a doctor and an inventor, constructs a glove of mechanical fingers to replace her missing digits. When I was researching for my book, I came across a fascinating article about a modern-day inventor and the mechanical fingers he invented.

Dan Didrick's device doesn't require batteries. Instead, it has a simple mechanism which, when pressed by the wearer's surviving fingers, triggers the device. Didrick's invention filled a gap in robotic prosthetics. The Xfingers give wearers enough dexterity to play golf, operate a keyboard, and play musical instruments.

You can read the full article here.

And you can see these Xfingers in action in this Youtube video. Pretty cool stuff.

Woo hoo! DARKE LONDON is now out! Discounted at Samhain Publishing for a short time.


The only way to save her life is to resurrect the dead…

Julian Darke was only a newborn when he was abandoned on the doorstep of a gentleman doctor. Though raised with love, he is driven to discover his true origins.

Convinced Sir Thaddeus Ormond knows something, Julian shadows him one night—and is shocked to see a young woman thrown from Ormond’s carriage and accosted by a thug. Julian manages to save her life, but not her face and hands from horrific injuries.

Nellie Barchester doesn’t recognize the scarred, disfigured stranger in the mirror. Though the gifted doctor and engineer has done his best to repair the damage, scars ravage her body, and chill her soul with the realization that her own husband may have plotted her death.

Julian’s tenderness is a balm to her soul, and Nellie is drawn to the edge of passion by a man not repelled by her deformities. But as their pursuit of the truth draws them into London’s underbelly, they cross the path of a ruthless enemy who will stop at nothing to fulfill his schemes.

Warning: Can a brilliant but troubled doctor find happiness with a woman scarred both inside and out? A hint of the supernatural plus a night of passion spice up this Uncanny Chronicle.

Available at Samhain Publishing, Amazon, Barnes&Noble, iTunes, Amazon UK.


"A dash of steampunk with a taste of lust makes this an intriguing tale" Library Journal

"There's a gothic feel to book one of the Uncanny Chronicles" RT Book Reviews

"A delectable read...Recommended to fans of historical romantic suspense with a dash of steampunk in it." Maldivian Book Reviewer

I'm joining the Teaser Tuesday meme and posting an excerpt from my steampunk romance, ASHER'S DILEMMA.

In this excerpt, Asher has travelled back in time and is reunited with Minerva, who is unaware of what has happened.

I’ve always loved the concept of time travel. One of my favourite movies is Back To The Future. I loved the crazy professor , the DeLorean time machine, and the “flux capacitor” which magically made the time machine work. I also loved how neatly interwoven the past and present were, and how, when Marty McFly returns from the past, the present has been altered because of his actions.

So when I began writing Asher’s Dilemma I thought I had time travel all sorted out in my head. Turns out, once you accept that time travel is possible, the door is opened to all sorts of mental gymnastics. I spent hours pondering the various scenarios, wondering what would happen to X if Y did this to him in the past? Would X disappear? Be wiped out from history? Travel to another dimension?

As I investigated time travel, I found scads of information on the subject. I found I had to choose a model of time travel from one of three broad choices:
(1) There is only one single fixed history which is unchangeable
(2) History is flexible and subject to change
(3) There are multiple co-existing timelines.

Even after I’d chosen my model, I had to work out my storyline to fit in with it. Many roundabout arguments with myself and headaches ensued. Every now and then I had to remind myself that I was writing fiction, not a scientific thesis! It’s a strange experience striving to be logical about something that is unproven, illogical, and—most people would say— impossible.

Hopefully, readers will enjoy Asher’s Dilemma, time travel glitches not withstanding.

What was London like during the Victorian era? I imagine it to be sprawling, heaving with humanity, glittering with fabulous riches, and also dirty, overcrowded, and downright stinky.  Victorian London was the biggest city in the world, with a population in excess of 4 million by 1880. Streets teeming with traffic quickly became filled with horse poo. Chimneys from factories and homes belched out black smoke. Raw sewage ran down gutters and into the rivers. Pickpockets and scavengers roamed the streets looking for an easy mark.

Until the second half of the 19th century London residents drew their drinking water from the same stretch of the Thames where open sewers discharged their waste. Makes me shudder to think about it! No wonder they preferred drinking ale or small beer. The Great Stink of 1858 finally mobilised the authorities to do something about the antiquated sewage system.

When researching Victorian London, one of my favourite internet sites to visit is David Perdue. He has an interactive map of Charles Dickens’ London, which shows you all the major landmarks of the city and also where they are referenced in Dickens’ novels. If you’re a fan of Dickens’ work or just interested in Victorian London it’s well worth a visit.

I recently contributed to a steampunk romance roudtable discussion about plot and world building which you can read here.

If you're into steampunk romance or just sampling it, the post includes contributions from fantastic authors like Zoe Archer and Cindy Spencer Pape.

My second steampunk romance, Asher's Dilemma, has just been released. This book is a sort-of sequel to Asher's Invention but can be read as a stand-alone book. The story involves time travel, steampunk gadgets, and a bitter sweet love triangle.

My second steampunk romance, Asher's Dilemma, goes on sale 7 January. I love the moodiness of this cover!


Ever since he awoke one day on the floor of his workshop with a brain-splitting headache, Asher Quigley has been haunted by fleeting visions of a beautiful woman everywhere he looks—a woman he's sure he knows, but can't recall. In spite of this he has finished his most wondrous invention yet, one that will literally make history: a time machine. But before he can complete his exacting calculations a bizarre accident causes the device to be activated, with him inside! He awakes to find himself in his lab, eight months in the past, and suddenly he remembers her…

Asher knows that something in the near future causes Minerva Lambkin, the woman who turned down his marriage proposal, to be erased from existence. And he's sure it has something to do with his device. Alone in a familiar world where he doesn't belong, he'll have to find a way to destroy the time machine to save the woman he loves from extinction. Even if that means erasing his own future.

33,000 words

For my first steampunk romance I wanted the setting to be gritty and industrialised. I wanted it to be brooding, uneasy, filled with cross-currents of tension. Victorian Manchester seemed an obvious choice. In the 19th century Manchester became known as ‘Cottonopolis’ as it rapidly became the centre for cotton and textile-processing. This rapid urbanisation went mostly unplanned, and resulted in untold human misery. Huge slums quickly developed, which were largely ignored by the more well-to-do populace because they were out of sight.


Outside visitors to the slums were often shocked at the conditions:
“On reaching them one meets with a degree of dirt and revolting filth, the like of which is not to be found elsewhere. The worst courts are leading down to the Irk, which contain unquestionably most dreadful dwellings I have ever seen. In one of these courts, just at the entrance where the covered passage ends, there is a privy without a door. This privy is so dirty that the inhabitants of the court can only enter or leave the court if they are prepared to wade through puddles of stale urine and excrement.”

The River Irk mentioned is one of several rivers that flowed through Manchester. Rivers and canals were used to transport raw materials to the city and goods for export to the rest of the world. The waterways were also heavily polluted by industry and the growing population.


‘Above the bridge are tanneries, bone mills, and gasworks, from which all drains and refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the contents of all the neighbouring sewers and privies.’

These places were definitely not for the faint-hearted, but they made for an intense, atmospheric background to my story.

To find out more about steampunk, Asher's Invention, and my writing process, check out my interview at Basia's Bookshelf.

I'm at Steamed! blog today talking about a Greek inventor and a famous chef.

On Saturday I joined an interesting Twitter chat about Steampunk Down Under. Lots of crazy ideas were exchanged like mad mechanical penguins, steampunk swimming costumes, and steampowered bush rangers a la Ned Kelly. Afterwards I hunted down some inspirational pictures on the internet.

Steampunk Penguin Professor by Bendragonx

Obyekt

And I just couldn't resist this steampunk kangaroo:

Andrew Whitehouse

Local steampunk events coming up: the Winter Magic Steampunk Parade takes place in Katoomba on Saturday 23 June 2012.

I haven’t been writing steampunk for very long, and I’ll admit it’s difficult to be precise about what is and isn’t steampunk. I’ve found various definitions of the word, but in a nutshell steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction and speculative fiction set in an era of steam-powered technology.

Strictly speaking a steampunk story doesn’t have to be set in the nineteenth century but even if it isn’t it should still have that Victorian feel to it ie. an atmosphere that is gritty and industrialised. Jonathan Green’s Evolution Expects is set at the end of the 20th century but still conveys a very Victorian feel—the British Empire is still ruling the waves and Queen Victoria (fuelled by her steam-powered wheelchair) is about to celebrate her 160th birthday. Some steampunk stories are more historical fantasy, such as Agatha H and the Airship City which takes place in a European setting of no discernible era.

A steampunk story can include the supernatural or paranormal, from vampires and werewolves to monstrous golems. eg Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate Series, Cindy Pape Spencer’s Photographs and Phantoms.

Steampunk is closely associated with a certain ‘look’ or aesthetic. Think of everyday items made from 19th century materials like brass, copper, glass, rubber. Machines and gadgets use cogs, wheels, levers, dials. Nothing is sleek or shiny, everything is engraved or adorned in some way.

Characters put the ‘punk’ in steampunk. They can be orphaned pickpockets, mad inventors or scarred aristocrats. They can be rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, nobles or peasants, but in some way they are marginalised from the rest of society, and it’s their differences that propel the story.

I think by its very nature steampunk lends itself to romance, suspense and adventure. Pitching eccentric characters into a cauldron of technological change, social upheaval and straitlaced Victorian values raises intriguing possibilities limited only by the writer’s imagination.

I’ve had great fun writing my steampunk novella, Asher’s Invention. It began as nothing more serious than a break from the contemporary romances I’d been writing, but the idea took hold of me, and I knew I had to finish the story.


Five years ago, Asher Quigley broke his engagement to Minerva Lambkin, believing she was an accomplice in a scheme to steal his prototype for a wondrous device. Minerva swore she was innocent, though the thief—and Asher’s mentor—was her own father.


Now, sheer desperation has driven Minerva to Asher’s door. Her father has been kidnapped by investors furious that he’s never been able to make the machine work. Only Asher, now a rich and famous inventor in his own right, can replicate the device. He’s also become a hard, distant stranger far different from the young idealist she once loved.


Despite their troubled past, Asher agrees to help Minerva. He still harbors his suspicions about her, but their reunion stirs emotions and desires they both thought were buried forever. Can they rebuild their fragile relationship in time to save her father and their future together?

When I first started writing seriously, I could just about write a complete 50K story, but every chapter was a struggle. The thought of writing 80K or 100K was as daunting as Mount Everest, but slowly I managed to edge up my upper limit. The last story I finished was over 70K, and it didn’t feel too strenuous. At last, I thought I was achieving writing fitness.

 But now I’m working on a short novella. It’s to be part of an anthology, so I don’t want it to be more than 10-12K. And now I’m finding it’s a lot harder to write less. I’ve written the beginning about four times and it’s still not right. With only 10K to play with, every sentence becomes important. It’s like putting together a very complicated jigsaw. I’m finding I need to cut out some of the action because the external conflict threatens to overwhelm the internal conflict, and without internal conflict there’s no meat to the story.

This is my second steampunk story, and when the writing isn’t flowing, it’s easy to get distracted by all the cool steampunk things on the internet, like this:

Artist and X-Men fan, Daniel Valdez of Smeeon, created a steampunk wheelchair for the character Professor Charles Xavier.

The smokestack even emits steam!


A steampunk wheelchair worthy of any dastardly villain.

Photos courtesy of Smeeon.

I can finally announce that I've made my second sale to Carina Press with my steampunk romance, tentatively titled Asher's Invention! I'm a little nervous, as this is my first steampunk story, and I've only recently started reading the genre. At least I'll have my fabulous editor Denise to help me along the way.

This month I’ve been using the RWA’s 50Kin30Days event to do a little experimenting. Up to now I’ve only concentrated on contemporary romance, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to flex my writing muscles and decided I’d try writing a steampunk novella. This has thrown up some interesting new challenges for me.

•  Novella. I’ve never written a novella before. I initially aimed for between 20K and 30K, and I think I’ll end up with about 28K. Best-selling author Angela Knight has some good tips on how to write a novella.

• History. My story is set in Victorian England, and I’ve never written a historical romance before. I enjoy reading historical, but I’m not so confident about writing them, especially when it comes to dialogue. I don’t want the characters to sound too modern, but neither do I want them sounding like stuffed shirts.

• World building. A good steampunk story involves building a world filled with airships, aether, ray guns, and all sorts of inventions. The world building has to sound plausible, but it can’t occupy huge blocks of narrative (especially in a novella).

• Steampunkery. To me steampunk has always been very visual, and it can be hard to get those visuals down in writing. It’s far easier to show steampunk in pictures than in words. I’ve read a few steampunk novels, and the best I’ve come across recently is Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Aagatha H and the Airship City. It’s actually based on their Girl Genius webcomic, so it’s also coming from a visual medium. Some book reviewers lament the book isn’t as good as the graphic novels, but I enjoyed the book even though I’d never heard of the webcomic.

I have a confession to make. I’m not into paranormal romance. Vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, daemons...meh. Give me something grounded in reality, either contemporary or historical, not some made-up stuff about curses and full moons and silver bullets.

Or so I thought until I picked up Gail Carriger’s Changeless and decided I’d read it for its steampunk setting, even though it heavily featured vampires and werewolves. The author’s detailed world-building impressed me. I liked how she set out the rules and etiquette of vampire and werewolf society. Still, the story didn’t connect with me until right at the end. Suddenly I was hooked. (Spoiler alert!) When Woolsey throws out his pregnant wife and accuses her of infidelity, I had the perfect meaty romantic angst to sink my teeth into. I raced through the next book, Blameless, keen to know how this intractable problem would be resolved.

For me, romance puts that extra zing in a story. Without the romantic conflict, I wouldn’t have bothered reading the next book, but now I’m eagerly waiting for the next instalment. And without the romance I wouldn’t have bothered reading more paranormal stuff.

Now, I’m even getting story ideas involving werewolves. Yikes!