Coleen Kwan

It's time for another Six Sentence Sunday. These sentences come from my current WIP. My heroine, Toni, has just returned to her hometown after a long absence and bumps into her old childhood friend, Dion.


“Still doing that bean counting stuff, huh?” The corner of his mouth twitched.

Her back stiffened. “I’m a qualified CPA now,” she couldn’t help saying.

“A qualified bean counter, then.” He lifted his eyebrows.


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Another six sentences from Asher's Invention:


“Do you regret the night we spent together?” He didn’t know why he asked that question, but he had to know the answer.

She paused an interminable while before speaking, “No, I don’t. I wanted to savor what little time I had with you.”

He wheeled round. “You mean, before I found out what had been going on behind my back.”


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an untrained eye

A week or so ago I was feeling drained and irritable. With the release of my latest book, I think I’d OD’d on marketing (even though I didn’t do all that much it felt like I did). There are so many avenues of promotion and not enough time or will to do it all. I can’t keep up with the deluge of emails from Yahoo groups which flood my inbox. Facebook often baffles me. Twitter is a fast-moving river that leaves me stranded.

I am an introvert. It’s not natural for me to stand on a soap box and trumpet myself or my books. I’ve never sought the limelight (the opposite, in fact), yet since becoming a published author, albeit of modest success, I’ve become something of a narcissist as I obsess over my popularity or lack thereof. And I dislike that. I don't want to become a 'me-me-me' person. So I am now on a strict diet, avoiding all checking of rankings and stats and reviews. I’m also concentrating on what I value most—writing. I’ve started a new story, something a little different, and I’m enjoying it. Writing makes me happy. Like a bowl of warm porridge on a cold winter’s morning, writing fuels me and makes me feel satisfied. My new story reminds me why I’m doing all this in the first place. I have my doubts about the marketability of my latest story but it’s rescued me from my malaise, and that’s the most important thing. They say one of the best ways to market your work is to write another book, so that’s the marketing strategy I’m going with. It’s also good for your sanity.

As I write this I realise the irony of what I'm doing: drawing attention to myself by saying I don't like doing that! Maybe this post should remain in draft mode, but then again maybe not.

My Triberr tribemate Mae Clair tagged me for the Next Best Thing Challenge. Mae's paranormal romance, Weathing Rock, comes out in October and sounds like a fascinating read.

So, onto the ten questions of the Next Best Thing Challenge!

What is the title of your book or WIP?
Asher's Invention.

Where did the idea of this book come from?
From reading and day dreaming.

What genre would your book fall under?
Steampunk romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
This is a difficult one.

For this Six Sentence Sunday I thought I'd post some lines from my contemporary romance, When Harriet Came Home:

Adam Blackstone. Almost unrecognisable. Ten years ago he’d had smooth, boyish good looks,designer clothes, and a sports coupé—but now! Now his dark hair was close-cropped, he drove a truck, wore work boots, jeans and a plaid shirt, and he looked rugged and gritty as sandpaper. The prince had turned into a woodcutter. Even his eyes seemed different—still grey, but with tiny creases at the edges and a dark sombreness lying in their smoky depths.

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I'm giving away a copy of Asher's Invention at Romacing The Book and at Book Lovers Inc. To enter head on over to these blogs and leave a comment.

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.