Coleen Kwan

Margery Blandon is an eighty-year-old widow. She lives by herself in the same modest inner-city worker’s cottage her late husband brought her to after their marriage. She has the same daily and weekly routines she’s followed for years, but Marge’s world as she knows it is under threat. Judith, her daughter, is determined to move her into a nursing home, not for Marge’s well-being but for her own selfish needs. Marge’s eldest son, Walter, an ex-boxer left with permanent brain injury, supports her efforts to retain her independence, but he has ulterior motives too. And Marge suspects her second son Morris, who hasn't visited her in years, might have committed a crime.

The inner-city Melbourne suburb Marge lives in is also turning against her as the tide of gentrification laps at her fence posts. The house next door is flattened and replaced by a gargantuan McMansion. The neighbours she’s known for so long are slowly succumbing to dementia and old age.

Amidst all this upheaval, Marge slowly begins to suspect that everyone around her has been lying, or at least withholding the truth. Is her daughter trying to kill her? What does her old neighbour and lifelong nemesis know about the truth of her marriage?

The back blurb of this book states that the author has written a ‘darkly humorous portrait of a family’. It was certainly dark, but not humorous for me. In fact, it was quite a disturbing read. The helplessness which Marge experiences as she is let down first by her physical and then her mental incapacities made for uncomfortable reading, perhaps because her struggles were so accurately portrayed. The deceptions of those around her, who were meant to support her, made it even harder to read. At the same time, Marge is not always a sympathetic character in that she seems to have wasted her life, squandering opportunities for friendship and never experiencing anything approaching joy.

The novel does end on a more upbeat note, but I was still left feeling a bit depressed at the thought of  all those elderly people out there who are passionately (perhaps unrealistically) opposed to being sent to a nursing home and yet are ultimately let down by their frail bodies and minds. If this was the author’s intention, then she definitely succeeded.

Fellow Carina author Rachael Johns tagged me for the Lucky 7 meme game. I've been away for a few days but better late than never.

The Lucky 7 rules are:

• Go to page 77 of your current WIP
• Go to line 7
• Copy the next 7 lines (sentences or paragraphs) and post them
• Tag 7 authors and let them know.

Here's what I got from the latest category romance I'm working on:

Jacinta stared at Holly. “Kirk’s wife was Lex’s ex-girlfriend?”

“Yes...” Holly squinted at her, the scowl evaporating. “You didn’t know?”

She didn’t know about any of Lex’s past girlfriends. She hadn’t wanted to know because it hadn’t been important, but now...now she couldn’t help wondering. Had Lex been in love with this girlfriend? Was that why he resented Kirk? The idea of Lex being in love with someone else brought a cramping pain to her sides.

Conscious of Holly’s curious stare, she quickly tried to compose herself. “Er, no. Lex doesn’t really talk about that kind of thing.”

As I'm late to the party, I'll skip the tagging.

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?

The Marketing for Romance Writers group is holding two marketing classes.
How to Plan a Blog Tour on 31 March
Introduction to Triberr on 27 April

To attend these classes just join the MFRW yahoo group here.

I have to admit I picked this book purely because of the title and the cover, both of which intrigued me.

Misskaella Prout is a witch living on Rollrock Island. She has a special connection with the seals that visit the island. The other islanders shun her, but everything changes when the men realise she has the power to turn seals into humans, and not just any humans, but beautiful, bewitching women. Every man hungers to have one of these seal-women for himself, happy to pay whatever price the witch demands. Even married men desert their human wives and children, forgetting them as soon as they leave the island. Soon the island is inhabited only by the men and their sea-wives, and Misskaella, who grows ever richer.

But the sea-wives are unhappy. They long to return to the sea in their seal forms but cannot because their husbands have locked away their seal coats. The sea-wives bear the men children, but only the sons are kept. The daughters don’t thrive on the land and must be returned to the sea to be reared by the seals. The witch knits blankets out of sea weed, which the sea-wives use to comfort themselves. The sons collect sea hearts, their mams’ favourite food from the sea. Eventually the unhappiness of the sea-wives grows too much, and everyone must pay the price.

Ms Lanagan’s writing is lush and evocative, and the images her prose conjured were powerful and haunting. Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy the story as much. This was such a dark and disturbing tale with a rather uncomfortable subtext. I really felt for the unhappy and lamenting sea-wives. Their trapped existence moved me, but at times I wished they would be more proactive. The husbands, although they are enchanted by their wives, don’t seem too bothered by their growing unhappiness, and ultimately it is left to the boys of these sea-wives to act on their behalf.

Although this wasn’t a story for me, I was impressed by Ms Lanagan’s skill in telling it. Readers who like dark, fractured fairytales will enjoy this book.

I've recently received the gorgeous cover for my June release Asher's Invention:

And in other news, I've sold a contemporary romance to Entangled Publishing's Indulgence line. No release date as yet, but I'm pretty happy.