In honor of winning CampNaNoWriMo for the month of August, here’s the opening scene for tell me no lies, the steampunk romance/thriller I worked on. It will, of course, probably end up getting edited and tweaked again somewhere down the line, so feedback and gentle critique is most welcome.
-oOo-
Tempest Dumont was no lady.
The art of feminine sweetness was lost on her, and the thought of pursuing the refined arts that were deemed appropriate for young women of quality made her want to retch. Luckily, she had been born on the streets of Stockton to a penniless washer-woman, rather than in some gleaming Nob Hill mansion where she certainly would have been imprisoned by the trappings of propriety and respectability.
As a result, she knew enough about machinery to fix her secondhand cleaning-bot, Mrs. Three-in-One, with little more than a well-placed hat pin and the flick of a wrist, and she could beat out even the best poker players down at Roarke’s Tavern. Better yet, she could swill cheap liquor down her throat without incurring too terrible a hangover, throw darts with the accuracy of a sharpshooter, and talk her way out of an arrest, no matter what the offense.
Of all her prodigious talents, it was her skill in flirtation and self-defense that she treasured most. As the star singer of The Belladonna, the glittering saloon where San Francisco’s wealthy playboys gathered to sample the delights of the Barbary Coast, such strengths came in handy. She was the Siren of the Coast, luring men to her side with the entrancing power of her voice. They flocked to her shows, eager for an invitation back to her dressing room, where they waited like gallant swains paying homage to a fickle goddess.
At least once a month, however, one of those eager devotees made the mistake of breaking The Belladonna’s iron-clad rule: look, but don’t touch. When they did, Tempest was always ready to put them in their place.
Exhibit A: Leander Ward, one of the wealthiest bachelors in the city and the latest in a string of fools to press himself upon the hot-headed chanteuse without permission. Bleary-eyed and intoxicated, he accomplished little beyond tangling his fingers in the laces of her heavily-boned corset. Pathetic, really. Had it not been his third offense Tempest would have let things slide, but rules were rules.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
