WeWriWa – Frenchmen and T

Hi everyone,

I’m participating in the Weekend Writing Warrior, a weekly blog event during which writers share 8 sentences of one of their projects. You should check out the others right here: http://www.wewriwa.com/. I share this post with the Snippet Sunday Facebook group, which you can find here.

My apologies for being absent lately. As you may have read on my blog, it took me a whole month and a half of calls, follow-ups, technician visits and quests for antiquated adapters to get Internet at home. I’m happy to now be settled in my barely-furnished-but-decidedly-mine apartment.

We’re back with another excerpt of my steampunk novel, Oil and Boiling Water (previous excerpts are compiled here). Tatiana is making her way through the Loose Cogs tavern to find her brother. A little creative punctuation has occurred.

A man threw himself backward as he burst into laughter, and knocked me off balance.
“Attention,” a Frenchman said as he grabbed my elbow to steady me. His clothes were a simple shirt and fitted trousers that revealed his athletic physique. He looked cleaner then the average tenant, his beard trimmed to a fine line that complemented his chiseled jaw and high cheekbones. His blue eyes sparkled with joie de vivre and his sun-kissed blond hair waved back into a low ponytail.
He pulled me between two dingy tables where the crowd was lighter. “It’s best to stay out of the ‘T’ zone, Damoiselle.”
His free hand drew a line from the front door to the bar, then a perpendicular line from one end of the bar to the other; the bulk of the crowd massed along the invisible lines.