Her debut novel, The Girl with No Reflection, won the 2022 Victorian Premier's Literature Awards Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript and was shortlisted in the 2025 ABIA awards. Her new YA fantasy is For No Mortal Creature. Currently she resides in Naarm (Melbourne) with her husband, two kids, one cat, and way too many house plants.
Chow applied the Page 69 Test to For No Mortal Creature and shared the following:
From page 69:Visit Keshe Chow's website.He shot me a wary look, and I stared back, belligerent. What was he doing here? Why had he interrupted the physician? I was still trying to untangle his motives, when I was startled by a choked-off cry. This was followed by a strange gurgling noise. Something heavy landed on my legs.I think that this does capture many of the major elements of For No Mortal Creature. Namely, that there is death and evidence of Lin as being a morally gray character capable of murder. We have evidence of a ghost—that of the murdered man’s, who speaks directly to the main character and asks her to respect his corpse.
Prince Essien’s eyes flared wide, and slowly, he turned his head. I raised my head, too. Only to see Larch slumped face down across my legs, blood soaking into the eiderdown, and—
Lin, standing behind him, holding that curved, bright-blue blade.
For a moment, I could only stare at his spectral body in shock. Then, the prince’s mouth dropped open, and I quaked. Scrambling up, the pulse in my ears thundering, I shoved the deadweight of Larch’s body off me. The corpse slid sideways and landed on the floor with an unceremonious thud.
“Careful, girl,” growled a voice, and I startled to see Larch’s ghost staring down at his dead body, frowning. He raised his gaze, piercing me with his disapproval. “You should respect the dead!”
Not stopping to answer him, I swung my legs off the bed and jumped to my feet. Essien Lancaster was staring down at the body of the now-dead physician. The prince’s face was puce, the muscles in his neck corded with tension. He’d lost the usual easy grace of his stance and was trembling with shock.
Lin’s face, on the other hand, was impassive. Almost smirking. I took in the entire scene within a mere fraction of a second. And then I noticed Lin, with the tiniest, most minute of movements, adjusting the grip of his knife. So subtly no one would notice.
No one but me, who knew him well. Or had known him well, once.
He drew back his arm to slash at the prince. For some reason, something within me snapped.
However, the aspect that this excerpt does not highlight is the romance that features in the book. The angst-filled romances between the main character, Jia Yi, and the ex-lover who betrayed her, Lin, are a huge driver of the story. Similarly, a burgeoning and tenuous alliance between Jia Yi and Prince Essien is also a significant part of the plot.
Lastly, this excerpt doesn’t highlight the main motivator for Jia Yi, the main character. The biggest thing driving her throughout the entire book is her desperation to save her dying grandmother, who isn’t mentioned on this page.
For No Mortal Creature is a dark, gothic young adult fantasy about a world where ghosts can die and become ghosts of ghosts. Jia Yi, a girl who possesses the gift of resurrection, must delve into the many layers of the afterlife to save her grandmother. However, to succeed, she must team up with her two mortal (and immortal) enemies: the ghost of Lin, the boy who once betrayed her; and the cold, enigmatic Prince Essien Lancaster.
Q&A with Keshe Chow.
--Marshal Zeringue