Sunday, January 16, 2011

Murphy's Law: what can go wrong, will go wrong

I've just set myself a deadline, something I swore I would never do, but Loose-Id sent out a Submission Call for a holiday story for next Christmas and I couldn't resist. So, what kind of story could I come up with? What was going to catch people's imagination? While chatting to one of Loose-Id's management team and fellow author, Treva Harte, I thought about the differences between Christmas spent in Australia compared to a Christmas spent in the northern hemisphere. While in England and in other parts of the world it's traditional to spend December indoors with a fire blazing in the hearth and watching the snow fall in lazy flakes from a grey and lowered sky, in Australia it's hot and sunny and we go to the beach and have barbeques and picnics under bright blue skies with not a snowflake in sight. So I thought about a tourist coming to Australia for Christmas to visit Bondi Beach, one of Australia's famous beaches, and their was my plot. I had my characters, David Shaw and Scott Murphy, one English, one Australian, both on holiday, both out for a good time, with neither of them looking for anything but mind blowing, gut clenching, uncomplicated sex. So they get together, but then starts the little disasters. A cut foot, a broken bed, a flooded hotel room, a broken down car, food poisoning, falling off a cliff, a shark attack and a plane crash. How are my two guys supposed to survive all that? And can a holiday romance turn into something more, something permanent?
So Murphy's Law was born.

If my proposal is accepted I hope to start writing at the end of March and complete by the end of June. Wish me luck. I'll let you know how I get on.

4 comments:

  1. Your Christmas story sounds fantastic. And i LOVE Australia. : )

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  2. Thanks Tara,

    Most of my stories are set over here and the more I write the more I put of Australia in them. I'd like to make sure I include parts of Australia most people don't get to see.

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  3. why Sydney ? why not base a story out of Perth or better still Margret River area which is well known internationaly. Bondi beach has been done to death and there is more to Australia than Bondi beach and Sydney

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  4. I entirely agree. I live in the Blue Mountains,and have set a couple of stories there. I have also included northern NSW in another story (While passing through Tamworth). However, though I've travelled around the world, as usual, I haven't travelled much in the country I live, but I intend to change that, and the more I see of the country the more it will appear in my novels. I do Google places but would hate to write about an area I haven't been to and make a mistake. But I love your suggestion of Margaret River. If you've been there or live nearby I would accept any help in getting a descrption, but more importantly an atmosphere. With Murphy's Law I had intended the characters to travel for the two weeks the novel is set in. Starting at Bondi and ending there, but not staying there.

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