Drive-by Inspiration by Natalie Anderson

A Hagglund (All Terrain Vehicle 
used in Antarctica)
 parked across the road from
the US program HQ. 

***EDITED to add the COVER and BLURB*** - MELT should be going live online in the next couple of hours - yay!!!

Often writers get asked 'where do you get your ideas from?' Well, I've been driving past this idea for years now, until it bugged me so much the story just had to be written.

I live in Christchurch which is sometimes referred to as 'The Gateway to Antarctica'. From here scientists, students, media, awesomely lucky writers and artists board big gray planes and head on down to that last untamed spot on earth - Antarctica. The New Zealand Antarctic program leaves from here and the US has a program based here as well.

Many go down for the 3/4 summer months, some for only a week or two and some for the full 6/7 month 'wintering over' experience.

Wrapped pallets of 'stuff' waiting
to be taken down to the ice.

Now I drive past the airport all the time, (Christchurch isn't the biggest city on earth). Down one side road, there is a wire fence all around a massive stretch of tar seal, and on that seal they line up all the gear that goes into the planes to be taken down 'to the ice'. There are so many pallets, all neatly wrapped, there's heavy machinery, food, generators, thousands of condoms, shipping containers, boutique beer to stock the bars, fuel tanks, carpentry tools and so on...

(Yes, you read that right about the condoms!) All the gear is loaded up through the summer months as the planes go down regularly. They have to have everything they need down there - for the busy 'visitor heavy' summer months and the long, long dark winter when no planes can get down (and apparently they 'need' all those condoms).

Well who doesn't imagine what it must be like down there? Who wouldn't love to go see the penguins and other wildlife? To get a sense of that vast environment?

I've always wanted to go, I've stared at all that cargo so many times, I've read all the articles that crop up in our local paper, I've talked to people who have been down there, I've been to the local Antarctic Centre that's across the road from the airport and been in the snow storm simulator room... and I've imagined, dreamed and of course, come up with a story :)

Why would someone be going down there? What would it be like? And what would they do for fun in that freezing place??? (Yes, Those condoms keep springing to mind don't they?!)

All this machinery and these containers go!

So all this drive-by rubber-necking is partly how my new novella was born - I have a wonderfully generous but loner hero who's literally putting himself 'on ice' for the festive season, and an untrusting artist who's gone down to make a name for herself. She's as much 'on ice' as he - because she has a mural to paint and no time to waste - even if it's summer and there is nothing but daylight down there...

When two frozen hearts collide…

Emma Reed closed her heart to love years ago after a lifetime spent getting kicked around foster homes and bad relationships. Now she's on a mission to prove she deserves her recent award to paint a mural for a research base in Antarctica. Nothing and no one is going to get in her way.

After months working in recovery zones around the world, Hunter Wilson planned to escape everything this holiday season by rebuilding a lab at the Kiwi Research Base. Alone. No to family, no to fun. It’s isolation not intimacy he’s aching for. But when he sees the determined artist, that ache becomes an urge – after all, shouldn’t someone show her what two people can do with twenty-four hours of brilliant sunlight?
 
In the coldest place on earth, even the most frozen hearts can melt.


MELT is out later TODAY from Entangled Publishing (and will be up on Amazon) - and yes, I did another drive-by yesterday to snap these pictures just for you!!!

So tell me, is 'going to Antarctica' on your bucket list like it is mine???