Hello,
Sunday Dinners is out and doing very well (thank you so much!) and so now it's time to talk about my Christmas novella, A Notting Hill Christmas. Yay! I've been thinking and talking about writing a Christmas novella for the past three years and for various reasons it's never quite happened. This year it's happened! So strap yourself in, it's going to be quite a ride!
I had the title, A Notting Hill Christmas, in my ideas folder for a while. That was it. No story, characters, or idea what it was going to be about. I just liked the idea of it. So when I decided to write a novella this year, I was going through my notes when I found this title and started thinking about it. I love Notting Hill as a place. It's iconic and there's obviously the famous film starring Hugh Grant. I knew right away though that I wanted to show a different side to it. It wasn't going to be the chocolate box Notting Hill that Richard Curtis gave us, which I love and wished I lived in, but something else. Something more real.
As always the characters came first and in this case it was the main character, Ben Canterbury - I've wanted to give a character the last name Canterbury since The Office when it was Tim's surname. I knew from the start that Ben had to be a bit of a loser. I had a rough idea of a story and it involved a large family coming to a small, cramped flat in Notting Hill for Christmas. Ben was going to be catalyst for this to happen. Actually his life failures and jealousy of his older and successful brother, Jamie, would be. Ben's tired of being the "deadwood in the Canterbury family tree" and insists he hosts Christmas, even though he has no chance of actually doing it properly in his little flat. There in lies the tension, drama and comedy of the book.
Once I had Ben, I needed a funny flatmate, and a crazy family (plus a very angry dog), which all came fairly easily. Then came the difficult part, I needed a romantic female lead - this is a rom-com after all!
It was tough working out the love story because here we have Ben, a 29 year old man, who's life hasn't gone to plan having Christmas Day with his family. How to fit a woman into this scenario in a real and plausible way without making it seem absolutely ridiculous was a challenge. When I started thinking about her the first thing that came to mind was that she was Scottish. I don't know why. I've always found the Scottish accent pretty sexy and I wanted someone who needed a reason to spend the day with Ben and his family on the big day. So she obviously had to be far from home. This is when things started to spark and the story and characters came alive.
The female lead, Mhairi, comes into the story and at first seems just about perfect, but obviously this is never the case. Also I think it would be hard to sell a love story with a loser main character falling in love with this amazing woman. She had to have her flaws and secrets too. And she does.
The main thing with A Notting Hill Christmas, is that I wanted it to be funny and heart-warming, but also honest and real. Just because it's a Christmas story and a rom-com, it doesn't have to be this overly sweet, fluffy, sort of fairytale. It's a bit dark in places, the characters are deeply flawed, and it's probably not the Christmas day you'd want to go to (£1 shop Christmas tree and decorations stuck on with Blu-Tack), but amongst all the carnage and drama, there is a really sweet, funny love story that will hopefully make you laugh and cry.
A Notting Hill Christmas is out on December 7th and it's only 99p! You can pre-order it here or just click on the cover below! I'll be back with more blogs soon!
Until next time.
Hugs,
Jon X
