A Horrorday to Remember

Welcome to Sally's book-a-day-for-2017 blog. If unfamiliar with the blog, scroll down.

A Horrorday to Remember (Post 101)

A Horrorday to Remember (2002) stars our old friend Baker, from Post 86 Creature Cottage, who also pops up in Soggy Doggy Dot Com. In this episode, Aunt Kris and Cousin Tiffany have scored some cheap tickets from Pocket-Saver Air for a trip to the Northern Territory and are taking Baker along. The story is told in journal entries, written alternately by the optimistic Baker and the ironic Tiffany.  Baker writes happily of a balloon ride, crocodiles and camel rides while Tiffany wonders if she can contrive to be left at home. Baker enlivens his pre-trip haircut with a free colour... purple. This leads to tourists throughout the book exclaiming "Amazing! The boy has purple hair!" in a variety of languages. Almost everything planned for the trip goes wrong. The plane is delayed, so they have to overnight in Melbourne, where the motel Kris generally uses is overbooked. They wind up in a backpacker with the window painted shut and strange people in the corridor. The delay means they miss out on the hired car booking in Darwin. There are geckos in the bathroom. They catch the wrong bus so miss out on the crocodile tour and end up in Doctor's Gully with the bats. They go to Croco-rama and discover they've turned up on the only day of the week when it's closed. They miss the camel ride because they're in Alice Springs on one of the two days the camels don;t go out. They miss the balloon ride because there's no wind. Finally, Aunt Kris decides to risk the balloon ride the morning of their flight home, because the plane is bound to be delayed... naturally, the plane departs an hour early.
    Throughout it all, Baker remains upbeat and optimistic and Tiffany annoyed. 
    As you might guess, many of the problems of the horrorday are based on things that have happened (or not happened) to my family... mind you, I've never been up in a balloon or had purple hair. Apart from a crash course in planning and how to say "purple hair" in different languages, the story demonstrates how different people react to the same set of circumstances. This is a reading scheme story, after all.
   This one was written under my pen name, Patrick Farrell.  

About the Blog 

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. If you enjoyed a post, or want to ask about any of my books or my manuscript assessment service, post a comment and I'll get back to you.