From Humble Beginnings - The Journey of One Shot

The concept for One Shot began a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Okay, well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but it feels like a lifetime ago when I had first come up with the idea to write a Western novel.

Back in 2006, I bought a copy of Lionhead's 'The Movies' Game for P.C from Dick Smith. The game wasn't in-fact a game - it was a powerful program that changed my life! I could finally turn all my story ideas into easy to create movies. I'll definitely dedicate a blog post to the old 'TMO Community' at a later date. I've always loved Westerns, but it was during this time that I fell in love with the genre even more: the Man with No Name trilogy, High Noon, Once Upon a Time in the West, Rio Bravo, Magnificent Seven, True Grit, 3:10 to Yuma; I think I watched every Western there was! I rented the films from the video libraries of yesteryear, of course... who else remembers Video Star's 5 Weekly Films for $10 Mega-Deal?

The Movies Game had Western themed props, costumes and sets, so heavily inspired by the romance of the genre - and with Ennio Morricone's 'The Ecstacy of Gold' thumping in my ears - I felt compelled to create a Western film of my own. My first attempt was a silent film called 'Buffalo Bill'. And it was terrible (refer to image).

I didn't attempt another Western for a while, as I focused my efforts on my satirical comedy series of shorts, Con the Don. But I was still absorbed with Westerns. At the time, as I searched for inspiration, there weren't too many modern Western novels around - although now there's some really great self-published Western genre authors on the Kindle store. So finding inspiration for a unique idea that wasn't as terrible as my 'Buffalo Bill' film took some time.

Then one day I was struck by a thought while watching Dog the Bounty Hunter on Fox 8. Yes, really! I had an idea along the lines of: 'What if there was someone who had a really high bounty on their head and was chased by these different people because they needed the money?'

I worked on fleshing out this idea for a while and began a screenplay for a movie, too. However, the more I wrote, the more I loved the idea. The characters evolved, and the themes grew deeper, until it got to a point where the program would not have been powerful enough to convey what I wanted, and it wouldn't have done the story any justice. That's when I decided to turn the idea into a novel instead.

Originally, it was titled 'The Outlaw - IDEA -

(just as all good stories begin as some misplaced word document in a folder somewhere). The story followed the perspective of five people who sought a hefty reward on offer for the capture of a violent outlaw: a lawman who is trying to solve the mystery and bring justice to his town, a rancher trying to save his ranch from bankruptcy, a gang seeking revenge for the murder of one of their own, an egotistical braggart who seeks to capture the outlaw only for fame, a poor boy desperate to make money for his family.

I completed an extensive outline, only to realise following the perspective of 5 main characters was too difficult to present with any real substance. I wanted the story to have the romance of the Westerns of old, but I wanted it to reflect the real hardships that people of the time endured. I wanted it to be fun, yet authentic, without all the forced clichés. But I was stumped on how to present the story, so I left it and came back to it several times over a number of years, continuing to refine my ideas until finally, it started to come together.

The eureka! moment was back in 2015, almost 5 years after my original idea, when I thought 'bugger it, I'm just going to sit down and write this.' And I'm so glad I did, because even though I got to 50,000 words deep into the story and ended up binning it and starting entirely from scratch, I knew exactly how I wanted the story to go. After I had deleted the first draft of my manuscript (which, apart from certain elements of characterisation is absolutely nothing like the book now), I went back to the drawing board with renewed enthusiasm. I created a huge A2 poster with notes connecting the plot, the characters, the themes and then I came up with a comprehensive plot outline of absolutely everything to make sure it all fit, including full character backstories of even the minor characters. After about 2 years of planning, and several conversations and discussions with my friends and colleagues (I love you guys!), I came up with a name: One Shot. Then I began to write again. This time, I knew I had it.

Since beginning the first draft of One Shot in 2018, it has undergone countless revisions, edits, rewrites, tinkering, and has spent hours in the hands of my beloved family and friends (again, thank you!) to become far more than I could have ever dreamed when I first brainstormed ideas for a Western back in 2006. This blog post is only a mere snippet of the toil I've endured throughout the making of this book, but I've fallen deeply in love with the world and the people in it - and honestly I've loved every second of it.

When you finally have a copy of One Shot in your hands - I promise it'll be soon - I hope there's something in the world that I've created that resonates with you. It's taken a long time to get to this point, but time has only made this book the best it can be, and it's certainly been worth the wait.