The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
Publisher Description
A cheeky rewriting of conventional mythology within a rollicking queer romance - Life can be Hell, thank god.
"So your life sucks. Couldn't be suckier if you tried. Falling in love with the most hated figure of all time isn't going to make it any better. So he brought you back from the dead. Just say thanks. And move on. Very quickly. Please?"
The Summer of ’79. A remote southern New Zealand beach. A group of school friends spend one last Xmas holidays together before the cares of Uni' and the 'real' world intrude. Day one, our over-sensitive muso' hero, Jamie is rescued from suicide by an extremely spunky stranger. Add a shadowy air of mystery and he's the perfect object for desire. However Nick's nocturnal tendencies and ability to fly should ring warning bells. Fortunately it's soon clear that he's neither vampire, vulcan, werewolf nor indeed any other dangerous creature of the night but instead an angel - albeit a fallen one. But for our two romantic heroes it's not all moonlight surfing because after bad relationship experiences with Will Shakespeare, Robin Hood, Cain, and 'god', Nick has commitment issues. Then there's the challenge of the unique and subversive manner in which he sees history, morality, and the meanings of all their lives.
Jamie, his best mate and lover Dom, Dom’s girlfriend Jude, her baby drag-princess brother Ryan, their bandmate Sue, Louise the gorgeous country cousin, and the sexy captain of the school rugby team (gay-basher?) Russell Wells, all get to confront the question – who’s idea of Life are they living? If it’s all someone else’s grand story, how do they escape and get to be the author of their own?
In "The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea" they each get to contribute. As they warn the reader in their foreword
"Each of us is writing down our own bit of what happened. Making sense of it in our own way. Sure, producing a lot of jigsaw pieces. A bit random so they probably won’t always quite fit, eh? But get over it. We don’t mind. These are our lives, and we’re entitled to speak of them in our own particular way. Kia Kaha!"