Thursday's Children Blog Hop: For The Love Of Punishment

“The scariest thing about dredging, is the threat of not making enough money to keep doing it.” -Zeke Tenhoff, "Bering Sea Gold"

Ideas come from the strangest places.

I am a slut for the Discovery Channel.  Everything on there gives me ideas.  It's like the network execs traverse the globe looking for the biggest, baddest, most hardcore people they can find, and then make a show about them.  This fits my "tender love stories, tough people" ethos perfectly.

I love these people.  They're the kind of badasses I like to think I could have been if I hadn't settled down and had a kid.  From commercial lobstermen to miners to that guy who wrestles monster fish week after week, they are my kind of folks.

Oh, and gold dredgers.  Mustn't forget them.

"Bering Sea Gold" follows several crews of rag-tag, nuttier-than-fruitcake gold dredgers, each struggling to make a living at what is easily the craziest job on the planet: mining for gold on the floor of the Bering Sea.  It takes place in Nome, Alaska, a former gold rush boomtown that has long since lost its "boom".  There are no roads that lead to Nome from the rest of Alaska- to get there, you have to either fly or swim.  Summers last all of three months, and winters are long, dark, and bitterly cruel.

The first time I saw this show, an idea hit me so hard I nearly fell off my bed: what an awesome place to set a romance.

To be a gold dredger, you have to be tough, stubborn, and a little warped.  Just the kinds of characters I love to write about.  And people who wind up in Nome are usually there because they've exhausted all other possibilities.  What better backdrop for a love story?

Hey, I never said I wasn't a little nuts, too.