Last night I was writing a scene for my upcoming book Santa Baby. In the scene Trip is investing in metals futures. As we all know Shanghai is the center of metals futures trading. (Oh, you didn’t know that?) There’s a twelve hour time difference between Atlanta and Shanghai and a six hour difference between Atlanta and London which he is also monitoring. Well, I’m really bad, I mean, really, really bad with time differences. I almost missed a flight once because I didn’t know Cincinnati was on Eastern time.
In the scene, Trip is up at 3 a.m. because he wants to see what happens when the London markets open, but of course Shanghai only has an hour left of trading. I promise you, I worked on this scene for four hours last night because I couldn’t get the time straight in my head to save my life. I also had to decide on the season, because England’s Daylight Saving Time is different from ours. So, depending on the time of year London is either 5 or 6 hours ahead of Atlanta. Fortunately, Shanghai is always 12 hours ahead.
Dear God, I can’t even get the time right, can you imagine what it would be like if I actually had to trade? The things we do for love. BTW, isn’t Shanghai pretty? I was never particularly interested in Asia before (Besides the food, of course), but I certainly wouldn’t turn down a trip.
the one who writes 