A very literary plot at Morrieson's Motel

Gordon McLauchlan confides to MARGIE THOMSON how he inveigled a who's who of New Zealand writers into playing an intriguing literary game

Take someone else's good idea, match it to local conditions, employ cunning and a bold lie or two, and - before you can say Taranaki township - you've got an intriguing little publication which should do very nicely over the Christmas period.

This is the background to Morrieson's Motel (Tandem Press, $24.95), a collection of tales by well-known New Zealand writers, edited by Gordon McLauchlan, which tells the stories of the inhabitants of a Taranaki motel over the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of one weekend.

And what a weekend it is, in this unnamed little town. The writers have conjured up incredible sadness, but also humour, jollity and bawdiness - especially on the part of Laura, the housekeeper, who, before some necessary editing tidied up her life, was having sex simultaneously (thanks to the imaginations of different writers) in a Volkswagen and in one of the motel's guest rooms.

Morrieson's Motel is a bit of a steal from two Irish story collections, Finbar's Hotel and Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel, but why waste a good idea?

McLauchlan, a great supporter of Pen and its local chapter, the New Zealand Society of Authors, knew that authors in Japan and Canada had contributed to anthologies on the understanding that half their royalties would go to the writers' organisation in their country.

He thought this was a great fundraising idea and approached Bob Ross, of Tandem Press, with the idea of a joint publication between Tandem and the New Zealand Society of Authors. Ross enthusiastically agreed. But what umbrella to use? Ross came up with the idea for Morrieson's Motel and McLauchlan got on the phone.

The first call was to Maurice Gee.

"That was a bit cunning," McLauchlan says. "I knew that if I could get Maurice - and he's a very nice man - I could get others. Maurice said he was pretty tied up with a novel and wasn't sure he could do it by the July deadline, but he'd think about it and let me know.

"Then I rang Vincent O'Sullivan and told him I thought Maurice was going to do it, and Vincent said, 'Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I'll be in on that.' So he came in, and then I rang Barbara Anderson and said, 'I've got Maurice and Vincent,' so she rang me back and said, 'I'll have a go at that.'

"So by telling bold lies I got all these writers. Luckily, Maurice did get back to me and said he'd like to have a shot at it."

For the project to be successful, McLauchlan knew that he had to get top writers, and so the list of 12 contributors represents a ladleful of the cream of New Zealand talent: Owen Marshall, Sue McCauley, Catherine Chidgey, Sarah Quigley, Kevin Ireland, Elizabeth Smither, Graeme Lay, Stephanie Johnson ... and McLauchlan himself who, despite being one of our most prolific journalists and writers of non-fiction, had never turned his hand to fiction.

Authors were given a sketchy scenario: the name and description of the moteliers, Clarrie and Betty Claridge; the housekeeper, Laura (a tarty sort of woman); and Laura's daughter Lisa, the unmarried mother of 3-year-old Charlton.

We can't tell you anything about the story penned by McLauchlan, or indeed about any of the other writers' contributions, as, at Gee's suggestion, the authorship of each story is the subject of a competition beginning on publication in early November and closing on January 31 next year.

Readers have the summer to figure out who wrote what and if more than one correct entry is received they will go into a draw to win book tokens to the value of $250.

Sounds straightforward, but McLauchlan says it's not easy. He is the only person who knows the answer and so far even the publisher and other writers have not been able to guess correctly.

"I wouldn't be surprised if it's some little old bloke from Dunedin who spots it," he says.

Only one writer he approached turned down the opportunity expressing anything other than regret. This writer, who shall, McLauchlan says, remain nameless, felt the project was derivative and unoriginal.

McLauchlan countered by letter that Shakespeare had never invented a plot or a story but had nevertheless not done badly. He didn't get a reply.

"This is not a pale shadow of Finbar's Hotel at all," he insists. "It's something quite different. We've made it our own."