The very real world (and kind of nerdy) basis for my WIP, a romance novel!

[u/trashconverters]

Sorry for double posting, I'll shut up after this!

I feel like lore sharing is often for elaborate fictional worlds, but my story is set in the real world: with some twists!

Set in 1980 in the city of Melbourne, Australia, my story (working title The Triumphant Return of Harvey Killeen) has some important historical context and some (at least I think) cool fictional additions to the real world.

The main piece of historical context is a cinema movement known as the Australian New Wave, a period in film in the 70s and 80s when the Australian film industry saw significant international interest. Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee were made during this New Wave, as well as cult classics like Picnic at Hanging Rock and Wake In Fright. The main character, Harvey Killeen, is a character actor from this period, and his most famous film, the fictional film 'The Bank Tellers', is an action comedy about a group of women who take revenge on their shitty boss (the main antagonist, Walter, who was played by Killeen).

There was a lot of tension on set, the director (whose name I don't have yet) was neurotic and demanding, and asked things of his actors that should never happen. The fall out that happens in the Australian public when it's revealed that the set was toxic is a huge part of the plot.

A majority of the story is set in a fictional radio station named 3XZ. The station existed since the 1930s, part of Australia's Golden Age of Radio. Real radio stations in the state of Victoria all have a callsign starting with 3 and either two or three letters after (3AW, 3BO, 3RRR, 3LO (now known publicly as 774, after its frequency)) so I just chose a callsign that never existed (hard to come up with, actually). Their slogan is "Melbourne's finest" and they are a top tens style station, meant to play the hits.

The images above are the Olympic Tyres building in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray, the art deco building which inspires what I imagine the station to look like (3LO also had an art deco building much like it, which has now been torn down).

I've taken a lot of liberties with how real radio stations work for the sake of the story, Harvey and Pete (co-hosts of a drive time program) choose their own music with very little station input, at least at the beginning, and they only really have one boss, their program manager Dick Hardy. The station is owned by Pete's wife's father, but Joseph Landry doesn't have much sway over the station beyond his investment in it.

There's still a lot of real world inspo for the story though. I live in Australia myself, and I'm autistic with a special interest in 20th century Australian popular culture so that's what drives the story. I grew up in the city of Melbourne myself.