Updates...

Well, it's been a busy week for me so far - lots of work.

Proctor:  The Art of Killing

As you may be aware from earlier posts, I'm currently writing Proctor: The Art of Killing.  I'm only 2000 words in to it, but the plot's shaping up in to a nice romp.  I'm not sure if the first chapter starts a bit slowly - the story largely takes place in a single place, so I'm getting the geography out of the way.  I might stick a hook in at the start.

Which brings me to a constant debate among writers (I'm a member in a few writers groups and I see a lot of 'How-To's).  A large number of aspiring writers buy in to the hook and a lot of the drafts and first chapters I see launch in to action with brutal deformed aliens ripping through crowds of civilians and along comes our hero space marine.  Sorry, but for me, that would normally be as far as I'd go.  I try to give a book a fair stab and I'll read a couple or three chapters, but if it hasn't done something that's piqued my intellectual curiosity by then, I'm afraid I consign it to the 'also-ran' pile.  I wonder how many respond to the lack of a definitive hook in my first few pages in the same way?  My hope is that the environment I set is in itself interesting and anyway, in none of my books do you have to wait too long for the action to start coming thick and fast...

So here's the start of The Art of Killing.

"Chapter One

Going underground.

Even just wearing light armour, some of the gaps were a squeeze, and it was warmer than Proctor thought it would be. When he planned his journey through the caves he imagined cold wet walls, and streams running underfoot. He'd been right about the streams, but it wasn't cold. Proctor had been in caves before, but never much further than the cave mouth. He'd been down mines to flush out cowering civilians, though generally the cult-marine approach had just been to lob in a few explosives and close off all the exits. Moved things right along from living and free to buried and forgotten about without all the usual messy middle stages.

When he'd given it a little more thought, it made sense. It occurred to Proctor that the rock and earth above them would act as a good insulator so the caves might well have a temperature close to the average of the land above. Perhaps in most places, caves might be a few degrees cooler, but these caves lay under an enormous mountain range and geothermal vents reached from deep below, bubbling steam and exotic elements through the foothills. It made the air in the caves warm and moist and left a tang of minerals and sulphur on his tongue.

The mountain range swept in increasing height and ruggedness from the northern polar regions, past the equator where it began once again to drop before reaching most of the way to the south polar region in an arc that encircled a third of the planet, starting and ending in a string of islands. The central string of jagged rocky snow covered peaks hinted at the planet's violent history of plate tectonics, and mineral wealth leached out of the mountains both sides. To the west it bordered a vast ocean, but the greatest wealth of the mountain range was to be found to the east, north of the equator where the mountains were tallest, reaching heights up to forty thousand feet. Here, the mountains skirted a broad continent's west coast. The land mass stretched out eastwards through foothills which opened out to broad grasslands and eventually desert then the sea. Hundreds of miles further north, a broad river marked the northern border of the grasslands and deserts. It took water away from the mountains through forests that started as thin scrubby bushes in the foothills and grew in height, density and variety as the river wound it's way through the more temperate regions towards the distant east coast."

So what do you think?  Does it make you want to read on or would you rather a few people got killed early on?


Proctor: The Art of Living.

This has been available on kindle for a couple of weeks now.  Sales have been predictably slow - without a marketing machine behind it, no one's going to hear about it.  That should be partially resolved when Night Time in Shanghai is published and the publisher do some marketing for that.

A couple of people have told me they don't have a Kindle.  You don't need one.  If you have a smart phone, you can download the Kindle App here or through Android/ Apple Stores.  I tend to do most of my reading using my phone, though I also have the Kindle App on my tablet and PC.

Get your copy.

Night Time in Shanghai.

This week saw the arrival of the proofs for Night Time in Shanghai and is the reason why I haven't increased the word count of The Art of Killing.  I don't want anything to delay the publication of this, my first novel, so pretty much from the moment the manuscript arrived, until I'd completed the work I needed to do on it, that was all I did.

There wasn't much for me to do, really.  Typos mostly, and the editor liked the story and was particularly complimentary about the way I build characters and my over-all writing style, so that put a smile on my face.  No major re-writes were needed - a few sentences were changed to make their sense a little more clear, but that was it.  The editing job was thorough without interfering with either the meaning or flow of the story, so I'm very pleased.

It was also very good to see the layout too.

I returned the files the day after.  The next step is to apply all the tracked changes and then the proofs come back to me for a final sign-off.  That leaves the cover and the marketing.  I'm looking forwards to seeing the cover, though it is taking longer than I expected.  Whether this is because the image I asked for is complicated (which it is) or whether other, more pressing jobs, have taken precedence, I don't know.  It shouldn't be long now.

Personal.

On a personal note, I'm slowly gearing up towards the changes that 2016 will bring.  My daughter, Natasha has been invited to Northampton Uni for a look around, and we need to sort out her halls, then, for her, it's head-down and get the results in her A Levels to make certain of her place.

I've been looking at more boats.  I've seen a nice cruiser that's already all fitted out to live-aboard.  I just need to hope that there's things like that available when I'm finally in a position to buy.

In the mean time, I have a lot of stuff to get rid of and other stuff I'll need to put into storage for a little while.

Interesting times ahead.....

Proctor:  The Art of Killing.

I really should have a couple of weeks off between books - I find that whilst writing, I tend to go at it quite hard - set myself a fairly punishing schedule and then push like hell to get ahead of it.  I didn't think I'd finish The Art of Living until March and here I am in February talking about the next book.

Anyway, it felt too early to start writing on Friday, even though thoughts about the new plot were rolling over in my head and ideas were coming thick and fast.  By Saturday, I was toying with cover ideas...

...well, it follows the theme.

This morning I sat down and wrote some background to the plot then fleshed it out to a set of chapter plots, then I started writing.

Proctor:  The Art of Living.

Got your copy yet?

Get it here

Read it? Let me know what you think.

Proctor: The Art of Living.

Today marks a pretty special day for me - I've just completed the publishing process through Kindle to publish my first novella, Proctor: The Art of Living.

You can get your copy by clicking here.

Proctor:  The Art of Living is a 170 page pacy sci-fi thriller and is the first of a series of books based on 'Proctor' a character introduced in Night Time in Shanghai, my first novel, and the first of three books in the Night Time in Shanghai series.

These novellas look at the formative years of Proctor's life and tell the tale of how he became who he is when we meet him in Night Time.

The series of Proctor novellas stands-alone - it makes no difference if you read them before or after Night Time in Shanghai.

I've already received some very positive feedback for this book and I'll be moving on to start the second in the Proctor series in a week or two.

I hope you enjoy it, and would love to hear what people have to say about it!

Personal...

Living on a boat.

In my first blog post I mentioned living on a boat.  I've been on a few holidays on Britain's canals and quickly fell in love with the whole getting up in the morning, pootling along for a few miles and then pulling in at some pub thing.

That's 'Dishy Di' a 45' SW Durham cruiser stern narrowboat I rented in 2014 on the Llangollen Canal, moored up outside the Poachers.

For some reason, people are always surprised to hear that even a 45 footer can have two full sized double beds, a shower and all the facilities you'd expect at home.  The thing that surprises people most is that they're warm.  That boat has central heating and most 'live-aboard' boats have a multi-fuel or wood burner as well.

'Rosie's Drum' a fifty footer out of Silsden Boats.  The two seats convert to a very large double and there's another cabin at the stern.

The point is, boats are cosy and warm all year round and as far back as 2010, I started seriously considering the possibility of living on one and touring Britain's inland waterways for most of the year, then ice-dodging over Christmas and the early months of the year in a nice marina.

Mercia Marina, a few miles south of derby.

Another comment I get is that I'll be 'stuck' on the canals.  I can live with being that stuck.  As the map shows, canals join a large number of the UK's cities, but more importantly for me, cross through some of the most rural and inaccessible parts as well.

Anyway, the plot is to wander off up some quiet canal and write a lot.  Find a quiet corner where I can set loose the demons in my mind to rage freely for a few days and see what I can come up with...

Now, one draw-back to being a writer is the time it can take to actually get paid.  These days, unless you are a well known writer, it's unlikely you'll get an advance on a book, so I need to wait for the royalties which get paid in the first quarter after the first full year of sales, so for Night Time in Shanghai, that'll be January 2018 at the earliest.

The point is, I can raise a few thou, but even a fifteen year old ex-rental forty-five footer will cost upwards of twenty five thousand, so I'm looking at something smaller to start with - a 'yoghurt pot' as they are disdainfully referred to by 'shiny boaters'.

This is a 20' Norman Conquest

It has forward and aft cabins, sleeping up to four and a large canopied central cockpit.  Converted to live aboard, it would be a bit basic, but it's possible.  The point is, this should be within my reach financially, later in the year when I finally make the move.

Between that and a narrowboat that isn't going to sink - something with a sound engine and a good hull, lie several larger versions of the same thing.

Norman 27

Norman 32

When I start living on the boat, I'll start blogging about it more regularly and as the year progresses and I review my options, I'll keep you updated.

This would be the dream, by the way...

New Perrydale 58' cruiser stern.

(follow the link for more pretty pics)

Progress Update, Proctor: The Art of Living (Proctor Novella One)

Finished!

At 44,591 words, "Proctor: The Art of Living" is finished.  Always a momentous occasion for me.  It took me four weeks and six days to write it.  Now I need to edit chapters nine and ten and then read through the whole book.  After this, it goes to my beta-reader, Arthur Edwards.

I've written the novella from the ground up, so it doesn't matter if you read the Proctor Novellas first or the Night Time in Shanghai Trilogy. 

After editing, I'll add the cover:

The dedication and the acknowledgements (read the book for those) and I'll use the same picture and 'about the author' piece as is being used in the printed copies of Night Time in Shanghai.

"About the author.

Andy Ellis was born in Derby, spent twenty years growing up in Bristol, moved to Newcastle to study Chemistry at the age of 24 and forgot to go home.

Andy has worked in all sorts of places - in a bakery, a milk bottling plant, factories, warehouses, kitchens, on roofs and in garages. More recently, he did a long stint fighting the machine from the inside out with the Inland Revenue. Currently, Andy works in astronomy.

Andy has loved sci-fi since he was old enough to read and looks forwards to writing many more books."

Once it's all packaged and I've added the description to the amazon site, it goes on sale.  It'll be three quid a copy.

Apart from the last few days where my life has clung on by a single thread as the swooshing sharpened pendulum swings ever closer, threatening to extinguish the flame of my life through the medium of the dreaded 'man-flu', I've really enjoyed writing this book.  When I wrote "Night Time in Shanghai" and "The Gaps Between The Stars" I was exhausted and unsure.  Month after month of writing whilst trying to keep going with my normal every-day full-time work takes it's toll.  Not that the Proctor novella's been any easier, just shorter.  The approach I took was to plane back the descriptive prose whilst still trying to retain a feel for the places in the book, all of the time making sure that the action drove the story forwards steadily.  A few of Proctor's thoughts and some of the situations he finds himself in tell you about who he is as well - I like my stories to be largely character driven and I didn't want to lose that through the shorter medium of the novella and I don't think I did.  Anyway, the point is, I think I've achieved what I set out to, and at around 170 pages, it'll hopefully be a nice pacy introduction to my style.  I'm happy with it.

A week or two off now, then on to Proctor: The Art of Killing.

Progress Update, Proctor: The Art of Living (Proctor Novella 1)

Whilst I wait for my first novel "Night Time in Shanghai" to go to print, at which time I will be moving forwards with publishing the second in that series, "The Gaps Between The Stars", I'm writing a few short novellas (aiming for 40,000 words or 150 pages), which I'll publish straight to Kindle.  The first is a pacy thriller set in the past of one of the characters I introduced in Night Time in Shanghai, Proctor.

The Cover.

As some of you may have read in my last blog entry, I'm looking for cover designs for my Proctor Novellas.  If you know anyone who may be interested, please put them in touch (see my last blog entry)

For now, I've been having a go for myself...

Effort number one...

I did this using Open Office Impress using some open source images I found on the net.

I then looked at a couple of cover designers and had a play with a few templates, but couldn't really find anything that I liked more than the background image I'd used above, so I ended up with this.

Perhaps a small improvement, I thought, and when I posted it to Facebook, most people agreed.  The issue was the thumbnail.  The writing is almost impossible to read.  So with a little help from my daughter Natasha, we had a little play around with fonts and colours and came up with this.

You can now clearly read my name and 'Proctor' in the thumbnail, so a huge improvement, I thought.  Back to Facebook.  Well, not everyone liked the colour and font choices, but I do.  A valid point was made that if someone was reading these from the first, I should identify the title's place in the series.  I intend each book to stand alone as a story, but the character of the title changes through the books, so perhaps to track his evolution, it's important to do this.

So I now have this.

Unless someone comes to me with something better, this will be the cover of the novella when it becomes available from amazon later this month.


The Writing.

So far, I'm 29,100 words in - about half way through Chapter 7.  I expect the book to reach 44,000 words or 170 pages long.

Here's a short quote from Chapter Three, A rude awakening.

“Fancy me?” the guy asked, turning to Proctor. Proctor ignored him. The man turned to his companions. “This guy obviously thinks I'm wrong too.”

“Leave it, Sy.” The military one. He looked Proctor over. “That guy's out of your league.” Sy laughed.

“Out of my league?” He walked over to Proctor. “No one's out of my league – that's the whole point I've been trying to get over to you old shell-shocked fucks.” As he approached, Proctor turned to face him.

“Take your friend's advice. Go have another drink.”

I'm enjoying writing this book and looking forwards to writing the last three chapters.