The Cover Story and The Product of My Dreams.

Night Time in Shanghai - The Cover Story.

The cover for Night Time in Shanghai has finally been agreed.  Along the way, I saw several versions and asked the opinions of my Facebook friends and those that follow my Author page on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/AndyEllisWriter/

The first version was this one:

Which I do like, but the cable is supposed to be a space elevator cable that leads from the centre of a large city on an otherwise relatively uninhabited peninsula to a space station some twenty two and a half thousand miles distant.  The space station looks a little nebulous and the cable should be needle straight.  I think that as Night Time in Shanghai is intended to be relatively 'hard' sci-fi, the distinction is important.

After a few months (during which time editing the novel was given the highest priority) the artist came back with a second attempt:

Which is very nearly what I asked for, except that the cable connects to the edge of the torus station and not it's axis, a distinction that I felt would once again be too much to overlook for the intended hard sc-fi audience.

Very quickly, a third version came my way, though I think the artist was beginning to tire of the criticisms and by this point was simply looking for a quick way out.  Well, perhaps that's a little harsh and I don't mean it to be - you decide.

Around this time, it was also pointed out to me that the peninsula in the image was actually Italy, so I decided that perhaps it might be better to look at an entirely new alternative.  This is what the artist came back with:

I quite liked this one, but a friend of mine pointed out that it was full of JJ Abrams style lens-flare, which is a fair point, but then again, JJ fills a lot of cinemas, so I wasn't against it, though I wasn't keen on the font used.  I decided to ask for a plain black cover with white writing and this is what I got back:

I was prepared to accept this, but after a little consideration, I asked the artist if it would be possible to do a version with the writing the same size and font as the original cover.  Also I asked what he thought of a plain black cover and if he had any ideas of his own that would keep the simplicity of white-on-black but perhaps have a little more shelf appeal.  He came back with the following two designs:

Again (having already decided on the second of the two designs, the artist's own favourite as well) I put it to my Facebook friends and those that follow my author page, and the verdict was unanimous.  When Night Time in Shanghai is released on the 30th of November, it will have the second of the above two designs as it's cover.

The Product of My Dreams

Over the last couple of months, a lot of other issues have got in the way of writing, the biggest of which has been getting used to living on a boat and making sure that I'd be able to survive the winter on it.  After a few years of living with my daughter, it was a huge wrench to me to have her move out and go to university and initially, it was a huge wrench to her, though she made a wide group of friends very quickly and seeing her dad took a bit of a back-seat.  This was actually good news for me because she's settled in and seems to be very happy - what more could a father hope for?

So a canal-style mad dash (at four knots) from Willington (south of Derby) to Northampton took on a more leisurely pace and I finally arrived in the area a couple of weeks before writing this.  I've seen her a few times now and knowing that she's (basically) well and (basically) looking after herself and (vastly) enjoying her time at university has settled my mind and allowed me to put a little more focus on my next writing project "The Product of My Dreams".

Today I finished thrashing out the plot and the writing will begin, perhaps this evening, in earnest.  This is the book I've been looking to write ever since I first sat in front of a keyboard and came up with the idea for the Night Time in Shanghai Trilogy, so it's important to me that the storyline does my thoughts on the subject (virtual reality) justice.  I think the plot suggests that it will.  At thirty chapters, this book promises to be the longest I've written so far, perhaps coming in somewhere around the 150,000 word mark - maybe six or seven hundred pages.

So uhhh... without wanting to be too cliched, watch this space...

Night Time in Shanghai and moving on to a boat.

It's been a while since I last posted a blog - my life has been hectic - I left Gateshead in early August and went, with my daughter Natasha, to stay with my dad in Mansfield Woodhouse for a few weeks.  A week or so later, I bought a small boat in Barbridge on the Shropshire Union Canal and spent 8 days moving it to Redhill Marina on the River Soar.  There, the boat was lifted out and I made some repairs to the hull and installed some equipment to make it liveable.  Anyway, more on that in a while.  On the 24th of September, my dad and I took my daughter to Northampton and moved her into her first year accommodation.  The next day, I moved on to my boat at Redhill Marina and began my own personal journey - again, more on that later.

Night Time in Shanghai.

On the 20th of September, I received the final proof for Night Time in Shanghai.  As you will have seen from the first paragraph, this was a very busy time for me and it took me three weeks to return the final edited proofs to my publisher.  Shortly after I did, they contacted me to confirm the release date for the book which will be 30 November 2016.

The ISBNs for the book will be:

ISBN 9781786290533 (Paperback) £7.99 / €9.99 / $13.95

ISBN 9781786290540 (Hardback) £13.99 / €17.99 / $23.95

ISBN 9781786290557 (E-Book) £3.50

I'll be making signed copies of the hardback available through my Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/AndyEllisWriter/.  The price will be £13.99 + P&P

I'm very excited about the release of the book, as I'm sure you can imagine and I can't wait to actually be able to hold a copy in my hands.  A lot of time and hard work has gone into producing the book, both from myself and from my publishers, Austin Macauley and to know that it'll be out there for people to read in less than seven weeks makes it all worthwhile.

Once I have a few reviews and an idea of initial sales for Night Time in Shanghai, I'll move forwards with the publishing of the second book in the series, The Gaps Between The Stars.  With any luck, this can be brought to print a little more quickly, perhaps with the aim to have it in the shops by this time next year.

The Product of My Dreams.

I've started thrashing out the plot for this and will hopefully be able to begin writing in a few weeks time.  It's going to explore the concept of stacked Virtual Realities and it's a book that I've been wanting to write since I first sat down and started writing Night Time in Shanghai.  Right now, it looks like it will be thirty plus chapters, perhaps in the order of 150,000 words, so a major project and one which I expect to take at least six months.

After this, I may move on to writing the culmination of the Night Time series, Machine War, but that's a way off and would be unlikely to be published before 2018, so no rush there.  We'll see...

Boatiness.

In August, I bought my boat, then called Bonnie, a beaten-up thirty-five year old twenty-two foot Dawncraft GRP cruiser in Barbridge on the Shropshire Union Canal.

Over the next eight days, I moved it 89 miles through 78 locks to Redhill Marina.  To say that the journey was 'eventful' would be an understatement.  The twenty-five locks up 'Heartbreak Hill' and then taking my little boat through the Harecastle Tunnel is a couple of days that will stay with me forever.

So after this 'in-at-the-deep-end' introduction to my new home, Bonnie was lifted out at Redhill Marina...

...and I spent four long weekends repairing the hull, fitting a leisure battery and heating system, adding a fridge and renaming my boat 'Driftwood' before returning it to the water on the 20th of September.

After taking Natasha to University in Northampton, I moved on to Driftwood and began my own journey.

At times it has been very difficult, and cold and wet - I soaked my first battery charger and had to replace it at Mercia Marina on the Trent and Mersey Canal - I spent a few days at Mercia and I'm intending to go back there for the harshest months of winter.  

After a few days at Mercia, I moved on to Fradley Junction, which has rapidly become a favourite spot on the T&M, and took a left and headed south on the Coventry Canal before joining the Oxford Canal at Hawkesbury near Coventry.  Then I moved south again to Braunston Turn, the spiritual heart of Narrowboating in the UK and on to The Grand Union Canal.  I'm writing this blog sat in my boat in the early afternoon October sun in Braunston Marina, where I can receive parcels and letters and catch up with my work.

My first leisure battery gave up the ghost and wouldn't hold more than 20Ah of charge, so when I got to Braunston Turn, I went again to Midland Chandlers where I bought and fitted two new batteries.  Even on the coldest and wettest of nights, my boat's snug and warm.  Walking back from Braunston Village one evening, I was moved to write this short piece...

"The afternoon's rain and the evening's dew soaks through the corners of your shoes, the autumn cold biting at the cuffs and collar of your coat as you walk down through the sheep-cropped fields from the hill of Braunston village. You cross the bridge, it's ancient brickwork supplemented by a thick rain-slicked sheet of smooth worn rounded modern concrete, picking your footing well on the slippery surface, and turn left on to the towpath.

Back up behind you, street lights in the village light up the church steeple on the top of the rolling English hills of the opposite bank, all evidence of the village, save the spire, hidden by the dark silhouettes of oak and yew trees. It reaches up and directs the eye to a pitch black sky lit only by a bright chill-silver half-moon and the black sheet of night sprinkled with more stars than you ever knew there were.

Thick wet mist hangs low over the canal like a shroud, the smell of wood-smoke mingling and mixing with the damp earthy smells of the bank and water, silvery tapers pouring from the chimneys of a dozen moon-lit narrowboats lined up along the bank, eddys wandering by under torch light; in the distance the faint whispering sound of a radio playing Tracy Chapman's version of Fast Car.

The grass under-foot wet from a few autumn showers, water beading on it's still green tips. The canal is smooth and chill as ice, the days frenetic pace lost in the chill of the autumn eve - it's still glass-like cold dark waters reflecting the whole scene, paying homage to the beauty of the night - another church, another moon another vega...

Living on the canals is truly magical." 

I think it captures the sense of tranquillity that living on the UKs canals gives me.  In a few days time, I'll move on to Northampton, then a week or two later, begin the trek back up towards Derbyshire, though I'll be taking my time...