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...