Paperbacks!!!

Amazon offered me the ability to turn my two self-published novellas into paperbacks and make them available on a print to order basis.  I'm not sure if this is something they intend to offer to all self-published authors or whether it's just something they offer to those who are selling a few books, but regardless, Proctor:  The Art of Living and Proctor:  The Art of Killing are now available in paperback.

Proctor:  The Art of Living (Paperback £6.49 - click the pic)

Proctor:  The Art of Killing (Paperback £6.99 - click the pic)

Having said that, I have two copies of each coming to me later this week/ early next week and haven't had the chance to look them over, so unless you want a copy that may well turn out to be very rare and flawed (and I can understand how this might be a good thing!) it might be a good idea to wait until I've had a chance to check them out.

OK, well, not a huge load more to say for now - I've been at my dad's house in Mansfield for the last few days for the Christmas period, and not a lot of writing has happened, though I did spend the last 48 hours formatting the manuscripts for the two paperbacks and selecting/ agreeing and editing the above cover designs.  Other than that, I spent some time with my daughter Natasha and the rest of my family, a large percentage of which placed either a glass or a fork (or both) in my hands.

I'm half tempted to take a break from writing 'The Product of My Dreams' (which is going slowly and is quite challenging) and perhaps write another Proctor Novella - I have half a dozen ideas for these and they are as much fun to write as people tell me they are to read.

Night Time in Shanghai

Early sales of Night Time in Shanghai have been very encouraging, with it currently unavailable in a few bookstores - I guess they will be re-ordering and that my publisher will have to do another print-run in the new year.  This was relatively unexpected - I'm a new author and the book's only been out a month so there has not yet been the opportunity for sci-fi bloggers and reviewers to comment on my book and it's usually a positive review or two from bloggers that gets sales moving.  The book is currently out to a few reviewers, so we can perhaps expect some news from this direction over the next few months, though these things happen quite slowly as reviewers get sent a lot of books to review and I imagine a large percentage of these don't actually appeal to the reviewer and remain in an 'unread' pile.  Generally it's all very positive though.

I still have a few copies of the Hardback left, so if you'd like your own signed copy of the first batch, first print, first edition hardback, then get in touch either through the comments below or my Facebook author page - http://www.facebook.com/AndyEllisWriter/ - £18.59 includes P&P

Talking of reviews - if you have read any of my books, please leave me a review, primarily on Amamzon.co.uk, but please copy that review to Amazon.com and my publisher's website, http://www.austinmacauley.com/book/night-time-shanghai.  Reviews help boost me up the search rankings for Amazon, and really to break into the market in any significant way, the book needs to get a high ranking in speculative search results, so the more reviews the better.

I see that Amazon.com now hold a few copies of the UK print of NTiS which is handy if you wish to order the book in the states.  A few other bookstores now list it as a stock item as well.

OK - well apart from wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year, I think that's me done for 2016!  Keep following me in 2017 for more exciting news about my progress as an author (and along the UK's canal network) and thank you for your support in 2016.

Andy Ellis Dec. '16.
RIP Carrie Fisher (my first crush) - 2016 has taken too many.

Night Time in Shanghai, The Product of My Dreams and Boaty Stuff.

Night Time in Shanghai...

(Thanks to Owen Lowery for the pic)

...has been on sale for eighteen days at the time of writing.  It seems to be doing reasonably well for a new book from a new author that nobody's heard of.  The marketing team at my publisher, Austin Macauley are in the process of contacting sci-fi reviewers and bloggers in an attempt to raise it's profile a little, but this process takes time.  It's impossible for my publisher to give me numbers - books are supplied to the main wholesale suppliers in the UK/ US on a sale-or-return basis, so although quite a few copies have gone out, quite a few may be coming back!  One way I can gauge sales is to look at sales of the novellas, Proctor: The Art of Living and Proctor: The Art of Killing which do seem to have picked up a little.

Authors live and die on reviews, so if you have read any of my books, please leave me a review on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com - also, if you have read Night Time in Shanghai, please leave a review on my publisher's website.

It is a very exciting time, and the majority of new books by new authors are very slow to take off with few or even no sales in the first couple of months, and I'm definitely doing better than that - I even sold a copy myself in The Swan Inn at Fradley Junction, south of Burton-upon-Trent.

If you would like a signed copy of one of the first batch, first print, first edition hardbacks, then please get in touch with me, either through the comments at the bottom of this page, or through my Facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/AndyEllisWriter/


The Product of My Dreams

Progress with The Product of My Dreams has been slow, but it is beginning to pick up pace now.  At the time of writing, I have written just under 24,000 words and I'm around halfway through Chapter 6.  The book is in three threads one from the perspective of an old woman, one from the perspective of a six year old girl and one from the perspective of a young woman.  I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but it is quite challenging to see the world (a world) from the point of view of a six year old girl, and in places I've had to use a little licence to make the story comprehensible.

The Product of My Dreams is a look at Virtual Reality (in a very non-Matrix sense) and the nature of time and tries to put into a perspective what this may mean for us and the world we live in, but at the same time, it is a tale of the lives of the three women and how those interact.  It's hard to say much more than that without giving the game away.  I think if someone were to insist on me giving it a classification, I would say it's a thriller, but definitely not in the same sense as Night Time in Shanghai which it is easy to classify as a 'Revenge Thriller'.  Certainly, you want to know what's going to happen to the six year old girl, alone in a war zone and the older woman, whose mind wanders through the mysterious layers of virtual reality and the young woman who seems to have a rare gift - how could a mistake she makes have always been a part of real history and what implications does that have for the world she lives in?

In a way, I'm taking a risk with The Product of My Dreams - it's intended to provoke thought and allow people to see how I view Virtual Reality.  It also has some interesting implications regarding the nature of time and also around the nature of spacetime and the effect of observation on quantum reality, particularly the precepts that 'consciousness creates reality' and 'reality is created by observation'.  If all of that went over your head, don't worry! it's still a thrilling and mysterious read with a whopping great twist.


Boaty Stuff

I left Braunston Marina two weeks and two days ago and yesterday booked into Mercia Marina (just south of Derby) for a month.  With Christmas just a week away, and the chance of some cold to very cold weather in the next month or two, that's the last of my travels until February.  Mercia is on the Trent and Mersey Canal, and at this time of year, The Canal and River Trust close locks to repair them.  From the fourth of January until the end of February, they will be closing Swarkestone Lock (north east of me) and Junction Lock (south west of me) effectively locking me into this small stretch of the T&M.

On my way up here from Braunston, which is a journey of 71 miles going through 28 locks, I took a few pictures - here's a small selection...

Braunston Marina, frozen over, the day before I left.

Newbold-on-Avon (just north of Rugby, North Oxford Canal)

Hawkesbury Junction (North Oxford Canal meets Coventry Canal)

Frozen in at Hawkesbury Junction

Hartshill (Coventry Canal)

A boat full of books!

Atherstone (Coventry Canal)

Hopwas (Coventry Canal)

Fradley Junction (Coventry Canal meets The Trent and Mersey Canal)

Sunset at Fradley Junction

Alrewas (Trent and Mersey Canal)

Willington (Trent and Mersey Canal)

A very festive Mercia Marina