Still Writing Two Books at Once, Visitors and Springtime in the Marina.

Still Writing Two Books at Once.

I spent about three weeks on The Product of My Dreams, adding around fifteen thousand words, and a couple of days ago, I switched back to writing Time Off.  So far, I've just re-familiarised myself with Time Off, edited the first two chapters and added around a thousand words, bringing it's word count up to eleven thousand.

For those that haven't read earlier posts, The Product of My Dreams is a virtual reality novel with a complex and deeply involved three thread storyline, written from the points of view of a young girl - six at the start of that thread - a young woman and an old woman.  The three storylines tell individual tales which seem only loosely linked to the story's end.  The story also studies the nature of stacked virtualities and ultimately, the nature of the universe.  The book should be around one hundred and forty-five thousand words when completed or approximately five hundred and thirty pages.

Time Off is a Proctor novel and follows on from the three existing Proctor Novellas, The Art of Living, The Art of Killing and The Art of Dying, all of which are available from Amazon in paperback or ebook.  My Author Page on amazon features these as well as my first full novel Night Time in Shanghai, published by Austin Macauley Publishers.  Time Off follows on in the action-packed fast-paced style of the Proctor Novellas, but as a novel, the book is more immersive and the storyline more complex.  I expect it to come in at around seventy-five thousand words or two hundred and sixty pages.

The Product of My Dreams

As I've said previously in my blog, The Product of My Dreams is very challenging to write.  As a middle-aged man, it's quite difficult for me to write from the point of view of a young woman in her twenties and even more difficult to write from the mind of a six year old girl.  The third thread is quite different to the other two and says more about the nature of stacked virtualities than it does about the old woman who is the protagonist of that thread.  I'm not sure if it would be easy to write from the point of view of an old woman, but the nature of the complexity of 'virtual space' makes this thread quite difficult to write anyway and when I do, I draw deep into my own mind, contemplating the nature of the virtual worlds and the universe in which they reside, and it can take me hours to get out again and manage normal human interactions once more.  So in three weeks or so, I've added around fifteen thousand words which isn't a massive amount, but I'm very happy with the way the story is developing.

A few quotes.

This section is from chapter six "Dreaming".  This is the second chapter of the six year old Claudia story thread.

"Claudia ran across the road, weaving between the holes in the smartmac surface and ducked through the open door of the bar. It was quite dark inside. One of the windows was half covered by a big shutter and the other was in the shadow of the building. Claudia stood and blinked a few times until her eyes adjusted. Behind the bar, someone had made a mess of the normally neatly stacked bottles. The floor was strewn with metal flasks, and lots of the glass bottles that normally stood there, containing a variety of brightly coloured liquids were gone. She knew the rebel mercs had been in here, so maybe they'd stolen them. Well, they were rebels and Claudia imagined that was the sort of thing rebels would do – take things that didn't belong to them."

A fairly short quote and certainly not the best I could have picked, but I don't want to post spoilers...

This next quote is from chapter seven "Heading home".  It's from the second chapter of the young woman - Cristie - thread.  I posted a few quotes from this chapter on Twitter, but this one concerns the nature of the 'real' and the stacked nature of virtualities.

"Most people simply accepted the life they lived as the 'real' but Cristie's own gut feeling and later, her training at the University, led her thoughts in another direction. Statistically, it was more likely that her own life was simply another twisting, miniscule thread in another equation that, once picked apart, would portray another elaborate tapestry that itself was a virtuality existing within a virtuality. It really shouldn't be hard to accept this, but most people simply didn't, or perhaps just didn't want to. To a majority, the whole concept seemed ridiculous – of course they existed in the real - “Just look around you, for god's sake!”. But then again, the virtualities where they took their holidays felt equally real, there was just something in the mind-set of the average human that didn't want to accept their existence as anything that might be perceived as anything less than 'real'."

I'm not going to add a quote from chapter eight "Substrate" as just about anything from the old woman thread would be a spoiler.

Time Off

I'm quite used to slotting myself into the head of Proctor, having first done so in Night Time in Shanghai and then revisiting for the three Proctor Novellas.  Time Off sees a somewhat world-weary Proctor attempting to find some peace and quiet in a small resort town on the holiday world of Finn.  But as usual, trouble comes knocking and Proctor's never one for not answering the door.  What seems like a relatively normal but deeply dangerous situation develops when Proctor runs into some old 'friends'.

Here's a quote from chapter two "Time for a few drinks"

"“For god's sake!” the woman shouted again. Proctor lifted his head a little and looked into a small mirror advertising one of the local brews called 'Saint Michael'. He moved his head to one side until he could see the woman. She wore a tiny pair of tight, denim-blue shorts with a matching bikini top. She had light but well tanned skin and a huge volume of curly bleached-blonde hair that cascaded all around, just past her shoulders. And the heavy make-up that seemed popular amongst those that shared her profession. Proctor had no time for whores and finding one that had got herself into trouble wasn't a rare thing. He returned his attention to his drink and emptied and refilled his glass once more. He shook the flask. Maybe half a shot left."

Writing two books?

So how's it going?  A good question.  Would I have written more if I'd just stuck to one?  I honestly don't know.  I find the first third of a book hardest to write - getting the story off the ground, inventing and describing new worlds, new characters and new situations.  At times, I can slow right down, barely managing a couple of thousand words in a week, and to be able to switch from one to the other at this stage, does seem to keep me focused.  As to the impact of changing from what is a fast paced, actiony storyline to a more complex thoughtful one, does seem to be helpful.  As I said in a previous blog post, going back to The Product of My Dreams and editing the first five chapters again, added a focus and brightness to them which had perhaps been a little lacking, and I was far happier with them after.  I held that focus for the following three chapters and when I've added a good chunk to Time Off, I'll go back and edit those.

I suppose this all means that I must think there's some value in writing the two books at the same time, but I do wonder if I'll feel the same way when the books start getting over one hundred thousand words combined.  When switching, I basically have to re-read everything I've written up to that point and that takes time.

Visitors and Springtime in the Marina.

Construction work continues in the marina.  The noise made by the groundworks was far less than the weeks of pile-driving that saw dozens (possibly hundreds) of fifteen foot piles sunk into the ground, sometimes doubled up.  They then added concrete footings to these and have just started on the steel framework of the building.

The steelwork's a bit noisier than the groundwork, but not as incessant as the pile driving was, so I don't find it distracts me too badly.  This shot was taken a couple of days ago and they've significantly added to it since.

There's quite a few ducklings popping up in the marina, but unfortunately, these seem to be mostly short-lived.  I've seen a mummy duck with thirteen ducklings and another with twelve, but only once each and I didn't see them again.  Apparently pike regularly take ducklings and in the marina, there's very little fishing (you can fish from the back of your boat, but not from marina property, and very few do) so there's lots of big fish around.  It always seems sensible not to wander around the jetties holding a camera (too much stuff goes 'plop' too regularly for me to want to do this) so I haven't managed to get any good shots.  This one - and you'll have to take my word for it - shows a mother duck with a dozen ducklings grouped around her swimming across the marina...

My daughter, Natasha and my very good friend David Metcalf have both been to visit me for a weekend each.  I gave up the main bed on my boat for both of them and slept on the back under the cockpit cover.  It had been lovely warm weather the week before Natasha arrived, but for the two nights she spent with me it was chilly.  We had a lovely meal in the Boardwalk Bar and restaurant in the Marina and I always treasure time I get to spend with my wonderful daughter, who I miss immensely now that she's at University.

When David came, the weather was a different story making it far more cosy on the back of the boat.  We went for meals at a local Indian Restaurant called Nadee and the most excellent Dragon in the nearby village of Willington.

So all in all, I'm having a great Spring and thoroughly looking forwards to taking my boat out for an extended trip along the canal.

As a side note, a twitter artist, @julesartvan did a quick sketch of a selfie I posted to twitter - if you feel inclined, you can bid for it on ebay - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/322503961853

Anyway - this post is getting a bit 'TL;DR' worthy, so we'll call it a day.  More soon.

Andy Ellis, Mercia Marina, May 2017.