Well, as the title infers, it's been a while since I last posted on my blog. Life has been difficult to say the least, and I haven't been in the right mindset for adding blog posts or for that matter, doing much writing - still, on to the writing in a bit.
My business...
As some of you will be aware, I have a small business called 'Astronomiser'. At the heart of this business is a modification service for Canon dSLR cameras which makes images such as this possible:
Anyway - I'm side-tracking myself. Modifying dSLRs was/ is the core of my business, but I also manufactured a wide range of cables. Living on a boat, I have had some issues receiving deliveries of parts which companies have sent to old addresses or they just haven't come at all and this led to cash flow problems. Because of this, I decided to close this side of my business before things got any worse. I owed six cable orders when I made this decision and most of those people have now claimed their money back through the PayPal payments system that I used on my website.
One person took extreme exception to this and attempted to destroy my reputation on various facebook groups, sent me messages with thinly veiled threats of violence and visited Amazon and left bad reviews for my books, none of which he has read. Anyway, I accept and understand his annoyance and frustration, but for the sake of forty three pounds which he can reclaim from my payments system, the response did seem more than a little extreme.
I just need to hope that the nonsensical reviews don't put too many people off of giving my books a try and I'll keep my fingers crossed that it won't be too long before positive reviews outweigh these ridiculous negative ones.
Talking of positive reviews, a Goodreads reviewer, Dion Perry read Night Time in Shanghai and left a nice four star review both on Goodreads, on Amazon.com and on my publishers website - thanks very much for this Dion - I hope you enjoy 'The Art of Living' when you can get around to it. It's pretty pacy compared to NTiS.
I'm going to carry on doing dSLR camera mods for a while at least. There's no outgoing expense with these, so they aren't affected by my cash-flow issues and as I've done nearly three thousand of them, so they are something I can do easily to provide myself with something of an income until I find other work or start getting royalty payments that I can actually live on.
To say that this time has been depressing is a massive understatement. I tend to disappear into a hole of self-doubt and it can be very hard to pull out of this - I watch Netflix all day and just feel sorry for myself. Fingers crossed that things improve soon - a very bleak winter awaits otherwise.
Location, location, location...
I've limited my travels over the last few weeks. I have quite a few friends in and around the Willington area so I've stayed on that stretch of the Trent and Mersey Canal though I do plan to move on in the next few days, continuous cruising rules being what they are. I haven't decided whether to go north or south yet. I like Fradley Junction (of the Trent and Mersey and Coventry Canals) and the pub there, The Swan, and I'd really like to head down to Hawkesbury Junction (of the Coventry and North Oxford Canals) and the pub there, The Greyhound, via Hartshill and one of my favourite pubs on any stretch, The Anchor in Hartshill, where Neil always provides a warm welcome, good food, good beer and lively conversation. But, I don't have the money either for three weeks travelling (OK, it's only a few days, but hey - stops, bad weather, plenty of places to visit on the way, etc.) or for spending on beer and food when I get there. So an alternative is to head back up towards Sawley and go and visit my sister Layla - this has the added advantage of keeping me in the area where I can go visit a few other members of my family so at least I won't starve, something that has been an issue recently.
About this time in my blog I'd normally add a recent pic, but I went for a midnight dip with my iPhone SE in my pocket which really didn't do it (or me) any favours. It heated up very rapidly indicating a massive short and hasn't worked since. Maybe I'll see if I can get it repaired at some time in the future, but in the meantime, I'm down to an old iPhone 4S. Me, on the other hand, I cooled down very rapidly (in heavy rain) and was surprised at how deep that section was - I struggled to get out and was a bit cut and bruised both by the fall and the effort to extricate myself from the clutches of the rather cold water. Anyway, here's an old pic of The Anchor at Hartshill, from last autumn. It would be nice to visit them again.
Anyway, on a positive note, this left me without internet for a few days so I did some...
Writing...
I was in the mood for some Proctor so I sat down and over the course of a week re-read and edited the twenty or so thousand words I've written so far in "Time Off", then added about ten thousand words - it's now up to thirty thousand. I'm sure I've mentioned in the past that the target for this book is eighty thousand words, so at the rate I'm currently adding to it, I doubt I'll finish it before Christmas, still you never know. Here's a quote from Chapter Six 'Flight and fight'.
"Proctor poured the last of the vodka into his shot glass and linked through a data node to the station's external cameras and watched as the liner detached and moved away from the axle, spinning end over end to align itself with some point on the far distant edge of the system. As he made his way back to the shuttle which would take him back down to the strip, a warp tunnel opened in front of the liner and it sped off towards the outer edge of the system. So he had maybe a dozen hours. In the back of his mind he briefly entertained the thought that she might in fact get away, but as he stepped on to the shuttle back down to a different part of the strip, he shook his head and dismissed the ridiculous idea.
Perhaps
it was because he was distracted, thinking about Amaneeta, or maybe
it was just the flask of synth vodka that he'd drunk in the last hour
that made him miss the monk that followed him on to the shuttle.
Whatever it was, he didn't see him. Maybe if he had seen him he
wouldn't have immediately paid him very much attention, but if he had
taken a second look, he would have recognised him. Not just for what
he was, he would have actually recognised him. In the same way that
he himself had been recognised. Instead, he just kept his head down
until the shuttle once more approached the strip. For some reason,
he didn't bother to link to the cameras out on the strip as the
shuttle settled to a stop and the doors slid open. Then it was too
late."
I think that, for now at least, I'll focus on 'Time Off', with everything else that's going on in my life. I know where I want to go with it and I know how I'm going to take it there and anyway, I enjoy ramming poor old Proctor into new and ever stickier situations, so maybe writing it will give me some release from the depression of real life.
Andy Ellis, 3 August 2017, Currently in Derby.
Andy Ellis, 3 August 2017, Currently in Derby.
