Well it's taken nearly seven months to get around to it, but finally an update!
In this post, I'm going to talk about the personal difficulties I've had (and continue to have) over the last year, books and writing and just general stuff about life.
So what's been going on in my life since I last put up a blog post?
In my last post, I said that my astronomy business had suffered badly due to lost deliveries, things going to the wrong addresses and general delays. Well, the cable side of my business has now disappeared. The camera side took a serious knock (along with my reputation), but I cleared all of the debts I had with my customers as quickly as I was able and cleared the debt that left me with my payments system. Camera modification work dropped off quite seriously and for a while I was trying (and failing) to get by on one or two jobs a month. My dad helped me out financially as much as he was able, so I just about managed to survive.
Over the course of the following months, with the onset of autumn and winter, the camera business started once more to grow, but it was very slow and patchy, and in the winter my heating costs go up to around thirty pounds a week. In December, my trusty generator failed and I went without heating or power for a few very cold days. Subsequently, I got very ill and ended up spending a couple of weeks with my dad recovering over Christmas. I have a new 650W two-stroke generator now which just about provides enough power to keep things running.
That doesn't mean my troubles are over - as I type this, I've run out of diesel for my boat's heater, so I'm sitting here in coat and hat, typing in fingerless gloves. Last night, the temperature dropped well below zero and it snowed on and off. I was tucked up warm in bed though - fully clothed in a three season sleeping bag under a fifteen tog duvet. Oh - my water tank (and my cat Lulu's water bowl) has frozen and my gas won't flow either. Hard, cold times. Once I get some diesel for the heater, the temperature inside the hull generally will rise and the water and gas will flow again. I warmed Lulu's dish up enough to get her water again anyway. It's snowing again now and has been for a while - tonight's probably going to be even tougher than last.
As it's the first of March tomorrow, and I get most jobs in at the start of the month, I'd expect to get a few payments in the next few days so I imagine I'll survive. That seems to be the basis of life at the moment - survival - but I've camped out in the Scottish winter (back in my winter mountaineering days) in temperatures down to minus twenty-two celsius, so I'm no stranger to this kind of advesity and generally speaking, over the last couple of months, when I've hit such levels of poverty, I've come through it in a few days.
So I get by on camera work which is currently giving me around £500 a month - hardly 'living the dream' but whatever. I could choose to give up my boat and get a council flat or something and start all over again, but as long as I can just about scrape by, I will. I chose this life and I'll stick at it. As I say, my camera work and reputation are well on the road to recovery, so hopefully I'll be able to start managing a little more easily soon. I don't need much for me and my cat.
Books and Writing.
Night Time in Shanghai and The Proctor Novels continue to sell, albeit quite slowly, and provide an occasional small top-up to my income. I've had a couple more reviews added to Amazon, and they are almost always five star. I'm sure I've said this before - I've read thousands of sci-fi novels down the years and only left a very few reviews, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that most readers do the same, but it's very difficult to get any recognition without reviews so please, please, please - if you have read any or all of my books - leave me some reviews on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.
Due to the other ongoing hardships of my life, it's been almost impossible to focus on writing and after short periods of writing in August and October of 2017, I came to a halt - surviving the winter took up all of my time. A couple of days ago, I decided to pick up 'Time Off - A Proctor Novel' and I've spent a couple of days re-familiarising myself with the story line and editing the first eight chapters (adding about 800 words). I could tell from what I had written that other things were taking precedence in my mind when I was last writing. Having said that, I like what I've written and the way the story is developing and the editing has been effective, so I'm now very pleased with it. Later today, I plan to get back to writing chapter nine, though it's a bit of a challenge in fingerless gloves and a coat. As soon as I've got something new, I'll try and add a quote. Hopefully, this will mark an end to my writing hiatus.
Andy Ellis, 28 February 2018, in a very cold and snowy Findern.
