Writing Limbo

Twelve weeks has never seemed so long. I had shingles in my left arm and it left me with continuing neuralgia and effective medication has proved elusive. The side effects kick in before each one has reduced the pain to manageable levels so we keep trying different ones. Currently, if I do nothing, I can just cope. Ten minutes of typing are rewarded with several hours of increased pain.
I had to bail out of the edits of The Sapphire Sea because I couldn't type and this put the release date back to November and I'm reduced to editing what I've already written of my current WIP in very short bursts. I cannot remember another period in which I have achieved so little.
I began by reminding myself of my contemporaries with much more serious ailments and this worked for a while (It still does on a conscious level). The next stage was how fortunate I was not to be suffering the same condition before modern medicine--another attempt to impose conscious control. I still kid myself that being able to write would allow me to relegate the pain to unimportance, but I'm beginning to wonder.
I've endured discomfort before and broken through pain barriers to achieve what had to be done, but it seems age reduces that ability.
Damn it!!

A slight hiccup with the edits

My original editor folded her tent and departed in the night without completing the edits and we are beginning again with a familiar editor and the deadline of August 1st looming ever closer.
Fingers crossed, we'll make it.
At worst, the release date will slip back to November 1st.
Wish me luck.

I remember reading Paul Gallico's original version of "The Poseidon Adventure" and being impressed by the lengths he went to in explaining why the ship turned over. It made his subsequent ignorance of the basic physics that the pressure of the air inside the ship must be greater than the atmosphere outside it all the more surprising. I couldn't believe that so experienced and effective a writer would overlook the dramatic consequence that would force the survivors into blocking off the escape route by closing the watertight door at the shaft tunnel entrance and turning the space into an air lock.
(We can draw a polite veil of silence over the subsequent film versions, and the most recent rendering of the "Titanic" disaster was painful to watch.)
In the last month or so, the intervention of friends has brought "Coasting" to the attention of former shipmates, fellow seafarers whose opinions I respect and men who were at sea in the period it covers (the mid 1970s). They have been unanimous in their praise of the story-telling and the accuracy with which I have captured the sea-going era we shared. They are all looking forward to the release of "The Sapphire Sea" in August.
Their good opinion validates my writing in a way no other group could achieve, especially as many stood on the opposite side in past battles.
David Andrews (who learned to write well as Amy Gallow)

Whiskey Creek Press have released "Mitchell's Run and there is more information at the following http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1114&zenid=d7dc70facc0b80e30e787fa56880863c
They've included the first chapter as a teaser and it sets up the story quite nicely by showing the conflict between her experience with Andrew Mitchell and reality as she understands it.
This is the first book I published as Amy Gallow, back in 1999, and the last of her early stories to make it into e-book format.
I'm not sure that Amy will write more books. She's published eighteen stories in books and magazines and given me the services of eleven different editors to hone my writing craft. It's allowed me to write confidently in a different genre, telling stories about the forty years I spent at sea and exploring my love of alternate universes, but you never know. I might yet get an idea that only she can write..
David Andrews (writing as)

I have been incredibly fortunate in my cover artists and Amanda Kelsey has done nothing to break the run. The ship in the foreground is larger and newer than the Sapphire Sea in the story but that is apparent only to experienced seamen. I have been accused of seeing the world only in shades of blue so the whole thing looks perfect to me.
The back cover blurb of the book reads:
" She was old, bordering on obsolescence, under-powered and small. Her crew were the last scrapings of the barrel, a mixture of drunks, old hands and new chums, yet the Sapphire Sea carried as many hopes and dreams on her last voyage as the most modern of her cousins in the Timor Sea.

Join her in Singapore and set sail with the others on her final charter. They won’t mind your company and you’ll glimpse a way of life experienced only by those who have the good fortune to experience it.

From that you can guess I enjoyed my time on the supply boats.

Mitchell's Run has its cover art and Eternal Press have accepted The Sapphire Sea

Gemini Judson has excelled herself again, changing my mind picture of Andrew/Drew Mitchell completely. I've been incredibly fortunate in my experiences with cover artists and this one is no exception.
The Sapphire Sea has begun its voyage to publication at Eternal Press. No cover art or release date yet.
Another great year of writing is under way.

You're the best thing that ever happened to me

Saturday is our golden anniversary, yet our first meeting seems less than the blink of an eye ago, the result of a series of improbable coincidences that still make me smile. Everything that has happened since became inevitable at that moment. I do not believe in fate, divine intervention or love at first sight, but I could make a good case for each phenomena from our lives together.
I would wish for another fifty years together, but it is difficult to imagine being one hundred and twenty-five.
Thank you.

L'envoi

When I retired from the offshore oil industry in 1997 I sought the services of publishers and editors by writing romance as I learned my craft. My first publisher insisted that I write as a woman and Amy Gallow was born. Amy's last book will be released by Whiskey Creek Press in May and I will continue to write under my own name as I explore areas other than romance.
To prove tha I have not entirely abandoned romance, this is an excerpt from "The Sapphire Sea" a tale leading to the final voyage of  a anchor handling/supply boat working in the Timor Sea.

Malcolm woke to the pre-dawn glow from the east and found himself alone in the bed. Tracey was standing naked at the open door leading to the balcony, her raised hands resting on either side of the frame, one foot slightly advanced as if she were about to step outside. She’d raised herself on her toes to peer over the edge of the balcony down into the deserted streets. If Malcolm survived to be old and grey, he was certain that this picture would be as clear in his mind then as it was now.

“Good morning,” he said.

She turned her head to look at him. “It is,” she agreed.

“Come back to bed?” He lifted the sheet to invite her in.

“You’re very ambitious,” she teased. “Wasn’t last night enough?”

“A thousand nights wouldn’t be enough,” he countered chivalrously.

“I won’t ask you to prove that, but the thought is delicious.” She crossed the room and slipped under the bedclothes with him.