Home is the Sailor

Home is the Sailor will be released January 1st, 2015. Set in 1802, during the temporary peace that followed the Treaty of Amiens, it follows the voyage of an ex-blockade runner turned West Indies mail packet from London to Kingston. This excerpt sets the stage:

“The need for absolute secrecy ashore means we can only vouch for half the crew. Our Billy Boy, as Barnaby calls him, could have planted a spy as insurance. Everything so far, indicates he’s fallen for the ruse. We don’t want anything to alert him and a spy on board could bring us undone. Guillaume d’Ardenne must not escape to prey on other ships and the destruction of the privateers-turned-pirate is a valuable blow for England before hostilities resume.”

Isabella relaxed back in her chair with a nod and Tristan rose to his feet, a signal for the others to rejoin them. She was aware of two searching examinations of her face, but chose not to respond, her mind racing to adjust to this new situation. She had to admire Nepean’s cunning. The Spritely wouldn’t have been the only one to sail under sealed orders. He’d dispatched at least one frigate to carry the messages and pay chest to the Admiral commanding the West Indies station. The Spritely would draw the pirates north and clear the normal shipping lane to the Caribbean, freeing yet another patrolling frigate. This was no last second plan, but a carefully constructed stratagem with everything taken into account. Her presence onboard would give credence to using the Spritely as the pay chest carrier. Guillaume d’Ardenne would suspect Nepean of being over-clever, because it was how he would have acted in his place, willing to sacrifice anyone to achieve his goal. Barnaby had hinted as much in his description of the man as a modern day Kublai Khan.

The American provided the expertise in getting the best from the Spritely and Tristan was its fighting heart. Nepean had given them the men and the tools to succeed, with Barnaby as his reliable messenger, his friendship with Tristan a plus. She was just window dressing, although Nepean had checked her out to see if she’d be a burden or an asset. It wouldn’t surprise her to learn Nepean knew of her childhood friendship with Tristan. He was a spider, spinning webs of entrapment from his store of knowledge.

Were it not for the threat to her burgeoning love, she might even admire him.

 

The evolution of a story

A Maritime Tragedy is my first contemporary sea story written entirely since my retirement. All the others had their first drafts written while I was on board various ships over the years. It had its beginnings in my distaste for a genuine tragedy high jacked by a union campaign against cabotage (in this case the transport of cargos between two ports in the same country by foreign registered ships). The misinformation they used irritated me at the time. It was too simplistic and focused entirely on their cause, ignoring the reality behind the sinkings. My first draft was technically accurate, based on the most probable scenario, given the known facts. It introduced the necessary characters and had them play their parts as they would in real life. Its only function now is a skeleton for a story.
One of the characters stepped forward in my mind as someone I might have known and his story became the real Maritime Tragedy. A good man, he does his best, but external circumstances overwhelm him in the end.
It happens.
I look forward to seeing this one published because it involves me enough that I am writing the ending reluctantly, even if the underlying love story endures.

Downsizing has arrived

From this

to this

After thirty-five years in a house on a quarter-acre block we are moving to a stand-alone unit on a block one third the size. From four bedrooms plus a fully self-contained bungalow to three, much smaller, bedrooms.
It will be much easier for us to manage and leave more time for my writing.
There is no doubt that we will miss many things about the old house, but the new one suits our needs so much better.

Reality

"Coasting" didn't win an EPIC award, but that's all right. It made it to the finals and perhaps "The Sapphire Sea" will do better next year.
We've survived the first open inspection of our home and looked at possible replacements without success. Building standards have changed over the fifty years since our home was built, the rooms are impossibly small and the whole thing is built with an eye to cost rather than quality.
I sound like an old man, but that's all right too, because I am.
It's about time I claimed the privilege's of age. I've become far too aware of the downsides this past year of illness.
All that aside, I'm deep in research for the beginnings of the Caribbean Odyssey begun with "Home is the Sailor". My immediate source is a book I bought in a second hand book store in my early teens. First published in 1927, it is a biography of Sir Francis Drake. Written in a very scholarly fashion by an E.F.Benson, it was an immediate favourite of mine because of its dry humour. The fact that it was undoubtedly cheap helped at the time.
Benson quotes many contemporary sources and suggests compromises where they conflict, always based on his assessment of the characters involved. I can remember laughing out loud at some of his conclusions when I was young and they are just as amusing now. This is not to challenge their probable rightness but to appreciate the wit with which they were expressed. I would have enjoyed sitting in a pub with Benson and talking about Drake, adding my seaman's insights to his scholastic knowledge.
A brief experimentation with the Cornish dialect and I've fallen back on hinting at it while writing the dialogue in modern English like the rest of the book. This is the part of writing I enjoy most, the broad outline of the story is clear in my mind and I'm just building the details into it.
Bon voyage!

A very good year!

The downsizing is in full swing, photographs, brochures, for sale board and open inspection of our home (we have to go for a walk for half an hour while strangers walk through our home opening cupboards etc.)
All that aside, the announcement of the winners in the EPIC Awards is less than twenty-four hours away and Coasting is in with a chance. The recognition of your writing by writing peers is very sweet.
The Sapphire Sea is a Rone Award nominee! Another plaudit from my writing peers. It still has a long way to go, with public voting in the Contemporary group open from March 17th - 23rd. If you'd like to look at the field and perhaps vote, the link is:

http://indtale.com/2014-rone-awards-week-two

 

Here are the two books and you can read their reviews at

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B009JBDXPA

 

 

 

David Andrews

Ancient Mariner - Teller of Tall Tales

Downsizing

A made up word for a process connected to aging.
We've lived in our present home for thirty-five years. It's comfortable, familiar and we've adapted to it completely, but a year of illness (first one, then the other) has shown us that the garden we love is beyond our physical abilities to maintain and do all the other things we do for ourselves and our children. It made the decision for us.
The first step was de-cluttering our home and its environment and that took a four cubic metre dumpster, a two cubic metre hard rubbish collection and a multitude of visits to the Salvation Army Thrift shop.
Then came the interviews with Real Estate Agents, assisted by a son-in-law with more experience in Real Estate than either of us. Private Sale or Auction? Which Real Estate Agent? How much commission? How to market the property? Open Inspections?
 Yesterday we signed an exclusive sale authority with the agent we chose and last night my mind would not shut down, re-examining the process over and over. Eventually exhaustion took charge and I slept.
This morning I woke, bleary-eyed and grumpy and She, who must be obeyed reminded me of something I've said so often to others, "What's done is done. Get on with it!"
A laudable sentiment that is a little harder to act upon at seventy-six.
I shall try.

A new start

A new title, a new background picture and me under my real name. Amy has served her purpose for the moment, introducing me to eleven different editors and six publishers. Writing under her name allowed me to polish my craft to the point where I could do justice to the stories I wanted to tell about ships and men as I knew them in my forty-five years in the maritime industry.
The background picture, taken from the bridge of a ship called the Selkirk Settler looks dangerous, but it isn't. The most interesting thing about it is how far the hull has flexed under the impact of the wave. Follow the lines of the deck visible aft and you will see how far the stubby foremast on the fo'csle has shifted to the right of the center-line. The mast is almost 150 metres (500 feet) from the bridge and has moved 4-5 metres off the center-line. It is not an abnormal flexing of a ship this size.

What's happening now?

The Sapphire Sea was released in November, 2013, and has already garnered eleven reviews on its Amazon page. Most of them are four stars and above and even the one at three stars praised the story-telling.
Coasting is a finalist in the 2014 EPIC competition and the winner will be announced on March 15th.
I have signed two contracts with Eternal Press:
Home is the Sailor is set during the brief peace that followed the signing of the Treaty of Amiens  in 1802 and follows the voyage of an ex-blockade runner from London to Jamaica as it runs the gauntlet of privateers turned pirate and the machinations of Evan Nepean, Fouche` and Tallyrand; and
Timor Phoenix, which follows the operation of a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) facility in the Timor Sea in 1999. It is fiction firmly based on my own experience.
There is no cover art or release date for either book yet.
I am working on another sea story set around the Ships of Shame campaign in the mid 1980s, following the loss of a number of aging bulk carriers with cargoes of iron ore around the east coast of southern Africa. Unfortunately, this is on hold for a while as we downsize our home of the last thirty-five years to something more manageable for a couple in their mid seventies.

David Andrews
Ancient Mariner - Teller of Tall Tales

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.

Offshore become The Sea Sapphire

In the days after my last post it dawned on me that the centre of the story was the ship rather than the personnel and I started to have doubts about the title. It's happened before. "Mitchell's Run" began life under another title, so did "The First Born". As with the others, changing the title changed my perception of the story, opening up possibilities I'd not considered before.
Apart from the prologue, the story begins with the introduction of the ship and will now end with the aftermath of the sinking described in the prologue. This was my original outline and the name change gives me the chance to cover other aspect of offshore operations.

Offshore

I began writing Offshore in 1982 while working on offshore supply and anchor-handling boats in Australia, both off the North-West coast and in Bass Strait. Originally it was little more than a series of notes written at odd moments and was intended to follow the members of a normal nine-man crew of one swing. I put the notes together into a story after I published my first romance novel in 1999, but there they languished until after Coasting was accepted for publication at the beginning of 2012.
I opened the story file while deciding whether to continue with the third volume of The Alliance series of science fiction/fantasy or continue with the semi biographical sea story theme started by Coasting.
The story I created in 1999 was simple and linear, beginning with a prologue in which the central ship had sunk and ending at the same point when the story of it came to happen ended. I started writing with that  and the outline of the nine characters in mind.
Other characters emerged as I wrote, some drawn from memory and others created by the story itself. A few elbowed the original characters aside, supplanting them in importance and changing both the flow and direction. I kept them disciplined for a while, but today I gave up and gave them their head.
I admit to having little Idea where the story will lead now, but I am enjoying the journey more.

The best review ever

I sent a copy of "Coasting" to a contemporary of mine who was at sea, on different ships to me, in 1975. He rang me yesterday and spent almost an hour on the phone telling me how exactly I'd captured the era and how much he'd enjoyed the story. "I felt I was sitting there watching it happen,"he said. "I remember the ship you based the Dargo on and the number of times I cursed that damned control air system."
We chuckled together about remembered incidents at the "Breckie Creek" hotel and at "Cleo's" in Fremantle, reliving our relative youth in its more madcap moments.
When the call ended, I sat for some time, grinning my pleasure at the compliments he'd paid me in enjoying the book so much and thinking it so true.
It was what I'd set out to do in 1972.

The Coasting Contest is live at Coffee Time Romance

Eternal Press released Coasting on August 1st and Coffee Time Romance are running a competition on their contest page . The prize is a download of the book and a $25 Coffee Time Romance voucher to spend in their book store. The answers are on the Coasting page of my websites

The following excerpt doesn't have the answers, but you might enjoy it anyway.

Doug’s mind wandered. His snatches of sleep since the boiler failed  were not enough and tiredness was a leaden weight on his shoulders. He'd husbanded the others as much as he could but there’d always been something urgent he had to do immediately.

Things had steadied now. Around him, everyone did their jobs and his focus drifted. It would be tempting to find a seat somewhere and sit for a while.

He reacted slowly to Taff’s sudden movement and incoherent shout. It was not till the man’s hand closed on the live bar that he shouted, “No, Taff, don’t!”

It was too late. The alternating current constricted the tendons and Taff’s hand locked itself around the bar. He gave a weird wavering wail and appeared to dance a jig about the bar. Doug caught the whiff of burning flesh and it galvanized him into action. He took two running steps and swung his right foot in a mighty kick to break Taff’s deadly grip.

The jolt of the current wiped out his mind before he knew if he’d succeeded

Edits

I have always enjoyed the interaction with an editor in the publishing process of a book or story. We are both committed to producing the very best telling of the story, but come at it from different directions.
Every editor I've worked with has been different and I've learned from each of them. It was my initial purpose in seeking publication, gaining the services of editors to help me learn to write better. The current book is no different.
The cultural difference between the US and Australia are fertile grounds for editors and Coasting has produced some classic examples like Smoko and Larrikin.
Other differences are more subtle. Handguns are not readily available in Australia and were even less so in 1974. So a hit man who patiently modifies a cheap, more readily available, .22 calibre rifle for each kill, disposing of the parts afterwards, seemed strange to my American editor. Especially when he compensated for the lightweight, hollow point, projectile by turning the cut down and silenced rifle into a machine pistol that emptied the fifteen shot magazine at the squeeze of a trigger. (I admit to having done the same modification when I was young, just to prove it could done and not to kill fellow humans.) It is a brutally effective and discreet killing weapon, inaudible except at close range. Its design facilitates breaking it down and scattering the parts afterwards--a valuable asset for the careful hit man.
It's all part of the fun of writing.