All systems go?

I've signed the contract and I believe Emma the Agent has as well, so just waiting for the publisher. I've seen a new proposal for the front cover, which both Emma and I like so that's pretty much settled, and I've sent a short 'bio' and an even shorted 'dedication' for the book.

/www.vamptasypublishing.co.uk/


So now we wait. I'm hoping that the book will be coming out this week. If I understand correctly it will be possible to download the book directly from the publisher in pdf format which a Kindle reader automatically converts. At least, that's what I thought I understood from the publishers website.
Now for yet another Sunday Lunch. I'm really not too sure where this last week has gone. Oh yes, work on a follow-on book is progressing reasonably well. I've edited what was already written and researched a few more ideas so the story is reasonably clear in my mind.
I've not heard anything from Latitudes & Attitudes magazine yet, but early days. The Guernsey Press ran an article on me that was basically lifted from my blog, http://blog.mailasil.com/troutbridge but unfortunately they didn't get it quite right. They have promised to print a follow-up article on August 2nd, with corrections. We'll see!

Exciting stuff!

I now have a slightly amended contract following a couple of questions I put to Emma the Agent. I've also seen a proposed mock-up of the front cover, which both Emma and I felt was a lacking a certain 'je ne sais quoi', so a counter-suggestion has been made.
Timescale? I should email the signed/scanned contract within the next twenty four hours, so presumably by the middle of the week it will have been counter-signed by all other parties. I think the book will be available fairly shortly after that in e format and if 'things' are encouraging in paper form two months after that.
Today really will be 'Roast Beef on Sunday'. The weekday chef at the Marina Restaurant has been persuaded to work Sundays to produce an 'English Sunday Lunch'. He was a cook in the British Army for eight years so he can 'do the biz'. Probably won't be as good as mine of course (NO comments from any ex-crew required, thank you), but sadly it will be a while before I'm cooking on Troutbridge (unless of course about thirty thousand of you decide to buy the book, in which case I might be in Australia by Christmas.....just kidding....no I'm not, buy it, you'll love it!)
Hey Ho, back to the magazine article, which I've provisionally titled 'The cost of a long blink'. Blinking high, is the answer to that!

I have a contract!

Great news, this morning Emma the Agent emailed a contract, so todays 'boat jobs' will be primarily printing off a copy, signing it, scanning it and emailing it back. Then I guess I'd better post off a hard copy.
The book will be initially published in e format, and available in Kindle/Ipad & pdf formats. If all goes well, some two months after that it will be available in 'paper format' and will be carried by Amazon and other major retailers.
Right, so now this weekend I need to finish the article I am aiming at a couple of sailing magazines then review what I've written so far of the follow-on book, which Emma feels the publisher would also like to carry.
Other works will be easier to sell once I have some sort of track record. Good news indeed, but no champers just yet, there's a lot of books to sell before my home is afloat again and I can continue my adventures in the Pacific. Hopefully, I've already experienced all the really exciting adventures and I'll be able to enjoy peaceful sun-downers with convivial company in quiet anchorages.
The publishers web site is being upgraded right now, but the address is:
http://www.vamptasypublishing.co.uk/

Thanks doesn't begin to cover it.

Carolyn & Andy are off early tomorrow morning, so we had a farewell lunch/beer and they dropped me off back at Rose & Vince's, nobody likes protracted goodbyes. All I can say is that a lot of 'boat jobs' have got done over the last two weeks that most likely wouldn't have been done and the boost to my morale has been immense.
So, today was spent mainly collecting my Mac from the Apple dealer then returning it when I found the the 'o' & '9' keys didn't work. I have to go back tomorrow to pick it up, by a combination of 'shanks' pony' and taxi rather than hire car!
Tomorrow then is Apple day and 'drop off the davit for repair' day. That will probably do it, but I'll most likely remove if not clean the headlining in my cabin.
Now pay attention, although I'm certain that I'll be saying this more than once in the not too distant future. I'm pretty damn certain that I'm going to have to find gainful employment, doing something somewhere in the World.
Flying is out because it would take too long/cost too much to reactivate my medical and licence then find a job (:
Standing under a lampost is out because at 6p a go it would take forever to raise what I think I'm going to need :)
Anything else would be considered anywhere where I can legally work. Apart from the obvious menial jobs I reckon I can turn my hand to pretty much anything, maybe something in the writing line?
Anybody got any ideas/jobs? Please contact me at either email address



Fiji: +679 9212518
http://www.blog.mailasail.com/troutbridge

Interesting News

A publishing house has liked and expressed interest in 'A Man out of Time'. Emma the agent tells me that subject to her vetting it, a contract will be issued in July. The plan is that the book will be published in E format initially and if it's well received then a paper version will follow.
Until the contract is a 'done deal' I won't mention who it's with, but all costs are to be met by the publisher so this is not any form of vanity/self publishing.
Good news at last. I've also been told to crack on with the follow-on book, so my current project is going onto the back-burner. Hopefully, now that the news on the boat-front is also brighter, I'll be able to start writing this weekend, or at least during next week.
The LeMesurier book is still doing the rounds, but Trembling Tim needs some editing.

And the opening lines of the next book are

T'wasn't a particularly dark night, except when the rain squalls came through and the low clouds obscured the leading lights nestling in the fetid hills above Suva. Nor was it particularly stormy, depending on one's definition of stormy of course; three metre seas and twenty-odd knots of wind weren't particularly uncomfortable, following the boat as they were, but heading into them would be a different matter.

On the beach in Fiji

The title might sound entrancing, unfortunately the truth is in attempting to enter Suva harbour early last Monday morning (23rd) I put the boat up on a reef. She is still there as attempts to float her off have been unsuccessful thus far. There is a 'bigger tide' at the end of the month when we may meet with success. More on my sailing blog http://blog.mailasail.com/troutbridge.
In the meantime......let's see what adsense makes of me being in Fiji instead of in New Zealand.

A cracking good read

An old friend (about three months older I think) has written a cracking yarn which he has published as a Kindle ebook. Sea Skimmer is based on his experiences as a pilot in the Falklands conflict and there may be more truth in this than is officially admitted! Be that as it may, I thoroughly recommend it. Enjoy!
If the link doesn't work check out 'Sea Skimmer' on Amazon.

A small, slow step forwards

The 'reading group' liked Dr Augustus Pierre LeMesurier and subsequently so did Emma the Agent. A final proof read then after the Easter break off to a couple of publishers. As always a slow process, I'm told that it will take three to four months to get a reply. First up I think is a publisher in Australia who has international links (so published and marketed world-wide ~ I hope:), they will accept electronic submissions. In tandem three chapters will be sent to another publisher who will only accept hard-copy (and a maximum of three chapters, initially).
A long drawn-out process. In the meantime 'DCI Karno' is busy solving several murders and is proving fun to write. Provided I don't get too distracted in Fiji (setting sail from New Zealand in about ten days, weather allowing) I should finish the book in about three months.
Still desperately searching for Susan, John, or anybody who can 'do' cartoon-type drawings to illustrate Tim. Oh yes, and I see that people are reading the blog (in some rather unexpected places) so please do take a moment to tick one of the boxes or post a comment and let me know what you think.

Grass does not grow under my feet!

Do I do anything else apart from writing? Well that would be telling! Be that as it may, a taster of the latest 'tome'. Let me know what you think.
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A beautiful early evening in late August; the sort of evening that middle-aged people think that every evening in late August was like when they were young, only usually of course they weren’t. Mind you those same people looking at photos of themselves taken at the same time as those misremembered beautiful evenings in late August always seem to remark that somehow or other they miraculously look slimmer, chicer and altogether more attractive than they felt themselves to be at the time the photos were taken, which only goes to prove that either most middle-aged people need to visit an optician as a matter of some urgency or they missed an awful lot of opportunities when they were younger.
Sitting on a quaint but uncomfortable and guano-encrusted wooden bench in the trying to be family friendly garden of the “The Cocked Pistol’, an old Cornishire smuggling pub situated in a picturesque small river valley surrounded by gently rolling heavily-wooded hills and built in the 1950’s complete with thatched roof, authentic oak-type beams and a tourist-attractive history that was total bollocks but nevertheless highly imaginative and vaguely entertaining, a slightly rotund pixie-like figure five and a half feet tall, not athletically built with a bald pate and a one inch wide band of hair running around his head starting from his temples and meeting at the back was taking a reflective sip of his pint of ‘Fetid Old Socks’ and looking at just such a photo, taken on just such an evening. Detective Chief Inspector Leon Karno, inevitably ‘Fred’ to his schoolmates and contemporaries at Hendon when he joined the force, ‘Guv’ to those detectives who worked under his somewhat quixotic direction in the Cornishire CID and ‘bastard’ to a fairly impressive number of local and not so local villains in Cornishire saw that the photo revealed a much younger but still recognisable Fred Karno and a mate, William Hiscock, whose cremation he had just attended. He and ‘Wild Bill’ had been quite the local lads, able to out drink all of their contemporaries and still stand up after six (occasionally claimed to be sixteen) pints of the local cider known as scrumpy; they had all the best chat-up lines, most of which Karno fondly remembered as starting with a cheerful ‘ello my luvver’; he also remembered that usually the hoped-for romantic encounters ended with a friendly riposte of ‘my friend says why don’t you fuck off and stop bothering her!’ Bolstered by this early success with the opposite sex, Karno had got a haircut and graduated from the police training college at Hendon eventually to join the CID; Wild Bill had graduated from the local scrumpy and eventually became a fully-fledged alkie and professional ‘gentleman of the road’, although they kept in irregular touch whenever Karno’s beat took him past whatever hedge Wild Bill was currently residing in. Middle age respectively found the two old pals a DCI and a DOA, Wild Bill having been found under a chic hedge in a more upmarket part of Cornishire clutching a half-empty bottle of meths, his preferred tipple of later years.