Chris James's Blog, page 9

The new – improved – workbench and some butterflies

During the few weeks since my last blog post, I have had my annual vacation from my full-time job, and in future posts I’ll include more pictures from our travels this month. For today, I’m posting some nice shots of butterflies I caught in the Polish mountains. But before those, I’m going to inflict on you some more home improvements images. During my vacation time, I also managed to finish the workbench that featured in the previous post. To save you clicking back, here is how it looked then:

And here’s how it looks now (and yes, I do need all of those axes, saws and bolt-cutters):

Now, here are some pictures of a few lovely butterflies. Stay safe, peeps!

The new workbench and the dragonfly

Regular visitors to this blog may recall this post from the beginning of June, in which I laid a concrete floor in the old house and lamented the passing of time. After a few tough weeks at work, yesterday I finally had a day off and could build the workbench I’d been looking forward to building since I laid that floor (in the concreting pictures, you can just make out the metal supports for the legs of the workbench). My local builder’s merchant has a nice, large-ish vice that has my name on it. Finally, I’ll soon be able to organise all of my power- and hand-tools in one place, and there’s nothing like that feeling of satisfaction when things get properly organised.

So, I’m afraid you have to scroll through two pictures of the workbench before you get to this week’s beautiful garden pictures. Every week it seems like new flowers bloom and more little visitors arrive. Today, a pair of dragonflies came zipping by, one of which alighted on a garden stick for the few seconds I needed to snap him. Take care and have a good week you lovely people!

A few more summer pictures

It’s been crazy-busy here in the James household over the last few weeks. In addition to my full-time job and a few other jobs in the garden that are as much a part of summer as the strawberries and raspberries, I’ve also been busy picking my jaw off the floor at the reception The Endgame has enjoyed since publication a few weeks ago. Many, many thanks if you’ve been part of that and enjoyed the story. You are the reason I write.

I just have enough time to post here a few pictures from the garden today, drenched in warm summer sunshine! Take the best care of yourselves, you lovely people.

Summer in my garden

The hot weather arrived here in Warsaw yesterday, when the temperature rose above +30 degrees for the first time this year. After the proper-freezing-cold winter we had in January and February, it’s a wonderful contrast to be under a baking-hot sky once again. I will never stop appreciating the pleasure of experiencing such a wide range of weather conditions while living in the same place. Here are a few of the flowers in my garden today and a few shots of the chickens. These ladies have now matured and are delivering ten plump, delicious eggs a day, bless them!

The Endgame’s first week; concrete ain’t wot it used to be

After those colourful pictures of the rhododendrons last week, today I’ve got six photos–three pairs of before-and-after shots–which are altogether far grubbier. But before those: The Endgame has had an amazing first week, and many readers have been kind enough to leave ratings and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. If you’re one of them, thank you. This title has performed far better than I’d been expecting (and hoping!), spending most of the last seven days perched at #1 on three science fiction Hot New Releases charts in the UK and performing strongly in Best Sellers in its main category, Hard Science Fiction. And it looks nice with its siblings

But while that was going on, this week I found out the differences between laying a concrete floor when one is in one’s 20s, and doing so when one is in one’s 50s. At the back of our garden is an old house that has fallen into disrepair. One thing I needed to do was concrete the old kitchen floor to give us more storage room. It didn’t need to be beautiful; it didn’t need to be perfectly level. This is just as well, because it certainly is not either of those things. Fortunately, I had Son and Eldest Daughter to help me on the cement mixer, loading bag after bag of some awful, dusty, ready-mix “concrete”.

And that’s the other difference I discovered: despite driving around all of the local aggregate merchants, none had the right ballast for sale. Yes, I could buy the sand and stones separately and combine them myself before mixing with cement, but this would only add more effort to an already forbidding workload. A friend of Mrs James runs a local builder’s merchants and told us that everyone uses ready-mix “concrete” these days, so I decided to minimise the effort: it’s not like we’ll be living on this floor, it’s only for storage. But the one thing that hasn’t changed, and which never can, is the sheer weight of gear involved: two tonnes dry, plus a couple of hundred litres of water. When you tamp that lot down in your 20s, you feel exercised and satisfied; when you tamp that down in your 50s, you feel really bloody glad knowing that’s the last bloody concrete floor you’re ever going to bloody lay!

Publication day for The Endgame, two million thank-yous, and flowering rhododendrons

Today my new book, The Repulse Chronicles, Book Four: The Endgame, was published on Amazon. This is the first title of mine that hundreds of readers, in the plural, pre-ordered, and I have spent some moments during the last few weeks being faintly amazed at this response. If you were one of those, then you have my thanks and I hope you enjoy reading the novel as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you’re wondering, I think the series has three more full-length novels, and I will do my best to bring those to you as soon as I can.

I’m not given to authorly navel-gazing, especially in public on this blog, but my books’ gradually increasing readership is really very nice. A clear majority of readers who start at Book One: Onslaught go on to read the following books in the series, and if a writer needs any kind of validation or confirmation, then that is it, right there, when readers continue reading. It’s a feeling I never really expected to be able to enjoy when I started writing science fiction some 17 years ago, and it is as valuable and as appreciated as every sale and every page read.

Speaking of which, this week also saw my books reach another modest milestone:

Two million pages read by Amazon Prime members, which equal about 5,000 actual books. While this is not likely to cause the foundations of the literary establishment to shudder, I remain a lone, self-publishing independent author going up against the big boys—traditional publishing houses who can exercise real muscle in the marketplace that a relative unknown like me just doesn’t have. So, again, if you’re one of those Prime members who’s borrowed and read one of my books while Amazon may have urged you to click on the higher-profile trad books, you have my sincerest thanks.

Okay, did I say ‘Thank you’ to everyone now?

Meanwhile, in the last few days summer has arrived with the rhododendron in the front garden blooming. I love trying to photo the bumble bees as they go bananas collecting as much pollen as possible.

Take care, you lovely people, stay safe and thanks for reading.

Tulips, hens, cats, and the ticking clock

Here are a few shots of the garden today that show the fruits of Mrs James’s labour. Among these gorgeous flowers, our recently acquired hens roam while Splidge the kitten (already a year old this month!) decides if she could be bothered to try and chase a hen or just go back to sleep.

Meanwhile, editing on The Endgame continues into the fine-tuning stage, now with only three weeks left until publication day. The number of pre-orders keeps going up as the clocks ticks down, and has far exceeded expectations. So, no pressure

Stay safe and have a good week you lovely people!

Spring chickens, a cycling mishap, and The Free Electric Band

These have been busy weeks, friends, but editing on The Endgame continues apace ahead of its 30 May publication date. Despite everything else going on, some of which I relate below, the next novel is right on schedule. Huge thanks if you’ve already pre-ordered your copy.

Spring has finally arrived here after winter dragged its knuckles on its way out of the door. This week, Mrs James drove to an out-of-town market and picked up a dozen young hens. The first batch we bought three years ago, after much preparation, had mostly expired, with just two left, only one of which is still laying. These new arrivals should start laying in the next few weeks:

Also this week, I managed to fall off my bike when the metal frame holding the seat stem snapped off without warning. Fortunately, a large, steel lamppost was there for my knee to hit at about 15kmh as I lost my balance, and I landed on soft grass. The frame snapped because, being a person of normal height and not a pygmy like 95% of the world’s population, I had the seat stem raised almost to the maximum. If you look at the closest image of the stem below, you can just make out the word “MIN” etched into the black paint to a depth of at least a thousandth of a millimetre. Apparently, the stem should not have been raised out of the sleeve in the frame beyond that point. This meant that this bike should only be ridden by pygmies.

I suppose it says something about the quality of the engineering that in the nine months since I bought it, I rode over 5,200km with the seat that high before the metal frame failed. Now, as I wait patiently for the black marbling effect on my shin to fade, I can only think that if the Universe wants me to stop writing science fiction novels, it’s going to have to try a lot harder than that. Tsk.

Finally for this post, I want to share a couple of videos. Like a lot of people, when writing my books I listen to music on YouTube. Every now and again, it randomly throws out a gem from the past that I’d completely forgotten. Such was the case while writing The Endgame with a track called The Free Electric Band by Albert Hammond, whose biggest hit was probably It Never Rains in California. The first video is a studio performance on its release in 1973, although this undoubtedly features the original sound recording and is not performed live. Then in the second video, fast-forward 44 years to 2017, where we find Mr Hammond in a plush country pile somewhere in Germany with some orchestral support, still making a pretty good fist of his song (although, annoyingly, you have to click through to YouTube to watch the second video, and he starts 48 seconds in). Time is still the only god. Stay safe, people!

A belated Happy Easter

I am the first to admit that my blogging credentials leave quite a bit to be desired. I’m behind with a couple of things. For example, the new motorway whose construction I’ve been following and posting about here actually opened on 22 December last year. But a combination of writing and winter has meant that I just haven’t had the time to put together the main before-and-after picture post I’d planned three years ago. And the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of editing The Endgame.

However, this morning Mrs James insisted we go for a walk in a nature reserve a half-hour drive to the south of Warsaw. So, here are a few pictures from that. I hope you’ve had a happy and restful Easter, and of course would like to say ‘Thank you’ to everyone pre-ordering The Endgame, which I can confirm is well on the way to reaching a publishable condition.

The Endgame: release date and pre-order links

The completion of a new novel leads to a lot of what I call “book admin”. The first and most important issue is the cover. The cover for The Endgame didn’t take long because I had it visualised in my head for some time while writing it, so I only had to play around for a few hours to create it. But in addition to that, all other aspects of my online presence need work. So, I have to update my biography for my website and Amazon, add the new cover to my header images and replace them on all social media platforms, and then let all of you know that the next book is on the way.

The Repulse Chronicles, Book Four: The Endgame will be published on Amazon’s Kindle on 30 May. The paperback will likely be available a few days before then. As regular readers will know, the special introductory pre-order price is $2.99 (or equivalent), because if you’re that keen to get your hands on it, I’m delighted to let you have it at a cheaper price. That price will stay until 30 days after publication, which is as long as Amazon will keep the book on its Hot New Releases chart, before going up to the usual list price for my novels of $4.99.

If you’d like to pre-order The Endgame, click on these country links: United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, India.

Thanks for reading and stay safe, you lovely people.