Too Big for its Blogge

24^th June 2018

I hold a record! As of last Saturday it is possible that I am the most acupunctured man in England, certainly the most that that particular practitioner has ever used. But then I did tell her to shove them anywhere if it helps. I was in the fallout of a terrible injury to my arm and hand and shoulders following a fallout with my lawnmower as to whether or not it was going to start. It did but my goodness it was angry about it. I’ve actually spent more money in repairing myself from the mower than it cost me to buy that wretched self drive first place. It was too big for the gardening round that was its task. It was too big for its boots. It has been retired.

But I’m back off the bench and my shoulders feel great. Well, they’re alright, but they were great just after all the prickly business. Anna asked me how I felt when she came to pick me up and I said I felt good enough to punch a tree. She told me that she was driving us home.

And so… The Brine in Me is complete from my end. The cover designer has come-on-down with a fascia that blows the tone right out of the water. Doubly impressive since the entire cover is set amongst a river. Well done James. I have been asked about selecting cover designers and I say find the ones with the responsible sounding names.

Otherwise it’s down to proofing, formatting and a last minute decision to throw in a couple of sample chapters from the next novel at the end. After The End but before those blank pages right at the back that are only there to fill in some other formatting conundrum that I’m not really privy to. It’s done on a different computer.

That being the state of play, and what with having taken a week off work to rest my grievances, I found time for the sort of introspection about the process that really gets in the way of getting words written. I’m back at work now but I’ll spin that record one more time.

I started this book, so I finished it. Perhaps sadly, I have possibly finished it too late for it to impress upon the mind of the man who was embossed on mine when I first thought of the book and committed myself to it in the space of one walk up and down my study (the floors). That would have been July of 2016, would make it about two years work with the original draft taking up just under half of that. I should say thank you to Anna and my editor, Katherine at this point. I do already, just to be clear, but it’s tough to keep up. For instance Anna will take these words and turn them into an actual electronic blogge. I don’t want to know about how that happens, but I’m impressed that it does and thank you very much my love. Yes I would like a cup of coffee, thank you.

So the person that was a launch pad from where I would release The Brine in Me, he’s not got any legs left. Now I know what you’re thinking, and no he can’t still read it without his legs because the dear soul has lost further marbles in the absence of having schemes, because of the incident with not having enough legs left to carry out those schemes. So when I think about it, having completed the work, I was too late. I’d probably already missed the mark by a good ten years. I’d missed it by twenty to be honest, but I was too foolish to know what he was getting at twenty years ago. I just used to smash a tennis ball against his wall because it had a decent lawn around it. I smashed through his pantry window once and he wasn’t short of marbles that day, or language. Over the years he’s forgiven me, and spilled the beans about the olde sea stuff that gets handed down even though most of it seemed to be made up in the first place. That’s what I like best about people, about writing in general – the making it all up; that crutch of all things.

It might be for the best that he mightn’t have the marbles left to read what I have done with the prescribed sea mythologies. Turned it into something of a quietly rambunctious Sunday evening is what I have done as far as I can tell. It’s what I was going for having written the feral party of the previous Saturday night with The Meifod Claw. You just need to work out which evening of the weekend you like best and I’ll have you sorted out. You want a Friday night? I’m working on that one. Come back a year next Friday.

Here’s a little from the Brine in Me, Derek’s old motifs already well set by his thirties.

‘The day after buying Mistral, I took the engine out and brought the sucker back to one of Moley’s barns to begin a quick exercise in one of my favoured hobbies: general engine maintenance. No time on land can be better spent than by preparing to go back out to the water, and this time I was excited as it would be under my own guidance, my own vessel. I wasn’t quite the admiral, but I was certainly no longer the deckhand. As I went about my fettling, old thoughts of Jerry crept into my mind – thoughts of his passing, the passing of his business stall to me. I hoped he would be proud, but I was also happy to know that there was nothing he could do about it anyway.’

The Brine in Me will be available soon as soon comes. If you fancy yourself an advance copy for review posting to Amazon or your favourite book site, feel free to get in touch electronically.

Young man crazy, old man wise. Some just steal, some just jive…
JW Bowe xx

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If you enjoyed this blog, and you’re impatient for something else to read, feel free to bunch up close to a free sample chapter from JW Bowe’s debut novel, The Meifod Claw, which is available now at Amazon, iTunes and on various other international eReaders.

You can also double up your sampling by following this link to the forthcoming fictional autobiography of The Meifod Claw’s wheelchair-in-chief, Derek Gainsborough. His life and apologies will be released this year under the sail of The Brine in Me.

JW Bowe can also be unearthed on YouTube and in various other ways through the Serious Biscuits homepage. Scroll down for further links, action and disclaimers.

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