A novel and daring adventure starts at 7 pm today
Blazing Reader,
Today, my son Jonah and I fly out at 7 pm for our new home in the Netherlands. We'll arrive at 7 am local time, then take a train to the south of the tiny country (I'm used to living in Canada — and it's really big) where my wife Ina will pick us up at the train station (I hope she doesn't forget).
On Sunday, at 4:30 pm, I (barely) finished the last recording of the Much Ado About Corona audiobook at the local recording studio — the last 2.5-hour session involved 95 retakes. When I arrived home, I shifted into emergency packing mode.
Yesterday, the overseas moving company was here, and it was twelve hours of work clearing out this two-bedroom apartment. My life's possessions went on a truck to Toronto, where it'll be put on a train to Montreal, then a boat across the Atlantic, where it'll be intercepted by pirates, and stored in a cave on a deserted island, while a carrier pigeon sends me a ransom note.
My neighbour gave me a card which summed up this adventure rather well: "magical wedding," "a new family," "crossing the ocean, "a totally new home."
Margaret didn't mention the whole new language bit. She did, however, add: "Phew, you don't do things in a small way..." and that it all sounds like a "story in a book." Or a novel.
Nobody reads novels for a safe and comfortable story. They read novels for something novel and daring. Maybe writing so many novels has made me more novel and daring. Or maybe I always was, and that's why I write novels.
Oh, did I mention tomorrow is my birthday? I'll be arriving in my new home as the sun marks my 47th year on God's round, flat and/or concave earth (depending on which theory you prefer). If you'd like to help me celebrate and support this rather novel, daring and expensive move, you can buy one (or both) of my novels (for yourself, a friend or your local library):
Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story The world's best-selling novel exposing the COVID-19 hoax told through the eyes of a small town welder who refuses to comply (after falling in love with the town's "conspiracy theory" baker).
All the Humans are Sleeping: Metaverse Book 1.0 A story that starts in Canada and moves to Europe (sort of like my life) about a farmer, a robot and the end of the world.
Works of philosophical fiction that one reader describes as "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life."
John C.A. Manley
P.S. I'll send some photos from the Netherlands soon (doesn't the "nether lands" sound like the perfect place for a speculative fiction writer to be living?).
P.P.S. If you buy both books together via Amazon, you'll get free shipping.
John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.
