Saturday Updates

World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas is out. Yesterday the book cracked the top 50 in the Amazon alternate history category. Can it crack the top 25 today? Lets do this people.

We've got a deal. Review World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas on Amazon and we'll send you an autographed copy. Email the link with the purchase # and your address to wtstroock@yahoo.com.

We spent the week going through The Great Nuclear War of 1975's presidential scenes. We're learning a lot about Nelson Rockefeller. He was a giant of mid century American politics, who still got mentioned casually when we were a kid. Of course, we're from New York State. When we were a young, firebrand conservative in the 90's the term Rockefeller Republican was an insult. Politically speaking, the best modern example we can thing of, for modern reader(s) is Mitt Romney. The analogy isn't perfect.

We usually fall into the trap, though it does work, of using the president as a cypher who asked questions of his advisors and using that to describe things to readers. But Rockefeller was the type who knew a lot and was an idea man. When he was a White House special assistant in the 50's he drove Ike crazy with his ideas, commissions, and position papers. He'd be the guy to come up with finishing the Alaska Pipeline.

We've researched the Alaskan Pipeline and will try to outline that chapter this weekend. Our goal is to not let this thing get out of hand. Maybe one scene to describe each aspect of the project. Setting it up, at least in our head, is proving to be difficult. The idea needs lead in so readers aren't just like, 'What? Yeah...oh....yeah...Alaska...I guess...oh sure.' Maybe it needs to be foreshadowed a lot. Maybe it needs to be in the back of everyone's mind almost from the get go?

On the Nederlandse front we're still waiting on a few beta readers. We worked on a couple of maps yesterday. We remain uneasy about what we don't know that we don't know about this novel.

Attack of the 50 Foot Communist is meeting quota and project director is sure to be rewarded by regional collective. Workers will have choice of cassette recorder or East German watch* for reward.

*Reference