Saddaming It

We have, very casually, written about 6,000 words or so of World War 1990: Saddam's War. Were this our primary project we'd be thinking about hitting 20,000 by the end of the month.

So here's what we have so far. A lot of meetings. We've expressed concern over the meeting issue before, and even tried to cut down on those in World War 1990: Castro's Folly. We later received complaints that readers didn't quite know what was going on without that birds eye view. It's clear you people do like tense cabinet meetings. Still, in the back of our mind we worry that there's some plumber or electrician reading one of our books over lunch and thinking, 'You professional types would think a bloody lot of meetings were interesting; bloody tossers.

So we have a meeting where Iraqis discuss ongoing events in Iraq, we have a Pentagon meeting where Wolfowitz and the Neocons talk about how to get into the Persian Gulf, a White House meeting where Colin Powell asks a reluctant President Bush to sign off on deployment plans. We also have a couple of scenes where people watch the news. Riveting.

We worry that a Will Stroock book is formulaic. Set up, lots of meetings, deployments, and then...Bam! Stuff 'splodes. But as we've noted before, Neil Gaiman declared that when someone reads the thing of yours they really liked they want to read another thing of yours just like it. So here goes nothing*. 

Idea, just to make things a little different, why not a blockbuster closing where the Israelis take out Arafat? We did this in Israel Strikes: Ware of the Red Sea, actually. Na, that should be in the opener and helps convince Saddam, if the Jews, then Saddam.

*Lando