Saturday Updates

Good morning, Stroock's Books Continuum. 

The furniture is delivered. The movers executed their mission with precision and had a great day. Our dad tipped them and then so did we. There's going to be some serious remittances to Guatemala this weekend. Over-tipping is a Stroock family trait. Our grandfather used to walk around the Algonquin slipping hundreds to everyone, which is why when he dropped something on the floor the Matre'd would get on his hands and knees and look for it under the famed round table. 

Anyway. A solid week at the gym. Three sessions. We figure that + all the furniture moving we did ourselves prior to the new furniture arriving counts as four workouts. 

French, via Duolingo is going pretty well.

We are re-rereading Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain. Just fascinating. 

By the many-faced god, we're so sick of politics, polls, etc and have been trying to stop paying so much attention. We'll say this. It is undeniable the Dems have gained tonnes of ground. We never believed the Red Wedding talk anyway. But it's summer. Normies aren't paying attention to politics.  Four years ago we chronicled the Tennessee Senate race in which former Dem gov Phill Bredesen went up against GOP Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn. The race was tied in the 40's till fall, then Balckburn pulled away. We expect a similar effect here.The issues all favor the GOPs. They'll gain back about half that lost ground, take the house and the senate, win and lose in a few places they shouldn't.

The things.

Still no ju-ju for side-projects. 

Sales remains strong. Surprisingly we're selling a lot of ebooks, though most sales come via the KU stream. As noted before, it used to be a wash, but now we make more money via eBook sales. World War 1990: The Weser is doing well. Sales are solid, it's cracking the top 30 of its Amazon category. But The Weser still hasn't popped. Sales of The Great Nuclear War of 1975 are surprisingly steady and it still hovers between 50-100 in its Amazon rankings. We really hit it out of the park with that one. If you plug William Stroock into the Amazon search, The Great Nuclear War of 1975 book 2 autofills. 

We have more people beta reading The Aftermath of 1976. Here's how we work with beta readers. Usually there's a slew of issues bothering us, but we don't say what they are. If the beta reader doesn't mention the issue, then it's not really an issue at all. We of course consider any issues that the beta reader brings up.  All that really needs to be done is copy editing. 

We had a great week with The New American Order. We accidently finished the sovereignty chapter. We did so in a way that allows us to add more scenes should a new idea strike us. We'll see. We made good progress on the refugee chapter and its Quebec separatist sub-plot. We really don't want to write about the Air Force arc lighting FLQ camps and tanks rolling across the border. We'll need to do lots of setting up. Overall TNAO is 60,000 words. We're getting close.  We think this book will settle in around 75,000 words. Remaining are the 1980 election chapter and the future history going all the way to 2025.