Saturday Updates

Good Saturday, Stroock's Books Commune. 

The rain's not so bad here. We did Saturday morning services so Middle Daughter can practice for her Bot Mitsvah next month.

The women folk are out shopping for dresses. 

Last night we realized that on election day we'll be on a plane bound for Florida. 

We had a decent enough week at the gym, but feel like the program of running, rowing, pulling and biking is running out of steam. 

Alert reader(s) noticed we put up a longer post later than we normally do on Friday. This is a new strategy in which we'll crank out a few blog paras early in the morning, and ad to them as ideas come to us before publishing in the afternoon. In this way we'll produce longer posts. We like to write the kind of blog we liked to read in 2004. 

Those same alert reader(s) may also notice we posted an old commercial on Friday. These will once again become a regular feature of Stroock's books. Why not?

The Things.

It's a new month and we can report that sales of The Great Nuclear War of 1975 and World War 1990: The Weser are following well established patterns. That is, sales drop 20 percent per month off their peak. 

Sales right now may be divided into thirds, The Weser, The Great Nuclear War of 1975, and All Other Books. Our now formidable backlist accounts for one third of all sales. Also, the release of a World War 1990 book inevitably boosts the sales of older World War 1990 books. No wonder we'll write in the World War 1990 Universe till we're dead. 

Our editor still has The Aftermath of 1976. When she sends it back, we'll kick off the formatting process right away. December. 

We had a good week with The New American Order. We finished reading the refugee chapter and things look fine. The 1980 chapter remains to be read. Also we need to write an intro/prologue chapter that brings readers up to speed. Right now we have one such scene; HMS Trafalgar returns to Britain after the Falklands venture. What else? Ideas welcome. Also, we deleted a refugee scene. We may write a few more. We'll see. We also must needs write the future history. 70,000 words and looking good. 

We didn't have such a good week with World War 1990: The Final Storm. As previously indicated, we may axe the rather long intro section. This takes the reader from the Kremlin to the White House, to Rome, to Paris, yada, yada, yada. We are also seriously considering re-inserting the Battle of the Roki Tunnel chapter. We'll start reading Part II this week. Maybe things will be better. 

If  we keep the current intro (about 25,000 words) and The Final Storm comes in at 100,000 words it will be our fiduciary responsibility to bring the MS up to 120,000 words and split it in too.  That would mean the first book with the Battle of the Roki Tunnel, all the intro chapters and then what? The second book would have the air strikes, the SAS raid....stretching that to 60-70k would be no problem. We must dwell on this.