Yesterday a friend asked why we don't write history magazine articles anymore. We should note that two of our pieces came out this year. Thank you, Military History Matters. But we wrote those articles years ago. Often publication lead time is years, decades even (just ask those disorganized cheapskates at Decision Games who stiffed us)*. Which is annoying.
We've lost track of how many history magazine articles we've published. We've topped a hundred published articles in at least a dozen different magazines.
Churning out 5000 words on Orde Wingate's Operation Longcloth is a tonne of work. The gig requires lots of reading/research, writing and a fuck-ton of excruciating editing. It ain't a lot of fun. The thrill of seeing one's name in print lasts...[shrugs] I dunno 30 seconds maybe.
Besides, history magazines don't pay that much. Their rates haven't changed since the 2000s. Heck, a few years ago a US government agency wanted us to write a few Pershing pieces for their WWI memorial, for free. This agency was $2 million shy of its $50 million fundraising goal. We are a highly talented, successful, and good-looking author. We get paid. We told said agency to get lost. [What's this blog pay again?-Ed].
The Ruskis paid better.
Writing magazine articles is a bad idea.
We saw WWIII trending on Twitter yesterday and tweeted out links to The Great Nuclear War of 1975 and The Weser. This morning we see a sales spike. Correlation, yes. But causation? Who can say? What's trending this morning...? We shrug.
Yesterday we dwelled upon the problem of World War 1990: The Final Storm. Including the Battle of the Roki Tunnel, The Final Storm is 80,000 words. Breaking off the Roki Tunnel + the intro chapters (Part I) creates a 35,000 word MS.
We sent the data over to NASA and they tell us that we'd need to write another 25,000 words to bring Part I up to 60,000. Okay, we've got the bun but what would be the book's the non-meat Impossible Burger? Were we to split The Final Storm in two we'd have the opportunity to write about something completely new. But what? This is an interesting intellectual exercise, but probably a bad idea.
Honestly, after looking over Part II of The Final Storm, we're wondering if we shouldn't scrap the whole damn thing and start over. Doing so would necessarily blow up the whole schedule. What are we thinking? We are among the best there is at what we do. We can fix anything. Trust in god, we shall all eat lamb in paradise. Inshallah.
*Last year they published something we sent in during W's first term. JFC.
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