Late Post

Events conspired for a later and truncated post.

So we're cranking out another piece for 19FortyFive. It is true when fans like the thing you wrote they want another thing like the thing you wrote. This is doubly true of editors. While writers are desperate to publish, editors are desperate for content. You may thank me for passing on that little industry secret. As former New Republic and Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes once said, 'The most important quality any piece of writing can have is doneness.' Question 1, is it done? Question 2, will it drive traffic? Question 3, is it any good?

In 2013 our magazine publishing pace slowed down. We had only five articles in print that year. Two were cover pieces. These were Green Hell: Battles for Burma, in World at War, and Holy Land: The Next Mideast War, in Modern War. We had another six articles in print in 2014 and then only two published in 2015. 

Why the sudden drop off? First, there's a long lead time before articles get printed. We wrote Qadhafi's Military Misadventures for Strategy & Tactics in 2009. They finally printed the piece in 2014. Second, we got our adjunct college prof gig in 2010 and that left a lot less time for magazine writing. Third, we started novel writing again in 2010. This left even less time for magazine writing.  

The last history article we started from scratch was the piece about the Trent Affair and Britian possibly jumping in the American Civil War for Military History Matters. The last article before that we think was Meuse/Argonne (a cover article too!), also for Military History Matters. Other than that, Decision Games (publishers of S&T, W@R and Modern War) are sitting on articles we submitted, years, decades ago. We're not kidding about the decade thing.