Will On the New Year

Nothing fancy for us last night, thank you. It's been a long, long time since we gave a crap about New Years. That's because we're a grownup. Youngest Daughter wanted to stay up, but we wouldn't let her. 'Look,' we said, 'It's just not that big a deal. One moment it's 2022, the next it's 2023. That's it. Nothing else happens.' She was pissed anyway. 

Segue...[He wrote 'segway' first, -Ed].

Long time reader(s) of this blog know we can get hung up on anniversaries. We like nice, crisp, anniversaries with round numbers. Ten years, twenty and the like. Well it's 2023, and twenty years ago was kind of a big deal for us, professionally and personally. 

2003 was a great year and we knew it at the time. You know that song about why can't you know the good old days are the good old days when you're in the good old days? Well, we knew. 

Come with us now to New Year's 2003. We've been running for a couple of months now through bucolic Peapack, New Jersey. We're in grad school, majoring in The American Revolution. On 20 October we got our first substitute teaching gig, the first of a hundred or so that year. Subbing is going to turn into a fun and rewarding job over the next years. In a few months Ty Bomba at Decision Games will accept our first magazine article. In March we'll finish reading Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and start writing an idea that's been kicking around our head for a year. That idea will turn into A Line Through the Desert.

We'll do another post or three about this. 

This being a new year, we've spent all morning looking at last year's sales. Here's Kindle orders for 2022:

And here's KU reads:

The spikes in March, August, and December represent the release of a new novel, The Great Nuclear War of 1975, World War 1990: The Weser, and The Aftermath of 1976. We see sales following historic patterns, dropping off about 20% off their peak. As we write this, The Aftermath of 1976 is spiking and has not yet peaked. Overall 2022 sales came in just below 2021 sales. In 2021, The Weser dragged up all the other World War 1990 books. 

The data confirms what we already know. Write books that sell. That means World War 1990, and now the nuke series. 

Segue again....Will's Good idea for the first week of January 2023 is World War 1990: Norway. We've done some great research on the topic this week and are getting the general plot of the novel outlined. Cracks and crevices are opening. We even feel the fire of creation. We'll start 1 February, maybe sooner. We shall see. 

Hmmm...pondering now....The Weser dragged up the other WW1990 books. Would a third Israel novel drag up Israel Strikes and War of the Red Sea? Maybe, Israel Strikes: Will Cashes Out. Meh...probbaly not. It's been too long.