Saturday Updates

For reasons we do not understand, in recent years summer has become for us a season of angst and trepidation. Mrs. Stroock taking the Stroocklettes to visit her dad in Indiana probably contributes to this. We say we're cut out for life as a hermit...[shakes head]. Oh hell, if Jordan Peterson can talk about this stuff...but we wonder what's the point.

We've had some success unplugging from events, but become aggravated once we plug back in at night. Realistically how many blogs to we really need to read? We say Instapundit, Ace of Spades, a check in with The Other McCain. We find Hot Air too aggravating. Good god, stop scrolling FB and Twitter. We're getting into FB flame wars out of frustration. Maybe we'll just reactivate our Twitter account so we can call the likes of Adrian Wojnarowski China's lickspittle. But what's the point of that?

We've taken to reading in the afternoon and night. We find this comforting. We're reading a series of short, 200 + page books about the Civil....er War between the States. Just finished the Mississippi/Vicksburg campaign.

On to business.

Another week another great week of sales. Overall book sales remain consistent and if the sales continue at this rate, we'll match or come close to matching what we did last month. Which is remarkable. Good news for us. Bad news for you. No book gets released until sales definitely and consistently decline. Ok, ok, we still anticipate1 September release.

We await the Nederland proof. This is taking longer than normal due to Amazon being slammed. We also did a test formatting of the Kindle version and it looks ok. Update! It will be here tomorrow.

We also await the short story compilation. Once received, we'll begin formatting right away. We've truncated the editorial process and this will only require a read through of the proof.

We have added a few more scenes to World War 1990: The Final Storm. Remember the Aussie F-111 drivers led by a Yank just come over from Europe? He shows up in Nederland as well. Reminder, we plan to finish one chapter this month, another in August before making a massive push to finish the novel by 1 January 2021.

The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is now 50,000 words. We pretty much have finished what we've written, that is, the chapters are more or less done. We want to finish the Alaska chapter and write a military chapter. Right now the low hanging fruit for a conflict is reigning in Gadhafi. The US is not going to war over the Falklands. Having something happen down there would be a good excuse for chapter about the UK.

We are now working on a chapter about the political reconfiguration of the United States in preparation for the election of 1976. Before you have an election, the state governments have to be reconstituted and that's only partially happened by the spring of '76.  After that, how do you have an election? You'd probably just have state legislatures choose the delegates, state-wide elections would be a logistical nightmare in this scenario. But first you'd have to reconstitute the state legislatures and then pass a law taking away the popular vote. Who runs against Rockefeller? Does Rockefeller even run? These are the questions that fascinate this blog. And while there is plenty of nuclear horror, The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is really about putting things back together.

Operation Polish Storm: Meet the Generals

General Ron Griffith, Commander, 1st Armored Division:

World War 1990: Polish Storm

The proof has shipped.

In four days we formatted the interior, designed the cover and uploaded the files. Why did we ever rely on CreateSpace to do this?

Did we mention that we've cut our production costs in half?

In the meantime we're going through The Final Storm and fixing things. This includes repairing some ghastly errors. Let's just say the Anglo-American language schism is alive and well. Recall that in Arctic Storm we invented the Royal Navy rank of ensign. And there we were thinking we were clever for having a few Bernard Manning references.*

You don't know what you don't know, as they say. 

[You don't know much, Yank-Ed]

Aw honey...time of the month?

[I just want some chocolate!-Ed]

I thought so. Here you go...

[Numb-numb-numb-numb....Ed]

Anyway, we're also beefing up the submarine warfare scenes trying to give them some sense of realism. No, if you were on HMS Trafalgar you're not going to think, 'Wow, it's like he was hot-bunking with me!' ** Still, we're fighting the boats as realistically as we can.

When will The Final Storm be ready? Not sure. It's possible we'll be submitting it on 1 September. That's our goal.

[Hahahahahahaha!]

Is that you, Ed?'

[No, an even higher authority.]

Charleton Heston?

*Go look him up on YouTube. Very funny.
**Where three sailors share a bunk by shifts....homophobe.

Book Progress

Ok, the editor will be getting The Austrian Painter next week. We're giving it a read through now and are more than halfway.

This gives us a few days, hours really, to figure out if there are any chapters to the painter's life we need to address.

Readers are welcome to make suggestions.

So far we see the painter in:

The Great War
On a Tour of America in the 1920s.
On a tour of Congo in 1930

From then on the action is in 1964.

In the meantime we'll be sorting out the last of the issues with World War 1990: The Final Storm.

World War 1990: The Final Storm

Ok, so we're slugging our way through Part II. As noted before II is not as well kept as Part I, but it's still pretty good.

We've had to clean up some things, of course. But the biggest issue is clarification. Where did this guy come from? What do you mean by that? etc.

The other big issue is scene order. We agonized a lot over order last year. Frankly it looks like we really messed up on that one. We're spending a lot of time re-working the order.

The good news is all of these changes make a big book infinitely better.

We've also decided that the chapter we chopped needs to go back in. We'll probably have to expand it as well. Hello rising sun.

World War 1990: The Final Storm

We're halfway done with the read-through and we couldn't be more pleased.

It's a big book, 85,000 words.

By comparison Operation Arctic Storm is only 60,000 words.

The text is tight. The scenes are meaty. The flow is good. The MS is clean.

We are seeing very little that must be added.

We are noticing that we were a bit wordy last year with lots of  'of course' and plenty of distracting asides. These are being smited with righteous fury.

We are really quite surprised at how well things are going.

We sense a trap.

Friday Updates

Ok, folks....

World War 1990: The Final Storm is now 75,000 words and on track for the rough to be done by the end of the month.

The agent has Pershing in Command and is getting a prop together.

The Pershing's War 1919 game is also nearly complete. Next assignment a grand operational game about the next Israel-Hezbollah War.

Since we're not writing any history our brain is restless and unfocused but we really don't want to start a new mag article.

Oh!...and my weight is on the verge of dropping into the 230's, not bad considering this time last year I was 265. That's pounds, not stone, for all you Limey reader(s) out there.