MTV on a Tuesday Wayback

We wake up sore. Finally did the hour on the treadmill and it was the damndest thing. We were just dying and thinking, crap we probably have 20 minutes left. We looked and we had four. Where did the time go? Just awesome. We brought glory to the treadmill.

More plugging along on The Weser yesterday. This thing is really coming together. We will, repeat will, have the rough done by the end of the summer. The Great Nuclear War of 1975 continues to look good. We admit to concerns about the format of this novel. It may just move too damn fast. There's nothing we can do about that. This is it. This is The Great Nuclear War of 1975. The MS will enter editing in September. Two novels are written. Good or bad, they're a go. At some point one must needs trust it Kek, and remind oneself that one is very good at what one does. 

One of this blog's Confederate readers mentioned how MTV got him hooked on the Monkees. For younger readers The Monkees were a TV show rock band from the late 60's inspired by and parroting the Beatles. They have fans. The late Kathy Shaidle did a lot of writing about them. Anyone over 40 now has the theme song in their head.

Beginning about 1986, MTV got a ton of mileage out of airing old shows and old clips. 1966 is roughly where 'the 60s' start, man and by '86 MTV decided enough time had passed. Dear lord it seemed like ancient history. You'd see a lot of Woodstock clips and old television performances. This is how we found out Ozzy used to be in a band. A lot of the late 80's heavy metal imagery was tinged was 60's psychedelic  aesthetics(click warning, people. It's phony and wretched but gets the point across). They played a lot of clips from John Lennon's Live at Madison Square Garden concert. MTV had a Beatles weekend where that's all they played.

The generational wars had not yet begun, and most Generation-Xrs thought the 60's were pretty cool. 'Hey, cool. Peace and love. You know, I hear girls are into that.' The biggest Gen-X music event was the Woodstock 25th anniversary concert of 1994. It's a who's who of Gen-X popular bands (Aerosmith, Metallica, Chili Peppers etc...etc...) , and plenty of acts from the the 60's too, man. Ironic, isn't it?

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 1/10/21 and other Things

We have split The Great Nuclear War of 1975 in two. Part one is 60,000 words. We're entering the sweet spot, page count wise. Part II is 53,000 words. Which means there's work to do. Beefing up the Korean War chapter is an obvious start. Three volumes is officially greenlit. A 120,000 word novel is an unwieldly thing to write, edit, and even read. Besides, we'd be leaving money on the table. Reminder, volumes one and two will be released simultaneous or near-simultaneous like.

We approach the work week with high spirits. We'll be working on new articles for 1945 and Inforos. We must keep our GRU handler happy lest he release his komprmot. Wonder what the subject will be. Exit question: What would have happened if a mob tried to storm the Russian Duma?

Parler billed itself as the free-speech alternative to Twitter and then used Amazon Web Services. Dumb.  They're about to get de-platformed. This happened to Gab a bunch of times. Last we heard, Gab's Andrew Torba was building his own server platform. Smart. First slowly, then all at once.

Yesterday morning my friend Kathy Shaidle died. She was a blog pioneer and at one point the most important blogger in Canada. She was always kind enough to reply to my emails and overtime we became pretty good FB friends, for a lack of a better term. An alcoholic, She helped me with some of my issues, 'Kathy says anti-depressants work,' is a sentence I will take with me to the grave. I'm glad I told her that a month ago. Mark Steyn presents a fine obit here. When you read someone for 15 years you get to know them pretty well. Steyn shows the Kathy Shaidle I read and knew. Here's the obit Kathy wrote for herself. It's pure Kathy. Gratitude and love.

The Thursday Downer

Sometimes it's hard to write a blogpost. This is one of those times. Longtime readers may recall a FB friend of mine, Kathy Shaidle. Kathy is one of the writers who helped start the blog revolution back in the wild west days of the mid and late 2000s, before Zuckerberg and Dorsey destroyed the free internet. Robert Stacy McCain has a pretty good and succinct writeup. From the beginning she'd been kind enough to reply to my emails. Once I started publishing, I bought some advertising on her blog. She plugged my books and even interviewed me a time or two. Kathy made blogosphere fun. 

Time passed, as it does, and over time Kathy moved her online presence to FB, where we became friends and even chit-chatted on occasion. A lot of the way she sees and thinks about culture influences the way I see and think about culture. 

Well Kathy has been battling ovarian cancer for over a year and she is losing. Soon she'll go into hospice. Kathy's husband, Arnie, is a blogger himself and hosting a fundraiser. I encourage those who can to give something as she and Arnie will need it now, and after. I did.

Thankfully I've been able to tell Kathy how much I've appreciated her help, inspiration and friendship over the last (more than a)  decade. And I'm particularly grateful I got to tell her the one thing she once said, an off the cuff remark that helped gut me through one bizarre, mystifying and horrible spring, 'Kathy says anti-depressants work.'

And that's not such a downer, is it?

It's Hard out there for a Mid-List Author

Via my FBF Kathy Shaidle, mid-list Limey book writers want help from Parliament:

This week, the All-Party Parliamentary Writers Group called on the UK government to take immediate action to reverse the steep decline in author incomes, a year after its inquiry found that writers’ earnings have fallen by 42% in real terms since 2005. 

As Kathy says, 'Get a job.'

In addition to writing novels we blog, we write magazine articles and the like. We have a new gig we're super pumped about. We used to be a college prof.

Our other gig is Mr. Mom duty. As we write this post we're thinking about taking middle daughter to the bus stop, doing the dishes, straightening up and getting to the gym with the other moms.

You're not JK effing Rowling honey, and you don't have a right to be Jane Austen. Get a job or marry well. We've done both.