Castro Research

This showed up on my FB timeline this morning:

For some reason Castro's Folly just worked.

Of course if we were writing Castro's Folly today it would be two or three novels.

The Nicaraguan stuff will be dealt with in some way, at some point. The Drive on Managua.

One. Last. Time.

...and we're going over World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas for the last time, on MS Word. It seems superfluous, but we have procedures and those include going over the MS one last time on Word before formatting.

Hah, we're still finding stuff that bothers us and making a correction here, a tweak there. The MS is over edited and we're numb it.

This is perfectly normal. 

We are also adding the Granma scenes. Wrote the first one. What fun!

[Good Lord, Yank. Parts of this were written during the British vote, the Brexit British vote. You're not going to have another idea, are you?-Ed]

Hey, you never know.

[Get to work, mate, and stop thinking too much -Ed]

Yes, Mummy. Can I have a snack?

[No-Ed]

The Coming Central American WW1990 Novel

Talking with a friend yesterday, he asked if we'd ever do a follow up one the Central American situation in Castro's Folly.

We remarked that the Honduras/Nicaragua section could 've been the first half of a book about the war in Central America.

We've always liked the idea of the Contras driving on Nicaragua and planned a short story about it. So why not take the Central American parts of Castro's Folly for the first half of such a book and write the second half. Ethically all we'd have to do is include an editorial note. 

Repackaging. Companies do that all the time. We've got to make a living, people.

World War 1990 and 90 and 90 and 90....

The World War 1990 series was supposed to be one book.

Yeah, stop laughing, Ed.

[Sorry? I was just enjoying a cup of tea. I really don't sit around here and wait for you to write something funny-Ed]

Actually, Ed, since you exist exclusively in our head, that's exactly what you do.

[Henceforth you use of 'we'?-Ed]

No, that's just the medication.

[Ohhhhh-Ed]

Anyway when we got it in our head to write about the Ruskis attacking Nome, Alaska* more ideas followed. 

Things got really out of hand when we realized Operation Eastern Storm would work better if the book was centered on the battle for Prague and the 2nd ACR's holding action. That's still the best battle we've written, we think. That book was going to have the whole battle for Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania.

[Romania? Huh? -Ed]

You'll see.

Also, why write one book that people will buy when you can write multiple books that people will by. The writer's number one job is to get paid, as the indefatigable Robert Stacey McCain says, and the WW 1990 series is doing well by us.
.
So the ideas kept coming. World War III in Africa and Central America, then Southeast Asia and soon Poland. 

Thus one book became four and soon five, then six and eventually seven and eight. But not this year.

[Really, The Final Storm is 42,000 words and really just needs political stuff to wrap things up. You could do that it like, a month-Ed.] 

You're killing me, Ed.

*Damn you Bearing Sea Gold, and yes some of those guys show up in Artic Storm. 

Locked in the Cabinet

Our novels usually feature a lot of cabinet meetings, plans, machinations, back stabbings and such.

We've noted before that not only are we getting tired of writing these scenes, we suspect that the reader is getting tired of these scenes. 

We kept the cabinet meetings to an absolute minimum in Castro's Folly. During the entire first half of the book showing fighting in Honduras and Angola not one single cabinet meeting takes place. Still they crept in later on when the US is gathering a coalition to invade Cuba. Even so some readers complained that they didn't really know what was happening. 

Cabinet meetings work great for that because they give on a bird's eye view.

We've been binge watching Game of Thrones season 7. There's a lot of meetings between Danarys, Tyrian, etc, etc and we've found these both informative and fascinating.

Maybe we should rethink scaling back the cabinet meetings.

Ratels of the South African Bush

We've done a lot of publishing on the old South African military and have come to admire it very much. The old South African Army deployed a variety of interesting vehicles including the Casspir, a kind of APC  and  the Ratel, a wheeled armored vehicle with a 90mm gun. They also deployed Ratels armed with missile launchers.

An FB friend, Mr. Bruce Allen sent along this Youtube clip of a ZT3 armed Ratel fighting Angolan tanks during the Lomba River phase of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale:

By the way, the third book in the World War 1990 series takes place in Africa with the SADF fighting the Angolans and Cubans. Plenty of Ratels in that one,

Battle Extraordinaire

Ahhh....the Bridge at Remagen.

There's a lot going on here. You got Krauts on one bank of the river, you go the Yanks speeding down the other bank blowing the crap out of everything on the far bank. Its a race to get to the bridge, which of course the Krauts dynamite.

Movie sequences like this have stayed with me my entire life, and elements of them make it into my writing. From World War 1990: Castro's Folly:

The Ratels got going. In column they advanced at about ten KPH along the south bank, turrets traversed north. En mass the Ratels fired, delivering a volley of 90 mm shells to FAPLA positions. Henceforth they fired at will. A torrent of fire kicked up great cascades of fire and debris on the far bank and beyond. Every second, the air was punctured by the rip of a 90 mm gun. Jenry doubted they were hitting much. But the fact that no fire was returned from the far bank was good enough. The Ratels were keeping FAPLA heads down.          They watched until the last Ratel drove past the position and they could only hear the noise deluge beyond. Then they heard more engines. One of Didi’s men ran at a crouch over to their position and pointed west. Didi and Jenry crawled over to the edge of the copse and saw what he was pointing at. A column of South African Caspirs making their way north, northwest.          ‘Heading toward the bridge, no doubt.’          Jenry scanned the riverbank again.          ‘No more South Africans,’ he said to Didi.          ‘Why?’          ‘They no longer feel that they need that patch of the river bank, I would guess.’          ‘Does this mean we can try to cross there?’          The C-130s flew back over their position.          Jenry looked at Didi and then back toward the river bank. He thought for a moment.          ‘Everyone will be too busy at the bridge, no?’ asked Didi.          ‘Good thinking, Lieutenant,’ Jenry said.          ‘Then let us go now.’          ‘Yes.’

Rolling Castro's Folly

Well as Doc Holiday (the Val Kilmer version, mind you) would say, Castro's Folly is rolling. We've cracked the top 25 of our category in the US, Great Britain and Australia, where we are threatening to go to number one. We've blown past people like Harry Turtledove and Philip K Dick. We're 'only' in the top 100 in Canada, which still ain't bad mind you. I guess you just can't sell a book about blowing Castro to bits in a country that just made his son Justin Trudeau Prime Minister. I'm not kidding about that, by the way. His mom used to hang with Castro, and well, compare the pics. He never did look anything like Pierre

Anyway, the Castro's Folly surge is a relief. Because my previous release, To Survive the Earth, is a failure. After six months its got one review. One freaking review.

This was and is stunning. To Defend the Earth was my second book and it did well. I've recounted before my thrill at seeing the sales meter move up a couple of ticks everyday. After watching A line Through the Desert no sell at all, TDTE was glorious.

With To Survive the Earth, Its not so much that I was worried that I had lost my touch, or my fan base. I was terrified that the market was changing and people were moving away from Kindle.

Phew.

What does this mean for my alien invasion universe? Nothing good. At this point we might keep writing but only put out a Kindle/Nook version. That would cut the publishing costs in half. We might run a single ad in a friendly publication.

Castro's Folly success means there's no reason not to press on, and we are frankly wondering why we would ever stop writing this series.

Friday Updates

Only one that matters today.Castro's Folly is now out.

Hard copy here.

World War 1990: Castro's Folly

As the Soviet Union loses the Third World War on all fronts, the Politburo opens new fronts to bide time before it takes the final nuclear step.

-In Central America, Nicaraguan forces cross the border to attack the Contra Freedom Fighters.

-In Africa, Cuban and Angolan forces pick a fight with the South African Defense Force.

-In the United States, the Bush Administration desperately looks for troops while diplomats go to the Organization of American States and rally the America's against...

...Castro's Folly