The Combined Italian Wuhan Coronavirus Final Storm Update

Our man on the ground in Italy reports the airports are empty, 3,500 new cases and 189 new deaths in the last 24 hours. Supplies of Chianti, Manicotti and Calamari running low and people are asking for emergency shipments of Italian food from America. Get ready for tortellini in a can, boys!

Meanwhile we've written an Italian Tornado bomber scene into World War 1990: The Final Storm. They'll be teaming up with the F-104 drivers from Battle of the Three Seas. 

Diablo Rossi Squadron and Sarissa flight, baby.

Write on, Right on

Lots of good Final Storm writing to do today. Canadian F-18s out of Labrador (these guys appear in Nederlandse), Italian Tornado Bombers arriving in Crimea (will describe actioning Hungary).

On the Nuke Story front we're prepping away. We're working on a scene where the president describes the damage done to the USSR. We will be doing some serious plot development on the treadmill today. Lots of Ju-Ju there.

Looks like Kamehameha's Navy hasn't made the cut. No problem, that just avoids complications for the short story comp this year. We could use another short story idea.

World War 1990: The Final Storm

We finished the last of Nederlandse's airbase scenes yesterday. This week we'll finish up the naval chapter.

We've been outlining The Final Storm. There will be a longish intro section. We'll bring back some old characters and introduce a few new ones that readers will see in books like Esercito Italiano.

Oh, those plucky Cubans.

From there, a coup section and an air strike section.

Hmmm....maybe we should have W. doing something down in Texas. Why not?

If you've got ideas, lets have 'em.

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 2/16/19

The way things are going, we may be able to start work on The Final Storm in March. Actually we alreayd have 15,000 or 20,000 words.

Here's some of the POV's were talking about:

-Israelis out of Crimea.
-Italian F-104s Pilots out of Crimea.
-Strike Group Savage of B-2 Bombers.
-The F-111 drivers from ANZACS being flown into Japan.
-A massive Japanese aerial effort. Heh, Operation 'Tomanoga' or 'Genda' or something. Of course they traditionally like to use letters, but whatever.
-Some electronic warfare experts flying Ravens.
-The Tornado Squadron out of Polish Storm.
-An Ohio class boat outfitted with 154 Tomahawks, cause it will be totally cool.
-An openning scene where USS New Jersey is actually bombarding the Soviet coast.
-Another scene where someone in Finland is like, 'Wow. Don't piss off the Americas.' You'll see in Battle of the Three Seas.
Maybe the Swedes thinks, 'We better get in on this?' Saab Viggens, anyone?
-Alert readers will have figured out what 22 SAS Regiment has been building up to. Two words: flame throwers.

End of the year? Maybe.

Will's Good Idea for 12/15/19

That's it, were doing The Final Storm in 2020.

Let's get this thing over with, yo.

We'll open with Granma making some trouble, remember her? And we promise there will be some humor.

We'll probably need a 'getting the band back together' montage; Romanov!

We'll have some Soviet Republics rebelling, Roki Tunnel 1990.

Then an all hands on deck effort to thwart the Soviet's planned nuclear attack. American F-111's (we'll be bringing back the American Colonel from ANZACS*), British Tornados, Italian Tornados, F-15s from Japan and...a nation that has experience taking out nuclear facilities.

Should we write about an Ohio Class missile boat armed with 154 Tomahawk Missiles? Yes, yes we should.

*No, we can't remember his name.

World War 1990: The Final Storm

We're working on one of the submarine chapters.

As noted before we're beefing up the facts and technical details. Oh, and this time the ranks are going to be correct. There are no ensigns in the Royal Navy.

[Dumb Yank-Ed]

Shouldn't you still be on the couch, binge watching Ab Fab or something?

[Sob!-Ed]

As it stands now the chapter is inadequate. It's two subs fumbling around the ocean not knowing anything about what's happening. We think we need a central character, maybe the sub force CO, to tie everything together. 

The Final Storm

In World War 1990: The Final Storm the United States and NATO* squeeze the USSR from all sides. This leads to naval and air attacks on the Soviet margins; the Soviet Far East, the Black Sea, and the Barents Sea.

These are maximum efforts and allow us to write about NATO forces we haven't really covered before. This has been fun. Both France and Italy had substantial blue water fleets including carriers and formidable missile cruisers.  We've traditionally been very mean to France, and we're making up for it. 

The Final Storm has several subplots as well. Chancellor Kohl finally has his reckoning with President Mitterrand, and what are Gorby, Yeltsin and the rest up to? 

*And a few others, heh.

World War 1990: The Final Storm

With World War 1990: Anzacs out, and The Austrian Painter in the hopper we're back to The Final Storm.

Man, it keeps getting bigger.

[Bet you wish your wife could say that-Ed]

Shut the fuck up Ed, you know I'm not afraid to whip it out.

[Sorry...-Ed]

That's better....

[The potted plant is over there if you want to go the full Weinstein. Ha!-Ed]

So right now The Final Storm 85,000 words and we're envisioning pushing right on to 90,000. Lots of submarine stuff to work out.

Those Soviet boomer boat bastions aren't going to clear themselves, are they? Oh and Clarkey needs a few scenes. Speaking of Clarkey, we're trying to decide if we can get away with what we're trying to get away with. Come on, the SAS can't go that far. Can they?

World War 1990, George Lucas or Peter Jackson

World War 1990: The Final Storm stands at 85,000 words and we suspect when all is said and done it might bloat up to 90,000.

As noted before this book has three parts, two of them being The Battle of the Polish Plain followed by The Battle of the Three Seas.

We woke up yesterday morning seriously considering axing all of The Battle of the Three Seas. We don't like how big this book is and worry that it feels like a Star Wars prequel.

The Battle of the Three Seas shows naval action across the globe and we think that's pretty cool. But then we hearkened back to the summer of '94. That hot D.C. summer where we had no TV, interned at the White House, and read Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South. Turtledove didn't show action everywhere, but merely hinted at it, mentioning that the U.S.had taken Winnipeg but the British had torched Boston. That was an amazing tweak and we wondered if we shouldn't do the same, cut these chapters, and throw them into the short story compilation we'll do in the near future.

Before pulling the trigger we read over and edited the sections of Part II that need work and they're shaping up nicely.

Then by coincidence another big, long, sprawling and kind of bloated movie was on and we watched it for a few hours. We refer of course to The Lord of the Rings.

LOTR is long, slow, bounces around all over the place, and its one of the greatest movies of the last twenty five years.

So we stepped back from the brink.

Don't cut, fix.

We Hate to say it...

...we mean we really hate to say it.

But World War 1990: The Final Storm could really work as two different books.

Right now it's big and clunky, like a Star Wars prequel. 

[We enjoy you being this tough on yourself-Ed]

We've spent the last week de-clunking the book. 

A big, long, sprawling book is not necessarily a bad thing.

Right now we're at 80,000 words with one big section about a land battle and another big section about a sea battle, the previously mentioned Battle of the Three Seas.

We have to write a few sections to clear some things up. That alone ought to get us to 85,000, 90,000 if we stretch, 100,000 if we throw in that amphibious assault we had planned.

We know what you guys are thinking, 'Amphibious assault? Cool!'

From there you're just 10,000 words away from our preferred book length.

Of course,breaking up The Final Storm would double our publishing costs.

[Come on! You've ruthlessly driven down publishing costs-Ed]

Cut them by more than half, actually.

[Well, bully for you-Ed]

Man, we hate to say it...

World War 1990: The Final Storm

We are plugging along here.

Now that we've entered The Final Storm's second half we are less pleased.

We are finding plenty of needless words to omit, also needless sentences and asides.

Now, one of the sections is titled The Battle of the Three Seas. We are finding one of those battles bare and otherwise inadequate. We will have to chop that chapter or expand it.

We like the title, The Battle of the Three Seas.

Ad-Ons and cut-outs...World War 1990: The Final Storm

Once again, reading through the MS we are terribly pleased.

We also realize we have some issues to thresh out in Part III.

This is not a big deal.

Minor spoilers ahead.

The Final Storm is made of three parts.

These are The Battle of the Polish Plain, the Battle of the Three Seas, and the as yet untitled Part III.

We had taken out parts dealing with the West German Army, a return of Seydlitz from Operation Eastern Storm, but are now thinking they need to go back in.

Also, readers will remember Loeb, our West German intel officer running anti-collaboration ops behind the lines. We may need more of him.

The book is big and at this point we don't see any harm in making it bigger.

There are also order issues, that is, which scenes follow which scenes, etc. Actually the scenes are pretty much worked out, and we vaguely recall agonizing over these last fall. Chapter order is driving us batty.

Overall we are very optimistic.