Creative Hell and the Fire of Creation

So we're going through the World War 1990: Anzacs proof.

This is the worst, absolute worst part of writing.

Making it worse is editing The Austrian Painter, not to mention Whatever Happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom, and World War 1990: The Final Storm.

They're all next and we're unwilling to start something new while those are sitting around.

So this means no percolation, that wonderful period of ideas where we sit around, in the car, at services or a kid's recital and think about the book. Battles swirl overheard, cabinet meetings play out, orders of battle come together.

It's a wonderful feeling, a creative fire, and right now its not happening.

We hate that.

Here's the Anzacs cover, for the hell of it:

The Grind

We write, all day, everyday. If we're not writing fiction we're working on history, or this blog, or the wargames we design.

We've gotten up, written for a couple of hours and then buried close relatives. 

It's what we do.

It may not be a real job, but man its a grind.

We could never work this hard at the job before. The implosion of our professorial career doubled the available time we had to write. We've taken advantage.

This year has been the hardest we've ever worked as a writer. Hard in that we've cranked out something like 300,000 words and hard in that its been tough to write those 300,000 words and tough to edit. ANZACs is done of course, so is the Final Storm, so is The Austrian Painter. Whatever Happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom is almost done.

Right now we're going through the last, absolute most final draft of World War 1990: ANZACs and it absolutely sucks. We've read this thing a hundred times. We've written, re-written, edited, re-edited, proofread, re-proofread and are now re-re-proofreading. All for a novel that did not turn out the way we wanted and frankly we have doubts about. And still a few typos will sneak through.

And when this is done we're going to turn around and it all over again for World War 1990: The Final Storm.

That's the gig.

This is pretty accurate

Editing (again) World War 1990: ANZACs

We have the physical proof for World War 1990: ANZACS.

Actually we've been wondering about proper usage for ANZACs  (Australian New Zealand Army Corps) or Anzacs. It really depends, but generally in conversation Anzacs is proper.

This is the absolute worst part about writing. We've read this thing 25 times already and its only on the 26th that one finds certain typos. Bear in mind that this is after an editor has taken a look.

We're working with the PDF printout of the manuscript. So far things are looking pretty not too bad.

Our proof readers will get the hard copy book and go through it. Once they're done we'll enter the final changes.

This is almost certainly the last round. If all goes well...[that's a huge, I'm sorry yuuge, if-Ed] about a month.

Anyway we slog on, slog on.

Castro's Folly Proof

Well the Castro's Folly proof is in.

I just love that cover, don't you?
I swear this is the worst part. That last reading, 265 pages just to weed out a typo here and there.

Actually I've already found that I spell a character's name 'Parades' and 'Paredes'. Its things like that one only catches on the proof. Don't ask me how the science works, but its real I tell you. With any luck this will be out in January, maybe even a little earlier.

Pressing on.