Chateau Lloyd

Over the last couple of weeks I've notice that a bunch of my books are getting more ratings on Amazon.  Some are good, others not so much.  Indeed, I've been surprised to see the Man of Destiny series pick up a bunch of ratings, but some are the lowest they've ever gotten.

Conversely, both Long Live Death and Walls of Men seem to be improving in their reception.

Perhaps this is the result of me taking on a higher profile at Dakka as well as Bleedingfool.com.  The more people who read my stuff, the more there are who may not appreciate it.  It comes with the territory.

The curious part is the lack of reviews.  The early versions of Long Live Death got punished because of the typos and editing errors.  I think Walls of Men has been spared this because the much more exacting editing process.

I'm aware that the Man of Destiny books are not as clean as they could be.  One of my goals it to release a second edition (perhaps an all-in-one with new cover art and some extra content). 

However, I don't think people are throwing out two- or three-star ratings because of that.  And since there are no reviews, I'm not sure what they could be objecting to.

The research for writing Long Live Death was quite challenging.  I quickly learned that there was lots of information on the Spanish Civil War, but much of it was false.  It is one thing to be biased, and portray various actions in the most negative way possible, but it another thing entirely to simply state things that are not true.

For example, Hugh Thomas has a clear bias in favor of the Republic, but his information is meticulously documented and generally reliable (though I did catch a couple of errors in his very complicated narrative).

Antony Beevor, on the other hand, is a total hack.  If he told me the sun was shining I would assume it wasn't until proven otherwise.  His bigotry and deception by omission renders everything else has written suspect.

The Romans recognized this the logic of this, enshrining the phrase: falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (false in one thing, false in everything) in the Western legal tradition. 

I'm sad to say that when working on Walls of Men, this same principle destroyed my trust in a web site I had visited and enjoyed for years: strategypage.com.

I'm not entirely sure of who posts there now, but back in the day it was product of the longstanding collaboration of Jim Dunnigan and Austin Bay, two old-school wargamers who had collaborated in the best-selling A Quick and Dirty Guide to War.

During the Global War on Terror, the site had been very useful in providing updates on Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots typically ignored by the mainstream media.  However, over time I noticed that the site was often irrationally optimistic about American operations. 

To be fair, it was possible that their sources were simply lying to them.  After all, we know that a great deal of internal communication within the US military was fabricated to justify ongoing operations and conceal the magnitude of failure from the American public.

However, when I began to dig into the inner workings of the Chinese military, the errors were too glaring to ignore.  The breaking point for me was a post which described the Peoples' Liberation Army as being "all-volunteer" since the 1980s.  This is absolutely not true.  (I can't find the specific post because the site's organization is abysmal.)

Multiple published sources (which I used in my book) confirm this, and reputable web sites also state that conscription still happens, though no one is sure exactly what percentage of the PLA is recruited using it.  Either way, it's just plain wrong, and that kind of error casts doubt over everything on the site.  I now have to wonder how much else they go wrong, and while there may be some value to determining whether it was due to bias or ignorance, the inescapable fact is that they simply cannot be trusted.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been talking things over with Chris Braly of Bleedingfool.com and the contents of that interview are now available on the site.

Long-time readers of my blog will find few surprises, but it was nice to see the management step out side the normal comic/geek culture box and examine how geopolitics can shape American culture.

I'm pretty sure the Venn diagram of people interested in both Chinese military history and comic books has a fairly shallow overlap, but there is a connection.

As I note in the interview, Hollywood has largely abandoned middle America and has turned instead to the vast Chinese market for money.  This has allowed them make a fortune selling vapid super-hero movies, but the drive to put "woke" themes in everything is something the Chinese have proven far more resistant to than Hollywood expected.  This leaves the big studios (particularly Disney) in a place where their biggest market and the home market both hate their products.  Hence the layoffs.   Anyhow, read the whole thing.

It's only a week since Walls of Men went live, but already my mind is turning to the next writing project.  This is because writing is what I do to unwind, and without it I get really bored.  I'm trying to fill the empty hours with chores and watching vintage TV and movies, but that's only a stopgap.

Sooner or later, I'll take on a new project.

I'm thinking it will be fiction.  Long Live Death was actually very easy to write (took 6 weeks or so) and while post-publication corrections were a headache, they were also a function of my desire to see it in print ASAP because of its applicability to the political situation.

Walls of Men, on the other hand, was really complicated and stressful.  Add in the fact that both books didn't really provide the escape from reality that fiction writing does.

On the plus side, non-fiction doesn't take the same creative energy - you set your thesis, do research and write what you find.  No dead-end plots or unconvincing characters.  You have to describe a world rather than create one.

Inspiration is also important.  This is why have never written a "fantasy" book in the style of J.R.R. Tolkien - I don't know what I would say that needs saying.  I've got at least half a dozen story ideas in the genre, but none rise above the level of Dungeons and Dragons-grade fan fiction.

I'm sure in time, this will work itself out and in the meantime I'll see what I can draw from my viewing.

As I'd hoped, Walls of Men: A Military History of China 2500 B.C. to A.D. 2020 has topped the new releases column for Chinese history.

This is wonderful news and I'm grateful to the people who have supported and promoted the work.   

Of course, the next question is whether people like it.  Given it's length, that may take a while to find out.

At long last my military history of China has been published!  If you haven't been following along for the last 15 months or so, here is the description:

China is using its economic might and growing military strength to challenge America's long-standing hegemony. Yet besides the posturing and high-tech weapons, the West knows very little about China's military culture or history. This book helps fill that gap by offering a comprehensive yet compact study of China's military strengths and weaknesses, from the timeless maxims of Sun Tzu to the guerilla warfare pioneered by Mao Zedong.

Walls of Men provides a detailed examination of the factors shaping the Chinese way of war over more than 4,000 years. More than just a dry recitation of battles and rulers, this book is willing to challenge the conventional narratives. Why did China forfeit its edge in military technology? How could the declining Ch'ing Dynasty survive the Taiping Rebellion, sustaining a death toll greater than the entire U.S. population at the time? Was Chiang Kai-shek actually a gifted commander and strategist? What can China's most recent conflicts tell us about the state of its military power today? Has the Three Generation Problem of leadership finally been solved?

Only by studying the culture, geography, weapons, and beliefs of the dynastic cycles that have shaped China's history can we hope to understand the China of today.

It is available on the Amazon Kindle and in paperback.

Obviously, one can't dig too deep when covering thousands of years of history in 360 pages, but I think I struck the right balance between detail and keeping things moving.  As with my other writing, when I found myself getting bored writing it, I figured the reader would be feeling the same way.

While I've been retro-watching the 80s shows of my youth, my memory does in fact extend into the 70s as well.  Sad to say, the few attempts I've made to go re-watch old programming did not go well.  Hulu had M*A*S*H on about a year ago and I could not get into it.  It was painful to sit through.  Maybe one of the later seasons would be better, but neither my wife nor I could stomach it.

However, The Rockford Files has aged reasonably well.  It's got the usual detective tropes and comically unsafe firearms use that is emblematic of the period and as I'm closing in on the halfway mark of the first season I can see why it was successful.

James Garner is perfect for the role of Jim Rockford and he has the easy charm and charisma that is sorely lacking in today's stars.  He's genuinely interesting to watch.  Such qualities made often made the difference between schlock and decent programming.

The setting is of course iconic - a guy who lives in a battered trailer set up in a ocean side parking lot.  The interior is nice, but it's constantly the target of various break-ins.  While perpetually broke, Rockford nevertheless boasts a sweet ride - a gold Pontiac Firebird.  This of course anticipates the 80s tropes where private investigators have sweet rides and/or helicopters (or speedboats, or whatnot).

Rockford therefore walks the line between being plausible and relatable (perpetually broke, often beat up) but also admirable (handsome, has cool car, total ladies' man).  There is not a trace of the Mary Sue in this show, which demonstrates how far Hollywood has fallen.

I'm not sure how long I will stick with it, but for now it's a welcome diversion while I finish publishing Walls of Men and recharge my batteries for my next creative venture.

The proof copy arrived yesterday and - as expected - there were a few things that needed to be fixed.  The maps seemed grainy, so I both lightened them up (they are monochrome) and I re-rendered them to a higher resolution.  This should result in crisper images.  Certainly they look better in the electronic format.

Other tasks included listing the maps and completing the table of contents.  I made a few final edits to the introduction and the went through making sure the formatting was optimal.  The final step will be completing the final version of the index.  At that point, it will be ready to publish, but I will wait for a second proof to arrive before taking that step.

I've learned the hard way that patience pays off, particularly in the non-fiction genre.  That make sense, because who is going to trust a history book riddled with formatting errors?  There's also the value for money aspect.  I'm going to charge a decent amount of money for Walls of Men because I've put a great deal of time in on it.  It's also more than 360 pages long - the longest book I've ever written.  All of which is to say it is going to be priced accordingly.

One thing I want to avoid is the mad scramble to correct errors that marred the launch of Long Live Death.  For that reason, I'm going to be extra cautious.

That being said, this is a self-published book, and I hope people won't nit-pick it to death.  Anyhow, it will be out soon enough and then I can take a break for a bit.

Almost there!  Before folks get too excited, I'm not out of the woods yet.  I know there are some mistakes still in the draft, but fixing them won't change the layout or page count.  I intend to correct them at the same time as any other mistakes which I find.  At that point, it can go live and I can get on with my life.

One area of concern for me is the maps.  To keep costs low (and simple) I went with a monochrome color scheme.  These are just sketch maps, nothing particularly elaborate and suitable for a compact paperback.  Still, if they need work, that could induce some delay.

All those caveats aside, I think it will be ready in a matter of days, not weeks.  After that, it's all about spreading the word.

The print version has 360 pages, so quite a bit bigger than anything I've yet done.  I can't wait to see how it feels in my pixel-stained hands.

I was going through some old emails and read with amusement my earlier goal of having Walls of Men submitted for publication in September. 

As if.

On the plus side, it is getting very close to that point.  The text is good to go, it's been formatted and what is holding me up right now is tweaking the maps.  I originally only projected a dozen or so of them but as I started building them, I realized that I needed more than twice as many.

These aren't particularly detailed, mostly just clarifying parts of the text - which is exactly why I'm adding to them.

You see, the maps have to go into the book, and it's nice to have the things referenced shown in the map.  Thus my original idea of just having outline maps of the various dynasties has mutated into some thematic ones as well.

To be clear, these are monochrome and quite simple, which is why I find it so easy to add to the collection. 

Even so, I'm most of the way done.  If I can get some quiet time this weekend, I may well get the thing submitted at last.

But first, I have to stop thinking of new maps to include.