Chateau Lloyd

The test readers have finally finished their labors, and we're now coming down the home stretch of Walls of Men.

This project really got out of hand developed beyond what I expected.  Based on my experience with Long Live Death, I figured I could hammer out a concise military history of China in little over twice the time it took me to write about Spain.  I was wrong.

Badly wrong.

Target completion dates kept slipping backward, from March to May to July to September.  I'm now reasonably confident that I will at least have a proof copy printed in November.

On the plus side, the feedback is very positive, which is great.  On the other hand, I've got a bit of work ahead in terms of cleaning things up.  I'm not really bothered by that because almost every one of my books has required a post-publication update as new typos and mistakes are brought to light.  Given the scope of this particular work, I'm willing to delay final publication until it's as clean as can be reasonably expected.

What next?  I'm not sure, but I need a break from the non-fiction realm.  Things are too stressful and disappearing into a world of my own creation will do me some good.  Both Vampires of Michigan and Battle Officer Wolf are long overdue for sequels, and I've been thinking about both of them.

I'm also looking at a revised one-volume version of Man of Destiny with some new content added to it (along with improved cover art).

To put it another way, I've still got stories to tell and things to say and with my impending retirement from military service, I'll have a lot more time to do it.

While I was in the throes of writing Walls of Men, I decided to forgo other creative activities.  As a result, my output here and elsewhere suffered.

Today my first new content since June appeared on Bleedingfool.com: a scathing review of Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai.

The review itself is less significant than the fact that I finally have time to do something other than research or write about China. 

Don't get me wrong, it's fun to take on a major project and feels great to get it behind you.  Still, it's also tough to give up sidebar hobbies and just grind away on a single topic.

I'm still decompressing from the effort, and am taking something of an intellectual vacation in terms of heavy reading, but the notion of getting back into turning out short pieces is appealing to me.

Today I completed the first hard-copy edit of Walls of Men: The Chinese Way of War 2500 BC - 2020 AD.

The next step is to send it to the test readers and to get to work on maps, the blurb and design a cover.   I think a mid-September publication date is within reach.

This this is big - the biggest book I've yet written.  I'm interested to see what people think.

It's kind of overwhelming and I'm glad that the heavy lifting on it is done.

I really want do some fiction now.  Two histories is enough for a while.

I've blown past my original deadline, but the end is at last somewhat in sight.

I've set aside time this weekend to push through World War II and get into Korea.  For those keeping score at home, the current word count is more than 64,000, quite a bit more than Long Live Death.

In fact, this is currently the second-longest book I've written.  (The current record-holder is Fall of the Commonwealth.)

The biggest challenge is knowing when to stop.  In earlier areas, there simply wasn't much information out there, so I wasn't tempted to go into great detail.  Sources are much more plentiful about modern conflicts.  Not only do I risk going into an unnecessary amount of detail, I also am tempted to do more research than necessary, which is far more time consuming.

Ironically, I think the work I've done on the warlord period and now WW II will make my discussion of the Chinese Civil War go much faster since the legacy of those conflicts clearly shaped the later one.

Once one understands that the Nationalists had effectively spent an entire generation at war, it is understandable that their forces were generally exhausted by 1946.

Of course the first draft is just that - a starting point, and I'll certainly have to go back and shore up various concepts and points during revision.  I am looking forward to finishing, though.  Hopefully that's only a few weeks away.

My writing on China has slowed to a crawl because I've been so busy reading new books.  Some are excellent, while others have been questionable.

The situation is not quite as bad as researching the Spanish Civil War, where a uniform scholarly bias exists that has only recently been challenged.

With China, the situation is more complex.  The crimes of Communism are undeniable, which makes it difficult to shower the Peoples' Republic with the same sort of soft-focus fan service rendered to the Second Spanish Republic.

The language barrier is also difficult, particularly with two translation schemes.  What this does is make it much easier for modern pro-CCP scholars to obscure unpleasant facts since the English renderings of most of the place-names have been changed.

Still, I'm reaching a point where I'm getting quite good at detecting the presence of revisionist propaganda, which is particularly important as my account has now reached the modern era.

Just as the bombing of Guernica has served as a useful litmus test on a source's reliability regarding the Spanish Civil War, the treatment of China's brutal imperialist history has provided a useful guide to gauging a source's reliability in other areas.

As a sidenote, I still don't have a title.  I'm sure one will come to me...eventually.

To focus my thoughts on the China book project, for the last several weeks I've been watching Chinese-centric films.

I started with Curse of the Golden Flower, which is supposedly set in the Tang Dynasty.   I have to admit that when I first watched it, I found it a bit odd but the themes now make a lot more sense to me - both in terms of its ending and also the time in which it was set.

Jumping ahead in history, the next film in the sequence was 55 Days in Peking, which is about the Boxer Rebellion and stars Charleton Heston as, well, himself.  I suppose it's biased against the Boxers, but then again, they were trying to kill all the diplomats and their families which was not very nice.

Props to Flora Robeson as the Empress Dowager.  Ah, for the days when people were allowed to play folks from other races and cultures.  I'm old enough to remember when our betters told us that race was only skin deep, not the defining human characteristic.

After that, I watched The Last Emperor, Super-Long Director's Cut Edition.  Whew!  This should have been a miniseries.  I get why the guy wanted all the extra footage added in, but he should have also included an intermission.  Ah, for the days when data compression required two disks for a movie of this length. 

The big takeaway for me was how deeply weird late Imperial China was and Henry Puyi was also a bit off. 

For a change of pace, we jumped to the 1920s for The Sand Pebbles, a movie that got Steve McQueen and Best Actor nomination.  It's a good film, well done, and covers the forgotten topic of US gunboats sailing around in China.  Hard to believe that Candace Bergen was once mild-mannered and sweet rather than middle-aged and caustic.

Closing out my journey was Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, which is set in Hong Kong as the Chinese Civil War comes to a close.  It's a fascinating snap-shot of Hong Kong before it was entirely paved over with skyscrapers and run by the Chi-Coms.  Jennifer Jones does a great job of being a half-Chinese doctor (or as she insists, "Eurasian").  William Holden plays his usual lecherous self.  Funny how that guy so often ended up portraying a writer on the take.

Anyway, I think the "off duty" attention paid to China kept me motivated to hit my goal of 40,000 words by the end of March.  I am definitely over the hump on this book.  Going forward, the sources are more plentiful, clearer and the lessons of military operations become far more clear. 

I've set a very ambitious goal of having 60,000 words by the end of April and a draft done by the end of May, so we'll see how that goes.

My decision to tune out the news for a few weeks has been a fruitful one.  Instead of fuming over various "hot takes" or arguing in comment sections, my China project has been moving at its fastest pace since December.  At this point, it's a given that it will be longer than Long Live Death, but even if it equals my longest book, I'm at least halfway there.

All of which is to say that I haven't tuned out the news entirely, and one thing I've noticed is the complete absence of any kind of peace movement.  With the exception of the Catholic Church and other religious leaders, everyone seems to be demanding that the combat become fiercer and bloodier. 

I've never seen anything like it.

All my life there have been vocal and high-profile politicians and activists whose response to any form of violence has been to call for immediate cease-fires and negotiations.  Again, I'm not following this closely, but even my cursory glances would have noticed something.  Where are the streets-filling "peace marches?" 

I don't think a single interventionist has been denounced as a war monger or had their office occupied by protestors. 

Did all those people change their minds?  Is violence now the answer?

I'd love to talk with someone who carried a "no blood for oil" sign and find out what they think.

I hadn't planning on giving up following the news for Lent, but I think I will.

There's so much nonsense going on in the world, it seems like a waste of time to try to follow along. 

Maybe it's not a formal vow, but I can think of three reasons to stop following the news:

1. It's usually wrong.  Time was people got fired for getting stuff wrong.  Not so much these days.  So long as the lie agrees with the narrative, people are fine.

2. There's nothing I can do about it but worry.  Whatever happens in the wider world is going to happen with or without me.  Better to focus on my family and community than wring my hands about events on other continents.

3. Every word I read about world events is a word I could be reading in support of my book project.  I've gathered a lot of sources, and if I'm going to keep this thing on track, I need to focus on my research.

Again, this wasn't something that really occurred to me until Monday.  I had been making good progress on my China book and it was then that I realized I couldn't write more until I dug into all these books I've bought.  That sealed the deal:  less posting, less news, more research which leads to more writing.

I really want to have at least a rough draft by May.  I think if I cut out the time-wasters, I can do it.

With Ash Wednesday coming up, I've been thinking about how to approach Lent this year.

Normally I give up things - usually sinful stuff, but also something I enjoy to remind myself of Our Lord's sacrifices.

However, Lent also calls for additional acts of charity, things we do for others, and so I want to participate in that as well.

In fact, I don't think I'm going to give anything up (other than what is required of all Catholics).  Instead, I think I will try to do more, pray more, give more.

I'm also going to try to push hard to finish my book.  That may not sound like much of a Lenten sacrifice, but it means that I'm going to limit other activities.  When the weather finally breaks, I know I will want to go outside and enjoy it.  Now is the prefect time to drive forward and finish the first draft.

I've been writing on various topics over the years, but tonight I realized that I never mentioned that much of my work is done with a cat sleeping contentedly on my legs.

Yes, I'm a cat person.

Okay, I'm not really that into pets.  I had a cat when I was younger, and from time to time our family has had cats ever since.  Right now we have two, who don't much care for each other.

The elder cat belongs to my middle daughter, but in truth she prefers me to everyone else.  Probably because I'm the one who remembers to set the food out.

In any event, I think cats are particularly conducive to writing because in addition to keeping one's feet warm, they also give their owners insight into non-verbal emotional cues.

Dogs are pretty much out in the open as to who they are and what they are thinking.  Dogs are the opposite of mysterious.  This is why so many people like them.  If you want a friend, get a dog.

Cats are far more independent and they do not overtly advertise their moods.  True, with practice, one can tell when a cat is agitated, curious or playful.  However, cats have a high degree of variation in terms of personality and behavioral signals.  I think the patience and observation required to learn this is of great benefit to authors.

I cannot recall including cats in any of my writing.  Still, they are always present, lurking in the background and keeping my feet warm.