And here we go again

 blather, Book X  No Responses »
Jun 262020
 

In January I signed my very first book contract, for a heavily illustrated aerospace history text Yet To Be Publicly Described. The manuscript and all the diagrams were due to be turned in to the publisher in July. And then… Commie Cough comes along, book stores close, supply chains collapse. Perhaps surprisingly, the book was not cancelled, but instead delayed by one year. Sigh, oh well, okay.

So today, I signed a *second* book contract with the same publisher. This is for a slightly smaller text on a different subject, but similar in idea: a boatload of aerospace diagrams. Book One looks to have around 180 diagrams; Book Two will top out somewhere in the area of 120. This one has a  due date of January, 2021.

If you like the US Aerospace Projects publications I’ve put out, then you’ll go bonkers for these books.

An aside: for public discussion purposes, the first book is “Book X.” The second book would thus be either “Book Y” or perhaps “Book XX.” In which latter case if and when I sign a third book contract, that would should prove quite interesting.

 Posted by at 9:28 pm

OK… *NOW* it’s personal

 AARRRGH, blather, Book X, Gah., news, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
May 052020
 

Found out today that the book I’ve been slaving away at has been delayed. Thanks to CERTAIN GLOBAL PROBLEMS causing supply chain issues and shutting down distributors and wholesalers, publication of my book has been put off by One Year.

Golly gee, thanks for that pandemic, ya commie bastiches.

In a desperate effort to look on the bright side, this also gives me an extra year to finish the manuscript. As anyone who has ever had to write some big report as a school assignment only to get an extension on the due date knows, this can be both good and bad. Extra time is handy, but it tends to result in slacking off if one isn’t careful. Still and all, I expect that this will lead to an expanded version of the book, assuming I don’t get taken down by the Pinko Pox before I turn it in.

Extra sadness: I was preparing to turn in a proposal for the *next* book, and it was agreed that it would have gone straight to contract were things different.

 Posted by at 3:52 pm

Another book update

 Book X, books, news  No Responses »
Apr 162020
 

As of  today… 150 diagrams completed for the book. Woo.

Oddly, and rather perversely, productivity while I’ve been stuck at home due to Winnie the Flu has actually decreased slightly. Some of this, though, is due to a lot of the earlier diagrams being of the “low hanging fruit” variety, while a good number of the diagrams as yet incomplete are of the much more intricate and complex variety.

 Posted by at 1:57 am

Update

 blather, Book X, books, drawings, news  No Responses »
Feb 292020
 

As of today I have 100 diagrams completed for the book project. Not cruising along quite as quickly as I’d hoped… in mid January I had a few short of 70 and had hoped to do at least one per day. But there has been about two weeks worth of work time lost of various and sundry issues, and a few of the diagrams turned out to be more of a headache than expected. Things are nonetheless progressing. The spreadsheet of planned diagrams is now just a bit short of 210 total, though I expect some of those might not come to pass… better to plan to throw in *every* damn thing than plan to run lean. If nothing else, I want this book to be the sort of thing that anyone else who might have ideas about doing the same thing would take one look at and give up in despair, knowing that there is nothing more to say on the topic.

 Posted by at 5:08 pm

Book deal

 blather, Book X, books, news  No Responses »
Jan 182020
 

An update: the contract has been signed. I now have until July to turn in my book. Until the publisher starts advertising it, I’ll shut the frak up about the details except to say that it’s along the lines of USXP, but on a tighter than usual focus… and a hell of a lot bigger. Currently have just shy of 70 diagrams finished for it (which explains the dry spell of aerospace on the blogs… I’ve been up to my eyeballs in aerospace, I just haven’t been sharing), and the spreadsheet lists just short of *200* diagrams.

 Posted by at 10:42 am

Book Project Update

 blather, Book X, books, news  No Responses »
Dec 212019
 

Just a minor FYI: after several months of being out of the drafting business entirely due to moving, and a year or more of a serious slowdown, I’m getting back into it pretty well, averaging one new diagram a day. At the same time I am completely reworking a lot of old ones, greatly improving them and bringing them up to new standards. All in all, going pretty well so far. Obviously I’m being perhaps annoyingly cagey about the subject and the publisher; I’ll keep those under my vest until papers are signed and official announcements and whatnot made.

 Posted by at 12:03 pm

So, yeah, about that…

 blather, Book X, books, history, Hmm..., news  No Responses »
Dec 162019
 

Not that long ago I was yammering about finally getting over the move and getting things back to semi-normal hereabouts. And perhaps you’ve noticed that recently blogging has been uneven and lean, rather than gloriously full of babble. What’s up?

Well… a book deal, as it turns out.

While there has been absolutely no forward motion on getting my sci-fi novel(s) published, or even seen by an agent or a publisher, it turns out that a publisher is interested in my aerospace history work. So I’m in the getting-my-ᛋᚺᛁᛏ-together stage of preparing the outline and such for an actual book. This will be something of an expansion of my US Aerospace Projects work, narrowed down to a tighter topic focus. While a typical issue has diagrams covering 8 separate designs, the spreadsheet covering this book includes more than 180 designs.

More info on this project when there’s more progress on it. But if all goes well, at some point soon-ish you’ll see a book with my name on it and a boatload of my diagrams in it on the bookstore shelves. This will be a bit time consuming on my part…

 Posted by at 9:44 pm
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