In which I announce that The Dragon From Chicago is out in paperback, and then wander off topic
For historical reasons related to the business of publishing that I do not entirely understand, new (traditionally published) books almost always release on Tuesdays—that’s why my Q & A’s with other authors about their new books almost always run on a Tuesday. Today it’s my turn. The paperback edition of The Dragon from Chicago is now out in the world, and I couldn’t be more happy.
I wish I could claim that I took the way news books are released into account when I decided that my blog posts would appear on Tuesdays and Fridays.[1] But I wasn’t looking that far ahead. I’m not even sure I knew that books release on Tuesdays when I started History in the Margins back in May, 2011. I certainly didn’t understand the relationship between writing a blog and writing a book.
I calculate that over the last fourteen years and a bit I’ve written roughly 1350 posts. (Yikes!) At an average of 500 words a post, those posts add up to the jaw-dropping equivalent of eight medium-sized books.
[pauses to check math.] [checks math a second time] [Yikes!]
In theory, I could have used that time to write another book or two—or take tap-dancing classes, or learn another language, or read my way through the hundreds of books on my To-Be-Read shelves[2] or take a trip with My Own True Love. But the fact of the matter is that the blog feeds the books in important ways. Blog posts keep my writing muscles strong and limber. They give me a place to explore ideas. To grapple with bits of history, large[3] and small, that I need to understand to write the current book project.[4] To share the cool stories I stumble across that don’t belong in the book at all, but add texture to my understanding of a period.
Writing History in the Margins is also a way to stay in touch with all of you. Thanks for being along for the ride.
[1] Unless my schedule blows up on me. As it did last week. I try to have one or two posts in the pipeline and scheduled to go live. And in fact, I do have two posts in the pipeline. Both of which will run on Tuesdays in September to coincide with the publication of other writer’s books. Unfortunately, that did not help me when Friday’s post squirmed in my hands like a cat that doesn’t want to be held. But I digress.
[2] And piled on my study floor
[3] I wrote a five-part series back in the early months of working on The Dragon from Chicago in which I tried to wrap my head around the Weimar Republic. There’s no easy way to give you a link to the series, but you can find them in June and July, 2020.
[4] Just for the record, I do not have a current book project yet.
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It’s taken me fourteen plus years, but I finally figured out how to produce real footnotes on the blog. Next challenge: Can I make it work on the newsletter?
