It never ends

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and the New Year - I did.

The manuscript and illustrations have gone off to the publisher, now I am just waiting for changes, admonishments and suggestions.  That said, I'm still eliciting input and double checking facts.  Up to the time it is laid out all is fair game.  I'm still working on some of the water color drawings for future use - as I finish them I will attempt to put some up on the site.

In conjunction with this book, I am working on some miniatures to tie into this period.  Currently, I'm painting up soldier of the Bar Confederation.  Eureka Miniatures has a Saxon range for the 1760's that works well for some Polish soldiers of the years 1763 - 1772.  They also have some lancers that work with the minimum conversion.

At the same time, Trent Miniatures has a range of figures for the Revolutionary wars in Italy which include the Polish Legions. I did a quick uniform guide for them, but I'm hoping to expand this into my second book - we'll see how that works.  I will probably update this to include some info on flags in the near future.

Totally unrelated, my good friends at Warlord Games have a new line of Russian troops from the Napoleonic Wars, so I am working on a quick uniform painting guide.  More info on that when it is finished and if they use it.

Our story so far...

Geez, I feel like one of those bloggers - "I know it has been a long time, blah, blah blah." and I realise I am one of those bloggers.  This reminds me of one time when I was a lad and my roommate had a bit too much one night.  He grabbed a roll of toilet paper on the way to the bathroom and dropped it, but held on to the end of the roll.  For some reason he thought pulling on the end would make the roll come to him - it just kept moving away. That is like where my time has gone of late, but I have been busy.

So, the manuscript is 98% done, the black and white illustrations are ready and finished writing the text to accompany the color illustrations. I am now starting to work on the artist notes so you will all have excellent pictures that Osprey books are known for.  There is a limit to the amount of original art these books can contain so we all have to just deal with it.  That said, I am going for a broad spectrum of normal (lancers and infantry), different (Bar Confederates) and exotic (Janissaries).  I'm sure I will go back to add more information post-publication, but that is a project for another day.  My initial plan is to create additional info as a pdf to download.

On a different note I have done some quick uniform guides for Warlord Games dealing with Polish World War II and Prussian Landwehr (not related, but both of interest to me).  Check out their website, all sorts of goodies and great miniatures. If I can only convince them or the Perry's to do miniatures on this period my work will be done - for now.

I have procured some great material of late.  Gembarzewski's 2 volume work Wojsko Polskie 1807 - 1830 as well a Morawski's illustrated book on the Legions - always planning ahead.

Passing the Bar

Here is the last of the Bar Confederation Cavalry sketches.  Only 2 will make it into the current book.  If anyone has preferences let me know.  Next up will be probably be some infantry from the Barist period - both Government and Confederate.

More Cavalry

Did some more sketches of Bar Cavalrymen for your review.  Not all of these will make it in this book, but we need choices. I have a couple more I will be adding shortly.  I am sending the text for feedback at the moment.

Don't be too judgemental

I started working on the artists notes, so really trained artists can do the center colour plates.  In order to do this I started some watercolor sketches of potential units.  I will be putting up pictures indescriminantly, give me feedback if there are units you want to see more of.  Today I am focusing on the Confederation of the Bar cavalry.  I'm trying to get a good cross section that will give you the feel for the period.  More to come over the next few days. Please let me know what you think.

Why e-books will save publishing

I just received another of my Polish language books in the mail on the Polish Army in the 18th century.  A great book with some good source material, but it still falls short.  The reason is the economics of making a full color book means it is either very expensive to get everything you want in, or you are forced to leave things out to be able to publish it at all.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these new tech people who say books are dead in physical form.  I like the feel of a book, when it is well made it is a thing of beauty, but the finances of publishing means that you can do somethings better in e-books.

First, not everyone has a color e-reader (nook, i-pad, etc) and I find there can be formatting problems in some of these devices to allow color pictures to be seen properly, but when you have a lot of illustrations, it is far cheaper do use an e-format.  For some people this may mean physical books might have websites to provide extra material on-line, or it might mean that at some point e-book sales may be used to help provide impetus for physical books. There are books and information that may not be viable in physical form, but will be allowed to get published in e-book.  I remember a few years ago at Book Expo seeing a book entitled "Birthing Techniques of Azerbajan".  I'm sure it was of use to people who study these things, but how could they afford to publish it?  This is perfect for an e-book.  The drawback is you can publish anything at any time and some non-professional stuff is already creeping onto POD and e-versions at Amazon, but the potential is there for a new burst of information.

In terms of history and especially military history, when studying armies, units and uniforms a picture is worth a thousand words and e-books may be the best way to allow information to get out there.

Writing update

An update on Polish Armies of the Partitions 1770 - 1794.  All the research is done and a first draft is finished.  This means I have enough for two plus books, but I have to edited down to one and still give you enough information to send you on your way.  Diligently working on it - I have my own deadline set for the end of August.

Next steps?  Well for this type book I have to provide the b&w illustrations and give them captions.  I need forty and I have about eighty so it is parse and paste.  Some have to be scanned, but once the office is back in operation it will all be ok.  The author also has to provide artist notes so the illustrator can produce those great pictures that Osprey is known for.  This is probably the most difficult part - you need photos, pictures or details to give the artist info to complete a detailed illustration, historically accurate (or someone will no doubt complain) and describe the scene in such a way that the person doesn't have to keep coming back to you for clarification.  Luckily, I think this is in hand, but it will take time.

 I started working out the illustrations by actually doing a sketch of how I wanted the scenes to look and what was going to be in them.  From there I just needed to collect pictures that would get us to that goal, so most of that is together.  That said it could go all horribly wrong when I hand it in, but we'll keep our fingers crossed.

This isn't to say that I have not been updating things and ideas as I go along - I am still checking to make sure I have details correct and occasionally finding new information, but if you don't draw a line in the sand it will drive you crazy.

I'm working on a new post soon on how gamers actually are the go to guys for this type of history or writting, but more on that later.