War in the Western Theater: Margarita Powered!

Little-known fact: The books in ECW’s 10th Anniversary Series are margarita powered!

When I’m not on the road, I usually treat myself to “Margarita Day” once a week at El Patron Mexican Restaurant in Spotsylvania Court House. The tradition sprang from work on ECW books, which—at various spots in the production schedule—require a lot of mindless, repetitive work.

For instance, if I have 175 JPGs to format, that gets mind-numbing pretty quickly. I have to convert them to grayscale, make sure they aren’t too light or dark, size them properly, and make sure their resolution is high enough. Over and over. And over. 175 times.

So I’ll order a jumbo frozen margarita and nurse it for a couple hours as I do the work. It’s a pleasant and relaxing way to make otherwise-tedious work a bit less tedious.

It is not the kind of environment where I could productively work on, say, a piece of writing. The loud, cheerful Mexican pop music would prevent that—I can’t write my own words while someone is singing other words in the background—and I also have a hard-and-fast rule that I don’t drink alcohol while I’m writing. I’m no Hemingway or Faulkner (in many ways), and that includes an inability to drink and write Nobel Prize-winning prose.

But Margarita Day is perfect for formatting, designing, and reviewing.

I want to offer my thanks to the fine, friendly staff at El Patron for their weekly hospitality, which helped make the ECW 10th Anniversary series possible. For that reason, I dedicated The War in the Western Theater to my friends at El Patron!

(Order your copy of the book today from Savas Beatie. Margaritas not included.)

Agradecido con mis amigos de el Patron Mexican Restaurant en Spotsylvania Court House, donde pase muchas tardes agradables editando todos los libros de esta serie mientras disfrutaba de sus deliciosas y gigantes margaritas. Salud Amigos!