The Day Before St. Patrick's Day

A happy pre-St. Patrick's Day and St. Patrick's Day Eve to Stroock's Books reader(s) from Cork to Derry, Belfast to Dublin [St Patrick's Day Eve? Not a thing -Ed]. No, it's not. But we are using the holiday, such as it is, to hock World War 1990: Ireland on Substack [People love spam in their feed. Good craic. Just cracker-Ed]. Shut up, Ed. You're from Liverpool. 

While World War 1990: Ireland (have you purchased your copy yet? If so, please say so in the comments) falls in the Amazon rankings, sales remain strong. Midway through this month, royalties are already triple what they were last month.

Speaking of Ireland...[Oooo segue -Ed], what we working on this week? We started one of the Belfast riot POV scenes, using that bevy of Irish characters one sees at the beginning and end of World War 1990: Ireland (which you should totally buy if you haven't already).  This should keep us busy for a couple of days. 

Moving on...[Thank you-Ed].

Israel has launched a new incursion into southern Lebanon today a 'targeted ground operation'. It's unclear if this is the big one.  Probably not. Battlespace prep? Probably. The IDF is 'preparing a massive ground operation' though. Reminder, Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, so national infrastructure is fair game. 

NATO is waffling on sending ships to hold open the Strait of Hormuz, which is sooooo European. Australia and Japan are nixing the idea too. So what good are these military alliances again? Stroock's Books believes America has no interests east of Iceland. 

The war will go on. Bla-bla number of vessels sunk, bla-bla we destroyed the Iranian space program.The bombing stats are impressive. We admit it. We are reminded of the Desert Storm air war, which went on for five weeks. During this time the Pentagon assured the public that Iraq and Kuwait remained, 'Target rich environments'. So remains Iran, one supposes.  Exit question: at what point does the American/Israeli bombing campaign tip over to diminishing returns?

Ant War II: we haven't seen any ants since we deployed interior and exterior traps. We remain wary. We saw one of the those leggy insects in the basement but let it be. Those things thick ants are a delicious snack. 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 3/15/26

Good Sunday morning, to all Stroock's Books Christian faithful except the C of E types. Wankers.

Our sojourn across the dread Hudson River went fine, as did lunch at Epstein's Kosher Deli in Hartsdale. A Stroock family tradition for many, many decades. 

So Tucker Carlson has been texting people in the Iranian government and now fears he's about to be arrested. Remember how Trump had Tucker at the White House shortly before the war? There's a lot of wild speculation out there that Trump was using Tucker to feed misinformation to the Iranians. Awesome and hilarious if true. Why not? Exit question: when did Tucker become such a drama queen? 

Whatever the truth, Tucker looks horrible. To make this about us, [Great-Ed], that's one of the reasons we stopped writing pithy/newsy articles for the Ruskis. Didn't look good. 'Maxim', we said to our KGB handler at the Kremlin, we said, 'Maxim, if you guys haul off and invade Ukraine, we're not writing for you anymore.' Maxim replied, 'I swear there will be no invasion....comrade.' We miss the gig, and one could make the case that writing pithy/newsy pieces for the Ruskis during the war isn't unethical. But doing so just didn't feel right so we decided nyet to more Ruski articles. We made that decision the December before the invasion.

Actually, it turns out the CIA and MI-6 used us to pass on misinformation to the Kremlin. As a result, the entire politburo met in the Walnut Room just before a squadron of SAS Chinook helicopters landed in Red Square. The SAS torched the Kremlin and tracked the Politburo down to Bunker 42, where they assassinated the lot. We apologize for our complicity in the event. 

[Why did you take us through that whole rigmarole again?-Ed] Mostly for the jokes [Jokes?-Ed]. Also we recall that several years ago the Feds were spying on Tucker when he was setting up his Putin interview. See how his story and our story are related? [No-Ed].

Will's Good Idea for the week of 15 March, 2026. We got a few nuke novel short story ideas. We know how they start but have no idea where they're going. Which is fine. 

We also got ideas for characters in Thatcher's War seeing riots break out in Belfast; on the telly or radio or some such. Best way to show those riots no? We really want to avoid a street level vivisection of the riots, right? Right?!

Saturday Updates

Good Saturday morn, Stroock's Books weekenders. 

We got in a Judaism last night. Our first in a while, actually, for various logistical reasons. 

This being America in 2025, our synagogue had armed security. Nice man. We brought him coffee and sweets. The owner of the company came by and said they'd been doing so much work in the Jewish community the last few years his guys were picking up Hebrew and learning prayers. The situation will grow worse. The golden age of Jews in America is over. 

America vanquished Canada again, this time defeating those moose eating bastards 5-3 in the World Baseball Classic. 

Various news outlets are reporting that Israel is about to launch an all out invasion of Lebanon. There's never been a better time to attack. After two + years of war the Israeli army is sharp, but also rested. As we said with Gaza and Hamas, it's important to slaughter the rank and file. In the end, Israel should reestablish the old security zone in South Lebanon. 

Sales of World War 1990: Ireland came back massively yesterday. And we look to have another good sales day today. 

 The Things.

The Battle of Ardee chapter...we shake our head in frustration. We wrote some good things in that chapter. But not enough. Fortunately we're making a sojourn across the dread Hudson River today, which makes for some drive time think time. If not this, what? 

We've got the cosmonaut story set up, we think, but have no idea where it's going. The literal day after, cosmonauts see destruction of USSR - then what? There's lots of good tidbits in there, where do they lead?

Fook the Farsis Friday

Good morning, reader(s) of Stroock's Books, and Shabbat Shalom. 

So we had two separate Islamic terrorist attacks yesterday, did we? One at a university, in which cadet students subdued and killed the attacker, and one in which a terrorist rammed his car into a Michigan synagogue and tried to shoot up the joint. The only reason why the synagogue attacker failed is because the synagogue, like many, many synagogues across the country, has armed security.

It's good that one can attack a synagogue after which 50 cops, making for a comical picture of a police cruiser traffic jam, will show up after your armed security has already taken down the terrorist. 

Exit question, how many mosques need armed security? 

Tonight is shabbat across America. Keep your fingers crossed.

Fun fact: most of the grief we get on-line (meaning Substack) comes from annon groyper/Tucker fanbois. We're dealing with one now. Usually we respond with yo-mamma jokes and calling them gay and retarded, which we enjoy immensely. 

Bla-bla Israel, bla-bla Iran...Lots of bellicose and tough talk coming from Washington and Jerusalem. The latter particularly annoys this blog. To reverse things, the more bellicose the Arab's rhetoric, the more impotent is the Arab, as reader(s) well know. Of course whenever Trump talks tough something else in Iran blows up. So we dunno. But we don't like the bellicose rhetoric. We don't like it at all. Exit quote, 'If you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk.' 

We are enjoying the destruction and pain inflicted upon the Iranian regime but we are also eschewing exuberance. 

How's this going to go exactly? 

Bombing campaign.

....

Peace and freedom! 

We've seen this movie before. 

DOGE Report.

Bahhhh!

We just don't like this Ardee chapter, but have no idea how to write it otherwise. 

Sales of World War 1990: Ireland back up yesterday and look to have a strong day today. 

The Thursday Post

A good rainy afternoon to Stroock's Books reader(s) across the globe, not you Canada. The American and Canadian teams will meet tomorrow in the World Baseball Classic. 

The ants have returned. We are getting ready to counterattack, counterattack with extreme prejudice. 

Gaudy explosions and spectacular assassinations have not yet brought victory over Iran and Hezbollah and...Yemen sooner or later. We approach events wearily. Interestingly, the US and Israel are targeting Iranian regime security elements. Soon? [Hey! What happened to no new wars?-Ed] This is an old war.

Pointless nostalgia...2006. Reader(s) of this blog who recall last summer's AC Wars will know that we look to our house's utility room with [Great fear and trepidation?-Ed], great fear and trepidation. But back in 2006 the utility room was a place of great solace. 

Our grandfather gave us his old treadmill, which we kept in the utility room. Almost daily we'd go in there and run a couple of miles while blasting music on our CD player. What were we listening to? A lot of Queen, a lot of Dio, a lot of Bon Jovi. And we were on the verge of rediscovering AC/DC. The Heavy Metal revival was just beginning. Those were the days...

DOGE report.

Ardee....we don't understand why this chapter is messy and we don't understand why we don't like this chapter. We are struggling on. 

We did a lot of articulation and characterization on our Soviet cosmonaut story in the 5th nuke novel. 

Sales of World War 1990: Ireland have peaked and are now falling. Sales should remain strong for another week to ten days and won't settle into backlist territory for at least a month. Hmmmm....so far, sales of Ireland aren't dragging up other books. However, this month's royalties are up nearly 100% over last month's royalties. 

We've made back over half the book production costs. We'll keep Ireland's price at $9.99 for the time being. But soon we'll put it on Kindle Select. Which should lead to another sales/rankings surge. 

Uh oh, in four ratings on good reads, Ireland has a 3 star and a 2 star. 

Twenty on a Wednesday

Good morning reader(s) of Stroock's Books. The daylight time might be saved, but as we write this it's dark outside. We'll have another warm day today. Yay shorts! After that blizzard and prolonged cold snap, the unseasonably warm weather feels good. 

Bla-bla Israel, bla-bla Iran. The lack of protests in the streets of Iran makes one think that the US state department, or whoever, has gotten word out that people should lay low till an appropriate time. Meanwhile the US and Israel bomb police facilities, IRGC bases, etc etc. Extit question: what is the appropriate time?

Pointless nostalgia. Twenty years on...aye, 2006. We were a more or less permanent sub at Bernards High.  We were in over a hundred days. Most days we brought our computer and wrote during prep time, or even class time. Very often we'd have nothing to do but show a movie, maybe pass out an assignment. Subs don't do much teaching in high school. 

The kids knew us and we knew the kids. Some of them even signed up for classes with us when we were a history adjunct at Raritan Valley Community College. A real treat, actually. Here's the class of 2006. Most of the names ring a bell. Those kids are now older than we were when we knew them - and approaching 40. Amazing. 

Out of curiosity we looked up a kid whom we liked very much. Smart, friendly, respectful. He had military aspirations and had been accepted to a military school and...son of gun. There's a photograph of that young man as a marine lieutenant in Afghanistan.  

Anyhow we were finishing up A Line through the Desert. Also we were working on a series of articles for Strategy & Tactics Magazine about the Roman Empire. An article we wrote about the Roman general Metellus has never seen the light of day. By the spring of 2006 we'd had four articles in print, but nothing out in over a year. The wait was tough. But we'll have the S&T cover twice that autumn.

DOGE Report. 

After further consideration we're keeping the Ardee chapter, for now. Let's fix it. Or not. We've got an Irish army battalion, a British army battalion, the Garda, and the IRA chasing one another around Ardee...kind of like we had the IRA, RUC, UDA, UVF, and UFF chasing one another around Derry in World War 1990: Ireland. We don't like it. We don't like it one bit. 

Will Sharpens his Axe

A faire Tuesday morn, Stroock's Books fellow travelers. We had highs in the mid-70s yesterday and expect highs in the high 70s today. Shorts abound. 

The war on Iran continues. More interestingly at this point, it seems the Israelis are going to intensify their aerial campaign against Hezbollah - and there's fuckall the Hezbos can do about it. Hezbollah joining the war on Iran's behalf was a terrible mistake. 

This blog awaits Iranian or Iranian inspired terror attacks against a Israeli or Jewish target. 

So beware Victory Disease. 

Did reader(s) know that IRA man Gerry Adams is in court? It seems victims of a trio of prominent IRA bombings have sued him for damages. Heh. 

We decided to have some fun with Grok and asked, 'Is William Stroock Jewish?' here's Grok's reply.

Yes, William Stroock is Jewish.
He frequently uses Jewish greetings and references in his public writing, such as posting "Shabbat Shalom" (a traditional Jewish Sabbath greeting) alongside pro-Israel commentary, like "Good morning Substack and Shabbat Shalom. This is your Friday reminder that Israel is great." He also comments on Jewish community issues, antisemitism, and topics like the "Golden Age of Jews in America" being over, while strongly identifying with and defending Jewish/Israeli perspectives in his Substack notes and posts.His body of work includes multiple pro-Israel military fiction series (e.g., Israel Strikes and Israel at War), and he regularly discusses Jewish-related historical and current events in ways consistent with Jewish identity and advocacy. There's no public indication otherwise, and his online presence aligns clearly with Jewish cultural and religious markers.

Every word is true. Every analyses on point. 

DOGE report.

We went over the Battle of Ardee yesterday and...didn't like what we saw at all. We may just ax the whole chapter and start over. We've ample precedent for this. We cut a 15,000 word opening chapter from World War 1990: The Final Storm. Anyone else remember our blogging about the Battle of the Roki Tunnel? 

The Salyut station cosmonaut story progressed. We still don't know to what the story progresses.  

So we'd been holding off on posting about World War 1990: Ireland on Substack. Till yesterday. Our initial announcement got four clicks. We'll do another post or two today. 

Anyway, Yesterday World War 1990: Ireland climbed to the #9 spot in Amazon's alternate history category.

We are among the best there is at what we do.