Two (novels in progress) for Tuesday

Good Tuesday morn, Stroock's Books fans. 

We understand the New York Knicks lost last night. 

We should mow the lawn. We probably won't.

On FB we sent out a call for submissions for our super-fun 80s songs playlist. We've had a list for a week, but felt it needed rounding out. We received a couple of good ideas. No Metal, just fun 80s rock songs. 

We've been working out to a The Answer playlist for a couple of weeks. We like it, but the playlist still isn't as good as they're Everyday Demons album. 

Trump says a major deal with Iran is weeks, days away. Yeah sure. This blog is not convinced that renewing military action is worthwhile. Meanwhile, Israel continues destroying Hezbollah infrastructure both south and north of the Litani. The USN is escorting ships through Hormuz. Eschew doomerism.

DOGE report.

Monday was an excellent day. We've finished, more or less, the rough draft of the BAOR nuke story. Much remains to be done, much smoothing and articulating. But there's the story. 

We've still no idea what the DEW Line story would be about. 

We read through the first 30 pages or 1/3rd of World War 1990: Thatcher's War. The narrative is a bit muddled, but overall we came away pleased. Lots of Irish stuff, obvs. Lots of American political intrigue. Oh, and some cloak and dagger in NYC. We've a chapter bouncing between the two. Half the point of the chapter is to show what's happening in the US after the war, little details, etc etc. 

Monday Show

Good morning, Stroock's Books fans, and happy Monday.

The morning air is cool with temps reaching into the high 70s today. 

We are genuinely surprised that Netanyahu ignored Trump and attacked Iran. It would seem negotiations have failed and Trump has lost control of events. The Israelis struck three airbases, air defenses and one petrochemical factory. Iran's launched 24 missiles in four barrages. Iran's response strikes us as weak and flaccid. 

What Will's Watching: A Marriage Story. We restarted this and watched the 2nd act. Much better with a lot of legal maneuvering, and Charlie's horrified realization that Nicole doesn't want to part amicably. Alan Alda plays Charlie's old, experienced, and slipping divorce attorney. We're enjoying Alda very much.

What Will's Also Watching: The Tony Awards. The girls love dance theatre and one of their instructors was in the show. We liked the opener well enough. Pink was fine as the show host. And we did like the great John Lithgow's gracious acceptance speech. The rest of the Tonys devolved into self-celebration and self-reverence. We've never liked Broadway and its pretentions. It's magical, don't you know? What is all this gay crap [In the theatre? Stunning-Ed]? Oh well, we're not the audience anyway.  We'll say this for the Tonys; it was a well scripted and tight show. Were we not entertained?

The Tonys had a couple of PSAs is support of theatre and drama programs. Which is fine. We were a theatre kid, lo those many years ago now, 35 of them. In high school we played a sailor in Anything Goes, and Captain Bracket in South Pacific our senior year:

We did enjoy the Hendrick Hudson Drama Club. In college we played Cradeau in No Exit* and Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer. The spring of 1995 marked the end of our drama career. But from time to time we had the actor's nightmare for years. 

DOGE report.

We got the BAOR story to the actual British counterattack. So far so good. 

Today we'll go back over Thatcher' War and see just what's left to do. 

We will not work on the Battle of Ardee this week.

*Hated the experience. No Exit is a bunch of French existentialist (we still don't know what that is) bullshit and the director controlled our every word and movement on stage. Asshole. The crew hated him too. 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 6/7 (!) 26

A faire Sunday morn, Christian Friends. Church starts promptly at 9 AM. BBQ at 1:00.

Happy Jerusalem Day, Yom Yerushalayam. 

6/7! IYKYM.

So last night the fami de Stroock went to the Flemington Greek Orthodox Church's Greek festival. We ate Greek food and drank Greek beer, a Mythos. The Mythos reminded us of Rolling Rock, so much so that we suspected Mythos had a deal with Rolling Rock where the former simply put's their label on the latter's product. Nope, we read the label, and the Mythos we drank was a product of Greece. 

Anyway, the festival had lots of Greek people and Greek music. We couldn't help but think of the Guns of Navarone, and then the Guns of Navarone playset we had as a kid. Man, that thing was awesome. 

What Will's Watching: Marriage Story. Scarlet Johansson and Adam Driver are a trendy, NYC theatre company couple getting a divorce. At times Marriage Story felt like a paeon to the entertainment industry with lawyers, casting calls, theatre notes, etc etc.  We didn't find any of the characters likable. Lots of talking about feelings and feelings about talking about feelings to the point of tedium. We had to stop about halfway through. 1/4.

As far as Will's good idea for the week of 6/7 26 goes. Don't got one.

Saturday Updates

Good morning, Stroock's Books weekenders, and happy Saturday. If you don't hear The Longest Day theme in your head, well, this blog has failed. 

We had a scorcher yesterday with another not quite as scorching scorcher coming today.

Whoa, the Knicks are up 2-0 over the Spurs in the NBA Finals. We haven't watched at all. 

Groin pull seems okay. Gym today? 

The things.

We had an excellent week with the Battle of Ardee chapter, rewrote it, articulated it, smoothed it out, and greatly improved it. World War 1990: Thatcher's War is 48,000 words.

We also had an excellent week with the BAOR chapter. It's set up and ready to be completed. The 5th nuke novel is 32,000 words. 

A good week. Nevertheless we feel limited, frustrated, unfulfilled. Choose your adjective. But we should be in a better mood. We ain't because planned side projects ain't panning out. In other words, we're a little bored.

Friday, Jews, Russians, Whatever

Good morning, Stroock's Books Kibbutzim, and shabbat shalom. 

Gonna be a scorcher today, with temps climbing to the mid-90s. 

So like an idiot we hit the gym yesterday even though we'd been to the gym the previous six days. However, when we felt a bad muscle pull coming on, we decided to not act like an idiot, and cut off our workout. We love the gym. We do love it so. 

Ben Shapiro* has been slamming (rightfully so) Candace Owens, Tucker etc for their relationship with and the former's tour of Russia. Huh, and there's American anchor Rick Sanchez working for Russia Today. Huh. We admit of late to reconsidering our past relationship with Inforos, for which we were occasionally called a Russian troll. Whatever. 

We wrote newsy, 800 word op-eds about American politics and current events. Everything we ever wrote for the Ruskis was 99 and 44/100ths percent true. Otherwise, we wandered the streets of San Francisco looking for 'nuclear wessels'. We stopped writing for Inforos when the Ruskis invaded Ukraine. 

Do we miss our gig in which the editor valued our contribution and paid us the agreed upon amount on time? You're damn right we do. In an ideal world we'd have written about the American view of the Ukraine War. But events won't allow it. Oh well. We shrug in the most Mediterranean way possible and return to our coffee. 

What Will's Watching: we restarted Justified last night. Why did we ever stop? We do miss that accent. Reminder, our maternal grandparents are buried in Livermore, Kentucky. 

An interesting article at the JPost about the rise of Gadi Eisenkot in the upcoming Israeli election. Our own sense is that Naftali Bennet has blown it. According to the Times of Israel, Eisenkot is rising. Wanna make the case for Eisenkot? We're listening. 

Right now, we'd put Netanhayu's odds at no better than 50/50. But should the Iranian regime collapse, he'd probably win. As far as Iran goes. Eschew doomerism. 

DOGE report. 

We had a fantastic day yesterday. 

We smoothed over and straightened out the BAOR chapter, and it should be in good shape for the actual counterattack. 

We rewrote the Irish army counterattack scene in the Battle of Ardee chapter. 

*Shapiro presents some horrifying stats about Russia. Do click over and watch. 

Down a Thursday

Morning, all. Temps begin the day in the mid-50s but will climb to 90 this afternoon. 

Six days in a row at the gym. It's time to take a break. 

We need more coffee....ah, there we go. 

Our local basketball team is in the NBA finals. We could not care less. Sorry, we're just not an NBA guy. The World Cup is here too. We don't care a whole lot about it, but we'll watch some matches. Why not?

War of the ants...we've spotted some little ones. But we haven't seen any big carpenter ants in the house for a week or ten days. 

Thursday...Thursday downer. 

We should be in a better mood, yet we aren't.

Reader(s) probably have an image of an author sitting in his study, furiously pounding the keyboard and ripping the page from his typewriter (IYKYK). Actually, most mornings ours is more like a cubicle job, like Office Space. Some days we even do that thing where we stare at the computer and pretend to work (IYKYK). We're actually just doomscrolling.  

In truth we feel stuck. Sales wise we've probably peeked as an author. We're not worried. Not yet, anyway. 

And no one seems interested in our magazine article queries. 

And we're bored. We're not quite bored with this blog. But we're bored AF with Substack, which feels like just another social media failure. See also Twitter and Gab. We're bored at night too. We've access to every movie and TV show ever made and we can't find something to watch. We can't think of anything to read, either. It's soooo weird. 

DOGE report.

Same. Lot's of progress on both fronts [So what are you so down about?-Ed]. Dunno. 

Your Post of June 3rd

Aye, Stroock's Books readers. A faire morning to ye all. 

After never settling in the night before, last night we slept the sleep of the dead. We are tired and groggy. 

Temps will climb to the mid-80s today. 

We still don't feel we're enjoying the late spring and are baffled as to why not. Too much to do, we guess. 

Do you people want a political roundup after yesterday's primaries? Neither do we. Bla-bla politics, bla-bla elections.

So this weekend we put together a rad-80s playlist of fun songs, including some forgotten 80's mystery clicks, as Ace would call them. Anyone else remember Lou Gramm's Midnight Blue? The list is mostly 80's stuff you've heard, Steve Perry*, J Geils, INXS, etc etc. Just good, fairly basic rock songs backed by a lot of talent. The kind of songs played at an 8th grade school dance in 1988.

Related....so we graduated from Blue Mountain Middle School in 1988. One of our teachers was a man named Joe Ryan. Mr. Ryan was a big man, 6'6 maybe. His voice carried, you could hear him all the way down the hallway.**  

Mr. Ryan was really into military reenacting, you know, like all those extras in the Gettysburg movie. Living history, Mr. Ryan called it. Well, if you were on his team, you were in his living history program. This meant on Fridays you picked up a toy musket and marched around the school parking lot. Students were required to have a blue or gray jean jacket and march under the proper flag. 

Last week we discovered Mr. Ryan is still around and living history.*** 

DOGE report.

Same really. We're in a good spot where we work on one novel in the morning, and another novel in the afternoon. We reverse the next day. So this morning we'll be focusing on the BAOR story. 

*Best voice in Rock and Roll. Probably deserved a better band. 

** During our own teaching and professorial days, we too were loud with a voice that carried. Thanks, Mr. Ryan.

***Ah, so we see we've blogged this before, albeit nine years ago. Such are the perils of running a blog for over a decade with 6000+ posts. Note that video at the link is from 1988 or 1989. We recognize those faces. One of them is the inspiration for Patricia in A Line through the Desert.