Saturday Updates

Mrs. Stroock is away for one more week. 

A strange week at the gym. Runs are getting harder not easier. Maybe we just need a break. We hate taking breaks. Three days off and we feel like a flabby, pudgy CNN potato. 

Just a great week writing The Weser. 10,000 words. Our NATO status 'shoot around' is done, the 211th ACR is set, and we can begin our ad-hoc corps meeting scene next. We need some stock Soviet characters, one for the 8th Infantry's counterattack, one for the 211th's counterattack, one for the French. The Germans will be facing the Brits, 'Hello, Jerry! Seems like old times,' and the commander of the 9th Panzer Division gives us the POV.

Roquejoffre commanding II Corps in Three Seas is real, but here we'll be making up a French general commanding two light armored divisions.

We are delving into the inner workings of the Apache via books and docs and downloaded the US Army field manual. We've never done attack helicopters before and look forward to the challenge. We had forgotten just how advanced that thing was in 1990. I mean, dayum. This is one of the ways we do the same thing, but in a different way over and over again. We had wondered if we wanted to do an NG Cobra pilot in the 211th. Can't we do both? This is how we keep the series fresh. 

We have read through 2/3rds of The Great Nuclear War of 1975. Our sense is the plot is jumbled. And we still have a problem with a lot of these one-off scenes. Wait, we're in Argentina now? Do we need to write an intro-intro chapter that shows a lot of these people? The Matt scenes are fine. In fact most of the scenes as written are fine. At this point we're worried about organization.  Every book has a 'this totally sucks phase and 75 may have reached it.  Today, The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is a woman.