Saturday Updates

So, Trump slammed American Jews. What do you people want this blog to say? He's right. No caveats. I don't care. Trump is right.

The Sidewise awards are tonight and our own The Blue and the Red: Palmerston's Ironclads, has been nominated. Fingers crossed. We're not a winner. Never have been.

Alert readers will notice a new edition at the bottom of our Magazine Articles tab.

Just a great week at the gym. Two days running, two days lifting. We've plateaued on the treadmill, which is fine. But have yet to do so with the lifting. We may take the rest of the month off. We'll see. And we may switch back to the machines (rope pulley, stair master, etc etc) in January. We will also see. We have not gained weight this month, which is impressive, given the Mrs. Stroock penchant for Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa baking. [Kwanzaa? -Ed] Yes, I know. Not a real holiday. Anyway...

We didn't look at The Great Nuclear War of 1975 or The Great Salvation of 1976 at all this week. In fact, we didn't even think about them. The faire editor has the 75 MS and is getting ready to give it a second readthrough. We need to think about what Years (a series of stories about 77-81) would look like. One idea, a story about a special strike team that goes around America taking out local warlords and enforcing Federal writ. There'd be one in the mountains, one in the Louisianna swamps...Al Haig probably wins the presidential election of 1980. 

We spent the entire week going over World War 1990: The Weser. We have never had an editorial experience like this one. Things look great. We recall busting our hump on The Weser before putting the MS down last September. Still, we're stunned at just how good the whole MS looks.

Which is not to say we didn't have a lot of work to do. At this point the biggest problem is clarification. Whose doing what, now? And where? Just what are the Soviets trying to do? And which Soviets are trying to do it? And to whom? Note to self: next time just get all the units worked out first. Somehow, we think we've blogged that before.

One problem we've noticed, and were not sure it's really a problem, is the meetings. All the division commanders in NATO ad-hoc corps get together for THE BRIEFING. And then all the generals in the 8th Infantry Division get together for THE BRIEFING. As we've said, we're not even sure that's a bad thing. Afterall, we must needs outline what's happening. And the best way to do that is with a general pointing to a map and saying, 'Roy, your brigade will hit Point Bravo.' But it is repetitive. 

We're not pleased that we didn't get a book out this year. It is what it is, but we don't want to do that again. Talking about 2022, our thought at this point is we'll put out three books next year. We haven't looked at The Final Storm in a month, but when we put it down, we thought we had a tonne of work to do. We'll be picking it back up in January (probably).