50 Week, the Second Day

We're getting haze from Canadian wildfires again. Damn you Justin, damn you, you maniac. Still, one wakes up here to a sense of absolute calm and peace. The lake is like glass in the morning before the boaters get out. And birds make the only noise. There's a bald eagle nest on the lake, and we once saw him dive into the water and come out with a trout. 

We had an excellent day out on the lake and then hiking through the woods. [You sound like a goddamn hippy-Ed]. No bear encounters, which happened to us up here once. We got an estimate for pruning the trees around the house, could have been worse. This being the Berkshires, the tree guy smelled like pot. There are at least six dispensaries in Great Barrington, but only three liquor stores. 

A fellow North American complimented us on our Girls of the IDF post. Stroock's Books has always been a site of culture and refinement, for renaissance men comfortable with Mozart and Metallica. We aim to raise the bar here at Stroock's Books, especially when IDF soldiers can blind the enemy with their beauty. 

You can't do that in Hezbollah. It's a shame what the Hezbo's have done to Lebanon, because Lebanese gals are knockouts. Behold, Haife Wehbe. She came to our attention while reading the Lebanese Daily Star during the 2006 Hezbollah War. [Knobhead you're turning 50, act like it. I'm surprised your not doing a post on Hotties of the Russian Army-Ed]. Know there's an idea.

Segue...It's an open question for us, just how much we want to write and what we want to write. A day before our 50th birthday we've accomplished just about everything we set out to do when we got our first magazine article published 20 years ago. We've published widely in various places, from the US, to Canada, to Britain to Russia!* (said in Tucker Carlson voice). We've no plans to write anymore magazine articles. Magazine writing has taken us as far as it can take us, and the money's no good. We're an established writer with something like 20 novels in print. We're worth more than they're willing to pay. 

All of which we've written in this space before. 

As far as the next ten years go, we're keeping an eye out for changes. AI doesn't worry us, yet. Though we think there will be some breakthroughs with the Hollywood writers/actors strike. We're looking for the next big thing. Amazon dominates the industry, but we think we'll publish one of those planned series (2543?) on a platform other than Amazon. Not Nook or Kobo. Apple Books? 

*Our first articles in Russia came in 2009 for ArtofWar.RU. They're not up anymore in English and we had one of our Ruski friends look over the Russian version. They didn't find our stuff there either. The Ruskis paid us via Western Union out of the Moscow office. Heck we used to get our Amazon royalties in checks made out in British Pounds [God Save the King-Ed]