Will's Sports and Fashion Roundup

The weather is really turning. We're going to have to put away our cargo shorts and breakout the blue jeans.* We ain't no John Fetterman. BTW, devotees of Stroock's Books may recall that waaaay back in the summer of 1995 we interned for Senator William V Roth R, (DE). The senate had a strict dress code, business attire. That meant a jacket and tie for the gents.

Everything about that photo says summer, DC, 1995. 'Hot town, summer in the city...' Diplomats used to get hazard pay for serving in Washington. Daily temps were 90 +, making for hot, humid and sticky days. Reminder, Washington is essentially a southern town. 

Mrs. Stroock's Eagles won impressively last night at Tampa Bay, 25-11. Here in the New York Metro area, Jets Nation is melting down. After losing their savior quarterback Aaron Rodgers four plays into the season, the Jets fan has seen that Zach Wilson is not a professional quarterback. The Jets had high expectations, but this is going to be yet another lost season. Same old Jets. This franchise truly is cursed. We'll be discussing said curse the rest of the week here at Stroock's Books. We look at the Jets conundrum not as a Jets fan, but as a football fan with no emotional investment in the J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets. Losers.

For months we've gone all Hamlet on the issue of digital book sales versus KU streams. We make more money on the digital book sale, but our strategy has always been to cast as wide a net as possible so we stick with KU. Recently we realized KU streams indeed work for us because we have a large back catalogue. Readers can stream Arctic Storm and go right into Eastern Storm and then....etc. Readers may not be willing to plunk down $4.99 to buy a title and otherwise wouldn't keep reading. Okay, good, we figured that out. We still struggle to find ways to expand the audience. 

We had a small spark of an idea for a future war novel, and just writing that we feel another spark. Let's call the idea, Sobieski: The Russia-Poland War. In some ways this novel would be a chance to talk about observations of the current war. Anyone else remember our Putin's War idea? Putin's War was overtaken by events. Or was it? We're still not 100% set on the Red Dawn Thingy, so we'll spend some time today pondering these ideas. 

We're back to reading World War 1990: The Final Storm. The Dixie Station chapter was different and we thought, inadequate. But how many scenes do readers need showing pilots flying through flak, bearing down on the target, etc etc. Actually, this chapter shows a lot of peripheral stuff. A US missile boat launching Tomahawks, a Chilean destroyer seeing the entire task force preparing, etc etc. As we said. Different. We reviewed the Tornado bomber chapter and are satisfied that it's as good as we can make it. 

*Those blue jeans are looser than they were last May.