Baited Ties Developed

Good morning, Stroock's Books readership, such as it is. 

So the Jets lost in the most horrifying, and frankly, Jets way possible. Blow a lead with under a minute left. Get the ball back lose 13 yards on a fumble by QB Aaron Rodgers. Throw a midfield pass with no timeouts but get saved by a dumb defensive penalty which stops the clock. Then get sacked by a three man rush with no time left. Jets' score a previously thought impossible 5/5.

In Giants news New Jersey's own Tommy DeVito will start next Sunday. Why the hell not?

Reminder, World War 1990: Castro's Folly cracked the top 20 in its Amazon category, has 566 ratings for a 4 + star average, made back its production costs and then some in like, a month, and is part of our large and profitable backlist.  We are a Titan, in the top ten percent or so of English language writers - on the planet. We are among the best there is at what we do.

Over at The Free Press, Peter Savodnik discusses the case of Justine Bateman, who has earned left-Twitter's rage for ironically critiquing the production values of their various post-election internet meltdowns. This is a very Gen-X thing for a Gen-X icon like Bateman to do. 

Savodnik notes that Trump won Gen-X by about ten points. Of Trump's Gen-X win, Savodnik  writes, 'Maybe part of it was that we had grown up in a distinctly unpolitical moment, when there were no wars to protest and no civil rights to champion. There was, about us, an all-pervasive don’t-give-a-shit quality, and it was reflected in our Ray-Bans, our irony, our apathy. Mostly, we wanted to be left alone—by our parents, by the sex ed counselors preaching abstinence, by Nancy Reagan telling us to “Just say no.” We were, for the most part, ideologically committed to nothing. ' That might be the most Gen-X sentence in the history of Gen-X sentences. We cling to our detachment. We cling to it.

For younger reader(s), Bateman played Malory Keaton* on the 80's sitcom classic, Family Ties, a pleasant show about a pair of ex hippie parents and their very 80's kids. Family Ties is probably the first time pop culture showed the Boomer/Gen-X dynamic, and the conflict that was brewing. In short, the Boomers would demand 'Why can't you be more like us?' but also 'How dare you try to be like us!' while Gen-X asked, 'Why can't you shut up about the 60s?' Mallory is interested in clothes, hair and makeup; she comes off as a valley girl ditz. Little sister Jennifer is just a kid, kind of a tom boy. Alex P. Keaton, about whom much more will be written, is a Nixon admiring, Reaganomics loving, upstanding young man who wears a jacket and tie to school. 

In response to Savodnik's very interesting piece about Justine Bateman and politics, this week is also Family Ties week here at Stroock's Books. We'll begin with the very wonderful Family Ties theme, fulfilling this blog's Monday (not) metal requirement:

You know, we haven't watched Family Ties since it went off the air in 1989. Damn it all, we're getting emotional. 

The leader of this blog's Confederate Contingent suggests an Indo-Sino-Pak war novel. 

for our summer sneak in, which is an interesting idea if for nothing else the sheer scope of said conflict. This reminded us that we had planned an Indo-Pak war in The Great Nuclear War universe. We were left thinking, maybe. But then we remembered that half the point of these summer sneak in machinations is to come up with something different to write. Let's flex a little. 

We want to do a one-off novel, [The World War 1990 series was supposed to be one-off. So was The Great Nuclear War of 1975 -Ed]. We don't want to do anything modern because we don't want to get into the cyberwar and drone warfare thing. [Really? You'd probably have a great time researching that-Ed]. Putin's War, about a Sino-Russian war, has been overtaken by events, and so has our idea about a US-Iran war. 

We could probably do the alternate history thing about a US/Iran war. Hezbollah in America conducts a terror war here at home while the Feds fight a terror/cartel war on the border. The US wages an air and naval campaign against Iran and launches an all-out invasion of Lebanon (1st Marine Division, the 101st Air Assault, 82nd Airborne, 1st ID). We like this idea, we really do. The POD would have to be post 2006. W in his last year in office? Na. What about a counterfactual where Mitt Romney won? Maybe. Okay, here us out on this one. It's 2017 and...Hillary is president. Have to admit, we're feeling it a little. Just think it over.

We're another day closer to making the call on War Night: Stories of the Great Nuclear War of 1975. 

*Here's our favorite Justine Bateman performance, with her real-life brother Jason in what is for us one of the top-5 sitcom episodes in all of human history. The title of the episode is Family Ties.