Will's Good idea for the Week of 2/23/25

A dull Saturday, just the way we like it. A rather pleasant evening, with the family sitting around the living room while Mrs. Stroock watched her 76'rs on the telly. They lost. They suck.

Yesterday we completed another three-day workout cycle. This regimen has been highly successful, but we're getting a bit bored and are wondering if it's time to shake things up. Soon it will be warm enough to go on 6 mile walks again. Maybe. 

World War 1990: Thatcher's War... Londonderry, or Derry for you followers of Popery and practitioners of Priestcraft, is divided by the River Foyle. By 1990 the west bank was predominantly Catholic and the east bank predominantly Protestant, except for the Protestant concentration on the west side of the Craigavon Bridge called the Fountain, and the Catholic concentration on the east side. 

The result is when Dublin sends the Irish Rangers into Derry to defend the Catholic side of the river, they're actually in a Protestant neighborhood. There's potential for farce here, as the Irish Rangers turn back a Catholic mob that means to burn down the Apprentice Boys Memorial Hall.  Then they get into a shootout with a bunch of Ulster Freedom Force gunmen trying to cross the Craigavon Bridge to defend said hall. Farce indeed. 

This is not what we intended but where we've ended up. 

Will's Good Idea for the week of 2/23/25. The Derry chapter should be embiggened. There's a lot of build up to the battle of Derry. And said build up needs to be worth the reader's while. Embiggen. Embiggen. 

So....20 years ago this week we finished the (almost) final draft of A Line Through the Desert. Writing ALTD took us two years. We learned a tonne about writing, and editing, and selling books. It's A Line Through the Desert Week this week at Stroock's Books.  Let's move some merch.