Yesterday's Best Seller Was...

...A Line through the Desert. In times like these, folks could use a little retro-read.

Its got teenage sex and exploding tanks.

[I'm sorry, people. I really am-Ed]

You said you always had a crush on Jake.

[Motherly-Ed]

Please, you told me you wanted to...

[Ah, yes well...I...-Ed]

Uh-huh.

A Line through the Desert III

On production and publishing:

A Line through the Desert Week Pt II

Publish this:

Monday Metal

Tuesday Edition:

A line through the Desert, among other things, is about music.

Sgt. Jake Bloom is into hard rock, classic rock and metal. And he really, really loves Led Zeppelin. Favorite song: Over the Hills and Far Away. In fact OHFA is referenced in the opening paragraph.

Here are some other bands:

Bon Jovi
Jon Bon Jovi (Blaze of Glory)
Cinderella (Yes I know, but that is some good hard rock)
Def Leppard (Pyromania and Hysteria)
Journey (puts it on the tape deck when in the car with Patricia. Heh, tape deck).

A Line through the Desert Week Part I

Ten years ago this week we published  A Line Through the Desert.

All this week we'll be doing videos on the novel and the process.

Here's the first video:

We're offering autographed copies all week. Send $14.95 to wtstroock@yahoo.com at Paypal (U.S. only).

Narrate This

I'll tell you one of the problems I've run into lately: narration.

You see, waaaaay back in 2003, when I began A Line through the Desert, I decided I wouldn't write a lot of long narrative discourses. I'd avoid huge blocks of texts that take the reader inside Jake's mind and show what he is thinking. 

I'd show and describe things through dialogue instead.

I've kept up this habit through a dozen novels.

Well in The Battle of the Three Seas I wrote some longer narrative parts. Scenes need bulking up after all. They don't work, it seems I don't have the touch for it.

Yesterday I rewrote these parts as dialogue and they work a lot better.

73 Easting

Twenty-eight years ago today, the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment fought the Battle of 73 Easting.

Two divisions of the Iraqi Republican Guard attacked the 2nd ACR, deployed on the east end of Wadi.

The America's technological edge was decisive. GPS put the 2nd ACR exactly where it wanted to be in the desert. Night vision enabled the Americans to see the Iraqis. Their SABOT shells ripped right through Iraqi armor.

The last great armored battle of the 20th century.

We chronicled the Battle of 73 Easting in A Line through the Desert.

Blooms

Blooms is out.

Blooms is the sequel to A Line through the Desert.

Blooms is about a married couple still in love and hot for each other after 20 years.

Blooms is a nice novel. A sweet novel, really. Blooms is saccharine sweet. I think the Moms would dig it.

There's plenty of explosions though with two chapters taking place in Iraq.

In the first, Jake Bloom is a captain commanding an armored company*. In the other he's with an advisory team in southern Iraq.

You'll probably not see a novel like Blooms from me again.

*Still haven't written a novel that doesn't have an exploding tank.

Twenty-Eight and Ten Years on

Twenty-eight years ago yesterday Desert Storm began.

Also ten years ago this year we published A Line through the Desert.

The idea had been kicking around our head since 2002, and we began writing the book in March of 2003 moments after finishing Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. Let's just say we related. The John Cusack film is a faithful representation, aside from being American, not British. 

There are traces of HF in ALTD, mostly music related.

At this time ten years ago we were going through Book Surge's (now CreateSpace's) agonizing formatting process. This meant a lot of waiting and money.

Now we do it all ourselves, for free.

Prepping for Blooms

Tooling around the internet last night while listening to the Joe Rogan Podcast with Steven Tyler, we found this old review of A Line through the Desert. 

Yes, we were ego searching our books.

The review will confirm reader's suspicions, we are awesome.

Not that anyone else thought so way back in 2009. We believe ALTD sold 19 copies the first month. Which was really pretty good, though we didn't know it then. We remember the following month's sales, mostly becuase they hurt like hell: Six, four, four, eight- etc etc. Then we had another decent month becuase we scored another review before returning to form.

By the end of the year we were thinking we'd made a huge mistake.

When we published our second novel, To Defend the Earth, it sold a couple of copies a day, and 104 the first month. We were giddy.

Then came Israel Strikes and 50, 60, 70 sales a day, a feat we've never come close to replicating.

Now we're settled in, our sales numbers a steady, ever advancing column of awesomeness, taking us to our ultimate goal: to be part of the high school canon for early 21st century American Lit.

It's times like these we miss Ed. But you can't be too careful in the age of #metoo, even with an imaginary editor.

Anyway, below is the first review of A Line through the Desert:

Reviewed by Trooper Phil Bolté- This is a book of modern war, soldiers, and romance. Author Stroock has written about a a young man who volunteered for Army service and became a trooper in the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, then stationed in Germany. Well trained and motivated, Jake Bloom became a tank commander, leader of a four-man crew of an Abrams tank. And then came Desert Shield and Desert Storm and he found himself shipped to the Middle East and participating in the regiment’s combat operations.

Stroock has done a good job of capturing the life of a soldier in a combat unit throughout his service in Germany and the Middle East. He describes accurately the challenges of the junior leader as he deals with his subordinates, peers, and superiors. Sergeant Bloom is able to walk the line between familiarity and discipline, a particular challenge of a tank commander. Underlying the military aspects of Bloom’s life is a romance started and broken off before his movement to Germany, a home town romance that went sour. Without overdoing this aspect of the story, the author has made it realistic. It is the story of a teen-ager who grows up in years and in experience, the latter magnified by battle.

While the gutter language used throughout the book may be seen as adding realism, some will find it offensive and consider it detracting from the overall quality of the narrative. Soldiers who read this book will find the author’s accuracy in describing weapon systems and their performance refreshing. He has, as well, captured the performance of soldiers in modern battle. — Cavalry Journal (US Cavalry Association)

A Line Through the Desert may be purchased through Amazon.

How do you like me Now?

Wrapping up Blooms put's us in mind of wrapping up A Line through the Desert:

So we sung all through the summer of 2004 as we finished our first novel.

This song is, by the way, almost exactly right. We didn't write her number on a football field but we did plenty of other dumb stuff to try to impress her. Police involvement was narrowly avoided.

Also we wrote a novel about her.

Well, now we've written 12 (13?) novels. See that? We've actually lost track. We are, in a word, highly successful.

[Narrator: That's two words.]

Also, we can call up most military history magazines and say, 'Hey! How's about an article on [insert topic]?' and they say, 'Yeah, uh-huh.'

She knows we exist. We have no idea if she knows about A Line through the Desert or her part in it. She's the love interest, after all; and in Blooms too. We doubt she would care or does care now. We haven't set eyes on her since a mutual friend's wedding back in 2003.

But that is a subject for another blog post.

Metal Monday

Sgt. Jake Bloom's playlist.

In A Line through the Desert, Sgt. Jake Bloom, commander of Grey-3, is seriously into music.

If Jake had an Ipod in 1991 he'd have a playlist that looked something like this:

Led Zeppelin: The Song Remains the Same
Led Zeppelin: Over the Hills and Far Away
Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Times
Bon Jovi: Dead or Alive
Jon Bon Jovi: Blaze of Glory
Cinderella: Coming Home
Journey: Open Arms
Journey: Faithfully
Def Leppard: Billy get your Gun

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 12-17-17

For the moment we've done everything we can to World War 1990: The Final Storm.

We'll be doing some more tweaks but not this week.

In the meantime we're getting back to Whatever Happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom, this is the sequel to A Line through the Desert.

We'll be adding some stuff about Patricia and what she goes through as an army wife with a brood of kids and a husband in Iraq for the third time in five years.

Also we've been thinking about the title. We've never really liked the above but haven't had another idea until now.

How about just calling the book Blooms?

Not Metal but Genius Monday

A few years ago we discovered the Velvet Underground and we are so glad we did.

The comp album, The Very Best of, is a revelation to us.

We love the band's ability to underscore a simple melody with keyboards and or rhythm guitar as heard in What Goes On, an excellent rock song, or Pale Blue Eyes, a sad paean to a love that cannot be. Let's delve deeper.

It was good what we did  yesterday

And I'd do it once again

The fact that you are married

Only means your my best friend

But its truly, truly a sin

Linger on

My Pale Blue eyes.

Here Lou Reed tells his love  that what they're doing is wrong and they can only ever be best friends. Wonder what the back story to that is?

Then there are the drug songs, lots of them.

Waiting for My Man will speak to anyone whose ever had to wait for his dealer, that's for sure.

[TMI, dude-Ed]

Sweet Jane has a rollie-pollie beer hall feel which we love.

Heroin + Lou Reed = The Velvet Underground.

Which is another great point. The Velvet Underground was part of Andy Warhol's scene. This is the old New York of John Lindsey, Abe Beam and President Ford telling New York to drop dead.

Waiting for my Man illustrates this perfectly:

-Up to Lexington, one two five (that is 125th Street)...

And,

-Hey white boy, what you doin up town?...

Then,

-Up to a brownstone, three flights of stairs, everybody's staring, but nobody cares...

Overall The Very Best of is just a fantastic melodic rock n roll album.

We're learning the guitar solo in What Goes On and will post later in the week.

[Greeeat-Ed]

Writing Whatever Happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom we wanted Jake to discover a new band in 2003 on the eve of the Iraqi invasion. We think we have our answer.

Jake loves music, after all, especially Zeppelin. See for yourself in A Line Through the Desert:

Summer 1992: Nostalgia Boogaloo

We've mentioned before that 25 years ago last month we graduated from high school. Running a self diagnostic, we're pretty happy with where we are.

Forgive us for indulging in a little nostalgia but thinking of the first five or six weeks of that summer brings warm feelings to our heart, as Yoda would say.

We were out of high school, thank god, and working our summer job as a camp counselor and a life guard. We had a sense that we had come out of the bad part of our lives and good things were coming. We had a girlfriend, which was the fodder for Patricia Bloom in A Line through the Desert. No, I never snuck into her bedroom, you could barely get to second with her, frankly.

[yeah, you couldn't-Ed]

Still, that summer is the basis for A Line Through the Desert...

[So let me see if I have this right. You wrote an 85,000 word novel because this poor girl, at whom you used to throw rocks and firecrackers, wouldn't drop her knickers for you?-Ed]

Well, I....

[I thought so,-Ed]

Moving on...

[please-Ed]

We remember pleasant things, getting to second with the above mentioned girl, visiting Wesley College...oddly what's always stuck out about that trip is watching the movie Comrades of Summer at the hotel.

[that trip was with you mum, right? Oedipus much?-Ed]

We played a lot of Harpoon and were allowed an MGD after work.

Our best childhood friends, the brothers O'Neill from the Clan O'Neill, were visiting.

[You mean the O'Leary brothers in A Line Through the Desert?-Ed]

Yep. We saw Patriot Games together. Seeing Patriot Games with a couple of Irish kids whose family we to this day suspect has ties to IRA fundraising groups in the USA was interesting. 'The IRA doesn't do that...don't ever call an Irishman a Feinian...'

We all watched Blazing Saddles and we recall our girlfriend getting that same 'really boys?' look on her face that our mum got when seeing Blazing Saddles, to which our mum said, 'I knew I liked that girl.'

[Again with the Oedipus thing?-Ed]

This is one of those times when thinking back all we see is the sun.

August sucked, though.

Outro soundtrack:

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 5-7-17

Whatever happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom has been in the works for a year now and will be out next year.

One event and one video are the genesis for the sequel I never thought I'd write. First the death of David Bowie. We were never fans but his death put us in mind of a mid-80's Bowie hit that stuck with us.

Behold:

Maybe it was the moment but we were inspired and had only one place where that sort of thing could go. It pretty much describes Jake Bloom, doesn't it?

Now the other inspiration for Whatever Happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom? Well, here you go:

I know I'm motivated.

Will's Good Idea for 2-26-17: The First One

In March of 2003 I was sitting in The Daily Grind a fabulous coffee shop in Bedminster, NJ, enjoying  a medium coffee and reading Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. It was there that I finished the book, put it down, opened up my computer and began writing.

The result was A Line Through the Desert. The idea for the book had been kicking around my head for about a year. Basically a young man defies his family and joins the army and he ends up at the Battle of 73 Easting. Also he's madly in love with the girl next door.

It just so happens that 73 Easting was fought 26 years ago today. It also just so happens that the commander of Eagle Troop at that battle, HR McMaster, is going to be President Trump's National Security Adviser.

By the time I began writing McMaster was already fairly well known. He'd published a book, Dereliction of Duty, and his exploits with Eagle Troop were well documented in Tom Clancy's Armored Cav.

For these reasons, A Line Through the Desert focused on a different aspect of 73 Easting: Ghost Troop's fight to the north. I wanted to break some new ground.

This week we'll be talking about various aspects of writing and researching ALTD, a lot of process talk. I think its interesting and might benefit fans who want to write themselves. And it might just sell a few books.

Nac Sec Ad, HR Mac

General H.R. McMaster has a long and varied military career that includes commanding the Tigres-Euphrates Campaign in Anbar in 2004-2005.

He is now going to be President Trump's National Security Adviser.

McMaster also commanded Eagle Troop at the Battle of 73 Easting. This is of course the climatic battle in my book, A Line through the Desert.

Jut saying.

If you like tank battles, and lord knows I do [you don't say?-ed] 73 Easting is for you.

Basically, the elite 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment repelled multiple attacks by two Iraqi divisions, one of the a Republican Guard division. It was an all night slug fest fought in a raging sand storm. Over the course of the battle the cavalrymen made mincemeat of the Iraqis.

An excerpt:

“How’s the fight south going, L-T?” Jake asked.

            “We’re kicking ass” replied Lt. Drew “And now Eagle is…wait one…”

            While Jake was waiting for Lt. Drew to resume, Dan spoke. “Hey what do you make of this?”

            Jake dropped back inside the turret and asked, “What do I make of what?”

            He scanned the horizon with his TIS and saw a series of undefined splotches and right angles. He’d never seen anything quite like them before. Jake switched the resolution from white on black to black on white, but with the storm he still couldn’t make out any clear hotspots. He used his TC override to line up and laser the nearest target. Jake got back up in the cupola and peered through the storm but still saw nothing.

Just as Jake was about to ask Lt. Drew what he thought, 1^st Platoon opened up with a barrage of TOW missiles.

           Lt. Drew shouted over the net, “Contact forward! Contact forward! Engage! Engage!”

            Jake dropped into the turret. “Fire Dan!” he shouted.

            “On the way!”

            Jake got his eyes on his site just in time to see the target explode and a turret flip through the air.

            “Engaged and destroyed!” he reported.

            Lt. Drew barked in Jake’s ear. “What did you take out, Bloom?”

            “I don’t know. A tank, I think.”

            “What do you mean, you think?”

            “Can’t see shit out there L-T.”

            Jake scanned the target area. “I found one!” He lased the target, “1300 meters!”

            “What the hell is it?!” Dan asked.

            “I can’t fucking tell!” He peered further. “Ahh, shit. Veras, Sabot!”

            Veras took a Sabot round from the ready rack and slammed it into the breach. “Up!”

            “Blast it!”

            “On the way!”

            Jake waited for a report but saw nothing. He reached down and slapped Dan on the back the head. “You missed! Re-engage!” he shouted.

            “Veras gimmie another Sabot.”

            Veras opened the ready rack took a round and slammed it home. “Up!”

            “Fire!” Jake ordered.

            Dan didn’t miss this time. The round penetrated an Iraqi tank with unimaginable kinetic energy, vaporizing the crew and exploding its ammunition. The turret spiraled through the air and landed 50 meters away.

            “Holy Shit, it’s like flipping God dam tiddlywinks out there!” shouted Jake.

            Jake tried to select another target, but every time he identified one it went up in a ball of flame. Ghost Troop fired and rolled forward against sporadic and ineffective Iraqi return fire delivered from the reverse slope of a wadi. By the time they came upon the edge of the wadi, Ghost Troop blasted the Iraqis right out their positions, reducing the Iraqi battle line to a hellish wreckage of flaming metal and flesh.

Appropriate This

Writing military fiction I run into this line of thinking every now and again:

Ms. Shriver criticized as runaway political correctness efforts to ban references to ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation from Halloween celebrations, or to prevent artists from drawing on ethnic sources for their work. Ms. Shriver, the author of 13 novels, who is best known for her 2003 book, “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” was especially critical of efforts to stop novelists from cultural appropriation. She deplored critics of authors like Chris Cleave, an Englishman, for presuming to write from the point of view of a Nigerian girl in his best-selling book “Little Bee.”

I've been told a few times by vets that I had no business writing about, say, the Battle of 73 Easting. That's right, you were at the Battle of 73 Easting and I wasn't.

We call this is fiction. To paraphrase Ms. Shriver, by this standard, A Line through the Desert would have been about an 18 year kid on his suburban cul-de-sac. I know, I'll write an entire novel about a middle aged college professor with three little girls! Heh, I could write a novel about what it's like to be white and middle-aged in northern New Jersey.

Falling asleep yet? I know I am. Lemm tell you, its pretty damn boring and that's the way I like it. Got the kids off to school....going to the grocery store later...maybe I'll make fish tacos instead of chicken teriyaki...just remembered, gotta stop by the Post Office...wanna finish the second season of Tyrant tonight...

Look, all literary critics are useless, but this particular brand of 'you weren't there' critic is particularly loathsome; especially disgruntled jerks who like to lard up my Amazon reviews.

Really, fuck you. And if you got a problem with that, I'm easy to find.