Waiting for the Tide...

Readers are expressing impatience.

We don't blame them.

We waited 30 years for Jerry Pournelle to finish Janissaries. Then he died.

Our cholesterol and triglycerides are great, and we do an hour + of cardio 4 times a week, including 35 minutes on the treadmill at 4 MPH (about 6 kilometers for you fancy boy Euros) so there's no chance of us just popping off.

[Now why mock god like that? You're not going to services that much.-Ed]

True. True.

So let us tell you people what happens.

We are finally satisfied. We send the MS off to Debbie for a line edit. We get it back. Format, produce a hard copy, send it back to Debbie and then to our proofer. Then we read the final proof and voila.

When will that happen? 

The New Year.

However, Nederlandse is coming on the heals of the Three Seas. And we still haven't quite figured out what we're writing next year.

You know I did give you people four books in a 12 month period last year. If you're desperate, read Blooms. Nobody's buying that. Rest assured there's plenty of action and tits. There's a scene where Patricia wiggles herself into a teddy...

[Men...Ed]

So come on guys.

Three Seaing It

Yesterday, for the first time in this long, turgid process, we read a chapter and thought all is well. The sub chapter is good. It doesn't really need anything.

All that remains is to write a few scenes and....

Well, there are still a few stray bolts dancing across the sky. We still think it would be fun to have something about a non-NATO ship or two in Task Force 60.

We had this problem with Blooms too. We wanted to explore a theme but just couldn't figure it out late in the process. 

But we are figuring out a thing or too about World War 1990: Nederlandse. We decided to do an openning blockbuster where Dutch I Corps is retreated west from Bremen and one armored brigade is holding open a corridor for them.

Blooms Reviewed

An extremely perceptive review of  Blooms:

What can we say, the reviewer gets it. Reminder, we went to enormous trouble to exercise literary revenge.

I got the Blooms

So Blooms is moving....not very much actually.

This surprises us not at all.

Will knows what his readers want; alternate history, alien invasion, and the Israelis blowing the fuck out of Iranian shit.

[What are you, 17?-Ed]

Blooms ain't that.

[No it ain't.-Ed]

Blooms was a special project we incrementally worked on for three years. During that time we published three novels, all of which will sell better than Blooms ever will.

Still, as the years go by people will pick it up. And who knows, maybe one day Blooms will be a Lifetime movie of the week.

[Lifetime? How far into the menstrual cycle are you?-Ed]

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.

Blooms is out

We were wronged.

We revenged.

Literal Literary Revenge.

Blooms Released

After three years of on and off work, Blooms is out.

By the way, one year ago today we released The Austrian Painter.

Together with Polish Storm, and Pershing in Command, that makes four books published in one year.

You're damn right we're tired.

Blooms is out

After a long slog, Blooms is out:

Whatever happened to Jake and Patricia? Twenty years to the day after he joined the army, Jake Bloom is a captain in the Florida National Guard and serving with an advisory team in Iraq’s al-Basra province - and his tour has just been extended by three months. Cynical and exhausted, Jake just must ready an Iraqi infantry company for the struggle that lies ahead. Meanwhile Patricia waits at home and wonders about Jake, their family and her life as an army wife.

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.

Blooms Back Cover

Whatever happened to Jake and Patricia?

Twenty years to the day after he joined the army, Jake Bloom is a captain in the Florida National Guard and serving with an advisory team in Iraq’s al-Basra province - and his tour has just been extended by three months.

Cynical and exhausted, Jake must ready an Iraqi infantry company for the struggle that lies ahead.

Meanwhile Patricia waits at home and wonders about Jake, their family and her life as an army wife...

For reader(s) who want to get caught up:

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.

Bloomed Down

Well that wasn't such a chore now was it?

The parts of that chapter which we felt needed excising were excised no problem and without substantially disrupting the flow of the chapter. We've lost a theme, yes, one we liked, and that's too bad. But the chapter goes on and does what we need it to do.

Pershing's War

With the first round of edits on the Jake in Iraq-2008 chapter of Blooms we've been looking at Pershing's War.

We have written the first part of this book, about 30,000 words, and are so far quite pleased with what we see.

Once we get Polish Storm and Blooms done, we'll be in really good shape to wrap up Pershing's War.

Blooms in Iraq

So we're going over the Jake in Iraq in 2008 chapter. He's part of an advisory team and working with an Iraqi infantry company.

This is about the day in, day out struggle to get an Iraqi company up to snuff, the battle to secure a small town, and solving an insurgent mystery Dragnet style.

We're very nervous. Sooner or later someone who was in Iraq in 2008 is going to pick up this book. Right now our goal is to get this thing as realistic as possible.

We're re-reading our source material and so far, so good.

What do we mean by 'realistic as possible?'. That means we want the details of daily life and duty in Iraq as right as we can get them. But, that comes within the parameters of Blooms. It's my book and story comes first, always. So if we have to bend reality a bit, so be it.

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 6-3-16

There are some gaps in Blooms. That is we go into a lot of detail describing Jake's tour with an advisory team in 2008. His down time at night could be used to explore things, no? Life, the universe, and everything.