Will's Good Idea for the Week of 11/14/21

The big maple tree out front is a collage of fiery red and orange leaves.  The autumnal weather here in New Jersey has been unseasonably warm, then cool, then warm again. This has wrecked havoc on the leaves. Today is the first really pretty autumn Sunday, and probably the last. 

Well, here's something I submitted to Strategy & Tactics Magazine a decade ago, published just this week:

We found the original source word doc, last edited in 2011. I really thought S&T had run out of stuff submitted in decades past to print. We've published a tonne of military history articles in a dozen magazines. Nobody else does business this way. 

One of the advantages of colluding with the Ruskis is they publish the day after submission and pay the next month. Many a night we have turned in an article and woken the next morning to see it online. Which is nice. Actually, we published a trio of military history articles with Artofwar.ru back in the 2000s. We've been colluding for a long time. We can find no evidence that these articles exist. Anyway, don't ever change Strategy and Tactics Magazine and parent company Decision Games.

Yesterday we scrolled through The Great Nuclear War of 1975 and gave all the chapters proper headings. We scrolled through an intro chapter. A couple of chapters dealing with the immediate aftermath of the war. A couple of chapters dealing with the winter prep. The Falklands chapter. Then finally the brutal winter of 1975-76. Close. 80,000 words. The Great Salvation of 1976 ain't far behind.

Which brings us to Will's Good Idea for the Week of 11/14/21. With The Final Storm taking shape, why not put it down and let it stew in December and go back through World War 1990: The Weser? That ought to about take care of things.

For that matter, we might just be in position to start something new on 1 January 2022. What would that be?

Post Diwali Morning Regrets

Last night was Diwali and we live in Bridgewater.  About 50 of us Chindians gathered in the cul-de-sac. It was cold and a firepit was started. Even so, lots of the women folk came out in traditional sari dress. The Indian gals tried to get Mrs. Stroock to put one on but she said no. Damnit. We had a second drink. Wow. Diwali is the kind of night that separates the childhood fireworks dabblers from the fanatics. In a time honored New Jersey fireworks tradition, many times was said, 'Check this out, it's from Pennsylvania!' Kaboom!

This blog endorses Hot Air's analysis of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. This bill was gonna pass one way or another. Haven't you people ever heard of a managed vote? And passing this bill makes it much harder for the Dem's to strongarm Manchin, Sinema and the rest. Zerohedge lists all the things in the bill that are crazy. But most of them aren't that crazy. Is the bill great? No. But it ain't bad either. 

NJ.com has a great piece on the political situation here in New Jersey. Basically it mirrors Virginia. Dem's too far left, unmotivated voter base, energized GOP. Here's a great point about outgoing Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney: 'Sweeney probably saved numerous Democratic legislative seats and maybe even the governor himself by protecting the party from going even further left on taxes, borrowing and spending these last four years.' Which is one of the reasons why we liked him. There's also some talk about Governor Murphy's 'branding'. Yes, he's running for president. 

We got a credit memo from Decision Games yesterday, which tells us they're publishing a piece we wrote about general Hunter Liggett; 2,400 words. We have vague memories of writing a short article about Hunter Liggett. We also have vague memories of having published a short article about Hunter Liggett. Did we already publish this piece somewhere else? Yes our publishing is so vast we have trouble keeping track. Military Heritage, Inforos, Strategy & Tactics, it all mergers together after a while, especially the Russian collusion. Writers aren't supposed to publish a piece in one magazine and then turn around and publish it in another. Of course magazines aren't supposed to stiff writers and put someone else's name on the wargame they designed. So screw Decision Games. Screw them with extreme prejudice.

The Monday Writer

What a month. KU reads of all books for the month of January exceeded our best month, June of 2020 by about 20%. KU reads of World War 1990 Nederland beat Three Seas' best month by about 30%. Arctic Storm had a great month too, our number two seller for January 2021. As Arctic Storm is a gateway book, that's great, great news. There's a few external factors lifting Arctic Storm sales and it's ironic as hell. Heh. Heh again. As always the Amazon markets resemble the Normandy invasion, with some Aussie's going along for the fun of it. Below, the last three months of sales. That spike is the release of Nederland. 

A few weeks ago we got a credit memo from Decision Games for an upcoming article. The memo said the article was 3,000 words long and we had a hunch which one it was. No, Decision Games can't be bothered to tell you which article they're publishing. Our hunch was right:

A decade ago we really got into the war in Burma and wrote a bunch of articles on it. A few of them are on the sidebar at right. This includes articles on the over all campaign (we designed the wargame Green Hell: Battles for Burma), Orde Wingate, Mad Mike Calvert and 77 Chindit Brigade, Merrill's Marauders, and Slim's final Burmese campaign. The culmination of our Burma effort was our fourth novel, A March Through Hell, which follows Captain Kim Taylor as he leads a combat team in the Marauders.

Decision Games stiffed us after we designed their Meuse/Argonne folio game and put someone else's name on our work. We've refused to write for them ever since. Anything of ours that Decision Games publishes was written a long, long time ago. Our last piece about the Canadians at Vimy (we think) we wrote in 2007. Before that, they published an article of ours submitted during Bush's first term. We wrote the above Stilwell article about a decade ago. A year or so ago Decision Games sent out a new writer's contract but we never returned it. Yet here they are, still publishing our stuff. That just twixes our nethers no end. In case reader(s) are wondering, no other magazine does business this way.

Which is why we've been looking for other places to write. Yesterday we asked reader(s) if they'd fork over $10 a month to read us on Substack. That's probably too high. Five bucks [or quid-Ed]. A reader asked what content we'd be generating and to be honest, we weren't too sure. Last night we had a great idea, though. Why not republish our military history articles at Substack? Five bucks sounds about like what we'd be willing to pay. There'd be motivation to write new pieces too. We could get maps from the West Point Atlas of Wars (it's a Fed publication so no copyright. Everybody does it) or have our friend Shourabh Mukherji do them. We must dwell on this.

By the way, Stilwell was a really good tactician who used pin and hold tactics to maneuver the Japanese out of their positions in the Hukawng Valley.