Will Goes the Full MC Hammer

Yesterday was The Great Nuclear War of 1975's best sales day. We're on track to have another great sales day today. As of this writing we're still in the top 20 in our Amazon category. 75 has beaten expectations, outperforming Nederland's and Three Seas's first month. Tomorrow we'll have more data on that. 

Working all day and after dinner we read through The Weser's Part I: The Americans. What a slog. But we were all, 'Nope, we're gonna turn this mother out.' That's 50 + pages. You know, we can still...ah fuck it. That's it. On to Part II: The British. But probably not today. Well, maybe today. 

Will Writes: We hate late stage readthroughs. We're just sifting through text looking for tiny little mistakes and miscues. Here's how we do it. We read one section, then get up and do something. Read the intro of 1-68 Armor, go switch the laundry over. Read 8-29 Rocket Artillery's loading scene, go start the dishwasher. Repeat as necessary. 

Okay, so in The New American Order we have HMAS Melbourne bringing grain to famine ridden Calcutta. It's a great scene describing what's going on in Australia and what's happening in India and Bangladesh. But what is the point of the scene and what is the end-purpose? This is just one of the many questions we will ponder today. 

Over at The Pipeline, Michael Walsh writes a great article on why it's time to move on from Trump. Read it. We ourselves believe Trump's time has passed. Honestly, we just don't feel like doing the Trump thing again. Not when Ron DeSantis is out there. Trump is a Vietnam era Arclight carpet bombing while DeSantis is a precision strike. The man has cornered the Dems into defending child grooming by weirdo teachers. The once a future Governor or Florida is a smart bomb right through the perv-left's bathroom window. 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 4/3/22

Our work used to be motivated by hope. But now it's fear that keeps us going. Fear that we're not showing soldiers interacting with their environment enough. Fear that we have the 12th Guards Tank Division advancing down CORRIDOR when we meant to have the 47th Guards Tank Division advancing down CORRIDOR. Fear that we missed opportunities. Fear that details are wrong. Which is why we're considering reading through World War 1990: The Weser again this week. Yesterday we discovered we need to add an Apache scene. No biggie. We'll write it this morning. 

For that matter, we gave The Great Salvation of 1976 a print readthrough last week. What are we waiting for? Why haven't we turned it over to the editor? Reading the print copy left us with a nagging feeling that the ending wasn't all it could be. We shrug. We don't know what else to add. 

The Great Salvation of 1976 is not as bleak (a word used by more than one Amazon reviewer) as The Great Nuclear War of 1975. There's hope in the beginning of 76, a sense of people climbing out of the rubble and rebuilding. Why the weather is warming up in Casper. Readers will see vignettes on same, the Alaskan pipeline operation, the Korean War, the presidential committee, Matt getting to where he's going. What else? As we've said before, at some point, one has done all one can with one's project and one must needs be done with it. 

Hmmm...our 3rd nuke book concept of one story for each year doesn't look like it's going to work. We may have to expand that to one theme each year: Warlords, a foreign war, etc etc. Here's an idea, empty houses, squatters, and who owns what? We even have a scene, a sheriff patrolling an abandoned suburban housing development. We can't build an entire chapter around squatter's rights, can we?

Another Week, Another Readthrough

We turn back to World War 1990: The Weser this week. We'll give the MS one last readthrough till...a print readthrough? Maybe. We'll be reading with an eye toward last minute additions and changes, small things to make the book better. Like taking the loader out of Soviet and East German T-72s since, you know, they didn't have those. We'll try to do one chapter per day.

Always nagging, can it be better?

Alright, alright, alright...

The Great Nuclear War of 1975's best ranking so far. We're seeing a sales surge and we've no idea why. The algorithm behind the curtain, we guess. This comes after we wracked our brain thinking, 'What can we do to increase exposure and sales?' Indeed, what can we do? Ideas welcome. We'll write a scene of the 3rd nuke book today. What's title? Right now it's Years: 1977-1981, but that won't stick.

The New York Post reports: 'Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday he is willing to compromise with Russia on the Donbass region — because to try to force Russian forces completely from Ukraine would lead to World War III, according to Reuters.' What are all the leaders of this, our third moral panic in three years (Covid, Fenatyl Floyd), going to do when Zelensky agrees to most of what Putin wants? This war could have been avoided. As we suggested to our KGB handler, 'Ukraine doesn't join NATO. You don't invade Ukraine. Deal?' He replied, 'Da. Let us celebrate our agreement by doing that arm linking, vodka shooter thing from Patton.' Prediction, the neo-lib Russia haters in the press will accuse Zelensky of being compromised in some way.

Monday Metal. Interestingly or not, Def Leppard released a new music video last week:

Meh. We don't hate it. We watched once and don't feel compelled to watch again. 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 3/13/22

Damn spring ahead...

We'll start out with Will's Good Idea for the Week of 3/13/22. World War 1990: The Weser is divided into three parts, The Americans, The British, and The Confederates. For reasons unclear to this blog, lots of British action ended up in the Confederate part. We successfully amputated the Brit sections from part III and grafted them onto Part II, where they belong. We are among the very best at what we do.

We've teased from time to time that a British officer, Colonel Charles Carter, Queens Own Hussars, will give a pep talk that we lifted directly from Jack Charleton, coach of Ireland's 1990 Football World Cup Team. 'It's not going to be easy for us but it's not going to be easy for them either,' etc etc. Those interested may have a listen here, 'Put 'em Under Pressure.* 

Okay fine. But why does Carter all of the sudden grab the mic, in front of a BBC crew mind you, and tell the Hussars, 'This operation's about, being effective, being aggressive, winning the field getting on with the attack. We'll put e'm under pressure.' Why? When do we show why? And how?

[I thought you were among the best there is at what you do?-Ed]

I am.

[Well start proving it-Ed]

Iran launched ballistic missiles at the US Consulate in Erbil yesterday? So...like, what are we going to do about? We believe a new Iran deal is imminent, and the Iranians will boast, 'Look! We attacked the Great Satan and still got everything we wanted.' There will be war in the Middle East. 

Ukraine! Once more, this blog urges reader(s) to approach all information coming from Ukraine with great caution. The media narrative tells the story of brave, plucky Ukraine, a nation of happy warriors fighting the Russian bear led by the increasingly unstable Putin. Why would you believe the media narrative.

Network/cable news is silly and dated. These guys are reporting the war like it's 1991. That is, we see an anchor with a onion dome in the background breathlessly talking about rocket strikes or some such. This is all very Arthur Kent. Anything we've heard on CNN (our middle daughter likes it for Ukraine news and we admit it's not generally nauseating,) we already read online hours before. 

There's a lot of solid analysis on Twitter. Jomini of the West is doing some great work. Behold those maps. He thinks the Ruskis are doing very badly. We think the Ruskis are slowly advancing toward their objectives. We can both be right. 

*And now you know where all that anavallen and Oley-51 stuff in Nederland came from:

We're all part of Jackie's army

We're all off to Italy

And we'll really shake 'em up

When we win the World Cup

'Cause Ireland's got the greatest football team

Saturday Updates

This is post 4864.

We had two sessions with the machines this week and two walks. Our body feels fatigued. The weather was nice this week. We allowed ourselves a cigar and beer. Which was nice. That was out third cigar this year. Let's stay on this pace. 

The things.

Book sales are an art, not a science.

Sales of The Great Nuclear War of 1975 got off to a good start on the release day and have increased by small increments every day since. We feel confident saying 75 is not a flop. But it remains to be seen if 75 will do as well as the typical World War 1990 novel. We've checked and 75 has not yet hit the daily sales number that Battle of the Three Seas hit. We don't think the algorithm has really kicked in yet. Readers posting 75 on their social media would spur sales along. Seven ratings now on Goodreads, so we know 75 doesn't suck. Exit question: is it worth shelling out a few hundred bucks on magazine advertisements? 

Book sales usually drop about 20% off their peek each month, that's cumulative.

We've hammered away at The Weser all week with great success. The text is getting as perfect as we can get it. The constant hammering has opened up a few cracks for us to make the novel even better. The British part needs an opening explainer scene from Corps HQ. Actually, that should probably be from SACEUR. This has been a great editing process so far. 

No one really knows how the Amazon sales algorithm works, not entirely. What we do know is mysterious and complex. 

The Weser presents a few unique challenges. We have four different tanks which means four tank crews and four men per. We have various division and corps commanders in their TAC CPs. This means we have a lot of staffers, aids, comms officers. Their handing Danger-6 the radio receiver, raising Echo-6, calling in TAC AIR etc etc. It all must needs be kept straight. And summer 2021 Will didn't necessarily care that this would be a gigantic pain in the ass for late winter 2022 Will. Summer 2021 Will is kind of a jerk.

By the time we're finished, World War 1990: The Weser will be 70,000 words. We remain on track to turn The Weser over to the editor in April. [In April? That's a little vague. Didn't you say 1 April?-Ed] We shrug as indifferently as possible. We may want/need more time, not because editing is going badly, but because editing is going so well.

We've got the juju (and books) to write Battle of the GIUK Gap this summer, but from a purely sales perspective, wouldn't Esercito Italiano make more sense? Italy remains an unrealized market. 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 3/6/22

Would whomever is reading every last page of this blog care to leave a comment, send us an email, text us or otherwise say hello? 

We don't think it's those anonymous pussies at Nightingale Russia. None of the traffic is coming from Sweden. Of course they could be using a VPN. They're clever. Maybe it's Ukrainian Nazi Commandos, upset with our writing for Inforos. If any blue and gold trucks pull up to the house we'll come out guns a blazzin'.

Whoever these people are they're using Unix. Usually when this blog gets slammed it's by someone using PlagScan. Reminder, I have never plagiarized anything, ever, and have the wherewithal and means to prove it court. 

The ongoing cancellation of all things Russian continues apace. Last we heard some sort of Ruski opera singer got the axe. Cancelling Russia is both retarded and counterproductive. If one wants to change Russia for the better, one interacts with them. If one wants to change Russia for the worse, one cuts them off from the rest of the world. Of course we'll be accused of colluding for voicing that opinion. Idiots. 

These people really think virtue signaling cancellations are going to defeat Putin. We are not a serious culture, this is not a serious time,  and that why Putin is going to win the war in Ukraine. Psst...he's already winning.

Let's talk about Will's Good Idea for the Week of 3/6/22:

That map's fuzzy, but we think World War 1990: Battle of the GIUK Gap will open with a blockbuster Soviet airborne assault on Bardufoss and Andoya Air Stations and the Reitan Operations center. By this time in the war, we think the Soviets have already taken Banak and the bases in the extreme north.

Let us now introduce or re-introduce a Ruski who was a minor celebrity in 1990's Russia. Gentlemen, General Alexander Lebed, commander of the Soviet 106th Guards Airborne Division. Did reader(s) know Lebed wrote memoirs? Did we order a copy of those memoirs yesterday? Why yes, yes we did. 

I love it when a plan comes together...or if you like...Oh boy is this great!

[Oh is it now? You'll write it and then bitch on this blog for months about fixing things. Do yourself a favor and get all your Soviet terms, ranks and sundry details ready to go before you write one goddamn word.-Ed]

Yes, mummy.

Sigh....so what else going on? The Weser read through is going fine.  We'll spend the week adding details. For example, we'll see if it's worth looking into what 1 RTR likes to call itself, nicknames, idioms and such. We'll work on some character development for Colonel Carter's Chieftain Crew (Queen's Own Hussars). Maybe his loader really likes Judas Priest, 'Put yourself in our hands so our voices will be heard/and TOGETHER we will take on ALL the world!' The question is not if it can be written. We can write anything. Rather, should it be written? Whatever answer we arrive at will be the right answer. We are among the best there is what we do. 

Saturday Updates

This is post 4857

Well, well, look who greeted us this morning:

This time the gout is on the left, rear ankle. How pervasive is it? We had gout in our dream, which was pretty weird to begin with. See, we were covering Russia's glorious liberation of Ukraine for Inforos when we were captured by a death squad of beautiful a Ukrainian fem-bots. and...So much for our gym and long walk plans this weekend. Looks like we'll knock off another Russia/Putin book. We're thinking the Ruskis in Syria.

The Bridgewater Breeze reports on the Bridgewater town meeting about the Z'Kye Husain situation. The usual statements were made. Bla-bla, racism, bla-bla change. This incident has broken our brain. On the one hand, there was a fight. On the other hand, the cops shouldn't have handcuffed* the kid. On the gripping hand, look at the professional racists jerking the incident dry. Does one really want to be on their side?

It is this blog's opinion that the Russians are, albeit slowly, winning the war. The footage of destroyed Soviet, sorry, Russian equipment is impressive, this blog admits. Zelenky is the greatest Jewish hero since Charleton Heston. 

But the Red Army grinds on, as is its wont. The Ruskis have offered a ceasefire in a few areas. The press thinks this is a humanitarian gesture. Suckers. The Ruskis are getting civilians out of the way and using the time to gather their strength. 

How does the conflict end and what comes next? 

We have yet to hear back from our KGB handler in Moscow and believe he's been assassinated by Ukrainian Nazi commandoes. Thoughts and prayers.

The cancelation of all things Russian continues. Mark my words, the next time Hamas picks a fight with Israel, the cancellers won't stop with Israel. No. They'll insist on cancelling Jews too. Expect to see protests in front of synagogues.  

We think the gout attack is stress related because we busted our hump all week on World War 1990: The Weser. We read each section: Intro, The Americans, The British, The Confederates...and then we read them again. We're pretty happy with what we've written. At this stage in the process one is nagged by the thought, 'Yes it's good. But can it be better?' Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We are nearing the end.

Remaining to-dos are unit checks; making sure 1/7 Arty is 1/7 Arty throughout, writing a few last scenes, seeing if there are seams into which we can put some ideas plus other odds and ends. We'll see. We'll be done by the end of the month. No need to write 'Inshallah' at the end because what will be will be and we shall all eat lamb in paradise. 

We'll spend our gout ridden weekend reading through the Great Salvation of 1976 printout. We didn't get through much of it this week.

Exit question: Does knocking off The Weser this month (it's being knocked off with extreme prejudice) clear things out to work on The Final Storm next month?

[I got an exit question for you -Ed]

Oh?

[The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is done, complete fin-Ed]

[Why not press the PUBLISH button, knobhead-Ed]

Dunno.

*See excessive 'officer safety' in your modern policing handbook.

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 2/27/22

Why haven't the Soviets Russians achieved their goals in Ukraine? This blog believes the Ukrainians have put up much tougher resistance than anticipated. The Ukes are also well equipped and those NLAW anti-tank weapons are deadly. 

Are Russian training and tactics holding them back? We'll reserve judgement because we don't know the Russian plan. Maybe they've achieved everything they wanted in the first 96 hours. Remember, the liberation of Iraq in 2003 stalled because of logistics problems and a sandstorm. But in the end the Marines still arrested Baghdad Bob, 'I'm sorry sir, you'll have to come with us.' Wait for facts. 

This blog believes Russian numbers will win out.

Putin Watch: We've been reading up on Putin and Russia. It turns out Putin is relatively popular in Russia. 

Were we to hit publish right now, The Great Nuclear War of 1975 would be available by dinner tonight.

Yesterday we finished reading Part I of World War 1990: The Weser. Then we started reading it again. We anticipate finishing the second read through of Part I today. When one doesn't collude with the Ruskis, one has more time for writing and editing. We spent a lot of time clarifying, 'Whose advancing on the Farm?' and omitting needless words. Here's an interesting problem. We wrote two American tanks (one M-1, one National Guard M-60), a Soviet tank, and a West German tank. That's sixteen (16!) characters right there.

We are pleased. 

Getting onto Will's Good Idea for the week of 2/27/22... We've discussed World War 1990: Battle of the GIUK Gap before, but it's worth going over again. 

Let's workshop this.

We think the novel will have an opening blockbuster. That might be the Soviet amphib/airborne attack on Iceland. Now that we think about it, maybe the opening blockbuster should be a Soviet amphib/airborne attack on one of the big Norwegian bases. 

We'll write lots of submarine scenes, Norwegian, Soviet, and probably British. We should bring back Tenacious, right? We should bring back Ula, right? Speaking of bringing back, we'll have our Backfire bomber characters from Battle of the Three Seas. They should wreck a NATO convoy. Maybe we should reach waaaay back and write about USS Stirling. Remember her? GIUK Gap offers us the opportunity to explore the P3 Orion and Nimrod anti-sub planes. Maybe we'll do a NATO hunter-killer surface group. Post ideas in comments. 

Saturday Updates

This is post 4846.

We had a great week at the gym with the machines, supplemented with two-mile walks. However, at the end of February we've utterly failed to take off any weight. 

We've read two books on Putin and Russia. We shall read more.

We dropped our phone screen time to about 2:40 or so. Not bad.

We think our KGB handler is pissed off and not talking to us.

This blog is impressed with Ukraine and its armed forces. The Ukrainians have shot down many Soviet fixed wing and helicopter aircraft. On the ground Ukrainian forces have exacted a heavy toll from the Soviets. The Ukrainian idea of defense mimics the Germans. That is, once the enemy takes ground, the Ukes launch a ferocious counterattack. There seem to be a lot of failed Soviet airborne assaults. The Soviets have trouble consolidating their gains. Last night the Soviets launched an airborne attack on Kiev and got significant forces into the city. Fighting continues in the capital. 

Here's a good account to follow for Ukraine war news. 

Overall we'd say the war is not going the way  STAVKA had planned, but the Soviets are still wearing the Ukrainians down. This blog believes sooner or later the Ukes will run out of men, ammo and time.

We just noticed we wrote 'Soviets' a lot. Oh well.

Things!

The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is done, fin. The files are uploaded. DRM are set. The price fixed. All we have to do is hit PUBLISH. Conception in the summer of 2020 to the verge of publishing. [So why not hit PUBLISH?] Dunno. 

We are reading a printout of The Great Salvation of 1976.

We put down World War 1990: The Final Storm. The process broke down. Too much work for meagre results. To put it another way. We had no ju-ju. We'll pick up The Final Storm in...April.

Because March is World War 1990: The Weser month. We've read through about 2/5ths of the MS and are highly pleased. The narrative works. Mostly we need to clarify, fact check and omit needless words. 

The Weser being in such good shape is proof of concept of the summer sneak in idea. Which WW1990 novel to write this summer? Battle of the GIUK Gap? We think Battle of the GIUK Gap.

The Last Saturday Update of January, 2022

Mrs. Stroock is still away dealing with family issues, leaving the six of us here: your author, three girls and two cats. We are consistently scoring Superior on the Dad Scale.

Progress of a sort we've made on The Great Nuclear War of 1975. We got an ebook proof from the formatter and had to apologize for being unclear. We need the softcover proof first. 

The formatter sent us cover concepts and we like one of them, though they don't seem under understand what we meant when we said, 'Air Force One should be on the cover'. We suspect the designer is a Millennial or Zoomer, and not getting the Cold War nuclear annihilation thing. They gave us one cover with an F-18, another with the Russian flag. May 1st is the very latest publication date.

Moving on...A few weeks ago we didn't want to read a paper copy of The Great Salvation of 1976 but feel up to it now - it's for the best. We need to get down in there and figure out what, if anything must needs be added. Soon enough. We'll send the MS to the editor by end of February at the latest. There's only so much more we can do. At some point one has to step back and say, 'This is the novel, kid.'

On to the big one...We spent all week hammering away at The Final Storm to great success. We'll need another week to finish up the SAS chapter - at least. We'll be much further along by Friday, we can say that. We're quite pleased with how things are going. Closing in on 70,000 words. 

Sitting in a small office in the basement of the GRU is a low-level officer fresh out of the academy who's tasked with monitoring Google Earth. We'll call him Ivan. No....Ivan isn't in the office, Ivana is. She's six feet tall, with long blonde hair and blue eyes like traffic lights. Her favorite Superhero is Wonder Woman; the costume she wore at the GRU's annual Halloween party. Ivana wants to move to Paris to pursue her dream of modeling, [Idiot-Ed] Anyway...Ivana is probably wondering, 'Why does this Amerikanski keep zooming in on Kremlin? Comrade Captain, open a dossier on subject, da?' to which the captain replies, 'I got a dossier for you right here.' Time for some Glasnost, and a little Perestroika afterwards.

From what music video did we snip this?

Three Novels for 2022's third Saturday Update

NFL playoffs today. We'll take the Raiders over the Bengals and the Bills over the Patriots. 

We are done pulling trim, carpet tacks, nails and the like from the basement steps. All that remains is to sand and stain. 

Hmmmm published reports say Ukraine suffered a cyberattack and Russian forces are poised to invade. Other reports claim US advisors are training Ukrainian troops for prolonged guerilla war. Which means US special forces are probably preparing to help 'stay behind' elements. 

If we haven't linked already, here's an interesting report at 19fortyfive from Philip Karber, a man who's been on the ground in Ukraine. Nut-graph, as the J-School losers say: Ukraine is prepared to fight. 'Considering the terrible shape the Ukrainian forces were in at the beginning of 2014 after two decades of utter neglect, their resurrection as a fighting force has been nothing short of miraculous.' Maybe Ukraine finally figured out they're, you know, next to Russia. 

If war, what are the ethics of writing for Inforos? We should stop, no? 

With the OMICRON surge (doom to all those that walk the ground, scourge to everyone who dwells upon the land) Mrs. Stroock asked us to stay away from the gym. Which is fine. We've been walking instead. We walked a tonne in 2020 and by the new year clocked in at 245 pounds. That's 17 and half stone for those of you with an English speech impediment. After a couple of weeks we can't help but feel that walking does more for us than running 3.5- 4.0 miles. That's 5-6 kms for folks who think a football field is 120 yards long. You can take your Grey Cup and...

The things:

We have three almost completed rough drafts.

We still await to receive The Great Nuclear War of 1975 as the editor is dealing with a family issue. 

We have read The Weser's final chapter. It's fine(?) Everything looks okay. We did the things we wanted to do, but aren't positive we did them justice. We can't help but feel something is missing. We really should be in the one-last-slow-readthrough-before-sending-the-MS- to-the-editor phase. This phase includes last minute technical details. We really haven't described the M-60 much. What's with the funny commander's cupola? It's possible we're over thinking. 65,000 words.

We have read through The Great Salvation of 1976. This is it. this is the novel. There is little more we can do to it. The MS goes into the sit phase now. How long? Till we clear the decks of other projects. 70,000 words.

So we ought to be able to write something from scratch next week. We're thinking a Final Storm chapter. Yes, one each for the two remaining weeks this month.

Ideally we'd like The Final Storm to be the first novel we put out this year. May 1st? But that seems like a stretch. The Final Storm is our forward novel, The Weser is our back novel. Which means the next World War 1990 novel is a forward. That's the summer sneak it. Esercito Italiano?

The Second Saturday Update of 2022

We woke up this morning and started a fire right-off. The temp is about 15 degrees here, -9.4 to you Celsius munchers.  

We got about four inches of snow yesterday. That's 101.4 centimeters for those of you saddled with the metric system (multiply by 25.4, the thingy says). We broke out the snowblower anyway, there's some old gas in there and we'd like to use it up. 

On to the things.

Plans continue apace to shut down this blog at post 5000.

We took a look at The Great Salvation of 1976 yesterday. We've been hung up on the last chapter and were hung up once more. Then we had a vision and realized the solution lay in destruction. We axed the chapter. One cut away from greatness, as Hitchcock used to say. There. That's it. The Great Salvation of 1976 is done. We think we can get the MS to the editor next month. 

After that we took the first tentative steps toward writing the nuke series' third volume. That is, we created a document and wrote the years 1977 through 1981. The other day our oldest watched a documentary about the Mt. St. Helens eruption and this gave us an idea for a town dealing with the first 48 hours of the war, but this wouldn't really work with the post 75-76 narrative.

We read through the attack scenes we've written in The Final Storm: British, Italian, Aussie/Japanese. By afternoon Friday these looked a lot better than they did on Monday. Each section is 2-3,000 words. At first we thought this was too short, but we don't want to over do it, or over write it. We must needs decide what chapter of The Final Storm we'll write next week. 

We did plenty of work on World War 1990: The Weser. It's almost done. We need to give Part III a readthrough this week. We'll also see if we can thread a few things into the narrative that we wanted to thread into the narrative. We'll see.

Our editor still has The Great Nuclear War of 1975. As soon as we get it back next week, well prepare it for publication. May 1st at the very latest.

We think the Ruskis are back next week from their New Years/Orthodox Christmas break. Guess we'll get back to colluding.

Sparks and Flashes or Not

The mind wanders, as is its wont, in search of something to work on for an hour and a thousand words a day. Do we really want to wrench ourselves from the Cold War to Medieval Times? That's a formidable task even for an intellect such as ours. No. No we don't. Doing our future space thingy requires a tonne of prep and extreme focus. Our planned 2543 trilogy ain't no side project. And by the Lords of Kobol, no radars, and SAMs, and torpedoes for a while. 

We were stumped.

But what if we just began work on the third nuke novel? This would be a comp of four short stories, each dealing with an individual year through to the 1981 presidential inauguration + a future history going all the way to 2025. We really don't have any story ideas. So we better start thinking. We do have one vague idea for a special military battalion that flies around the country taking out warlords and petty local tyrants that have sprung up. 

We're not taking a about a spark, a flash across the sky. But the mind does seem to like being in the third nuke book. It would be good to get the project done. Go where the words are. We shall ponder. Post ideas if you got 'em.

So we went over The Final Storm's Italian and Australian attack chapters yesterday. Cio Bella as far as the Italian chapter goes. The Australian sequence, or we should say, the Pacific sequence, is okay. But a lot goes on in this chapter, and we can't help but feel it deserves to be fleshed out. We have Aussie F-111s, Japanese F-15s, Tomahawks flying all over the place. There's some real scope there. 

So Joe Rogan has gone and joined GETTR and brought hundreds of thousands with him. We've tried other social networking sites and have stuck with Gab for well-nigh half a decade now. We have some traction on Gab but nowhere else. Otherwise, most of our internet ventures are a bust, YouTube, Substack, etc etc. We're on Twitter but don't do anything serious there. We might start pestering NJ07 GOP congressional candidate Tom Kean, though. Should we try again on GETTR? I dunno....Exit question, what would make GETTR different? [That para is all over the place Mr. good writer-Ed] I know. Exit thought: Hmmmm....what if we started doing this blog on Substack?

For a commercial break, a bit of pointless Gen-X nostalgia. We remember watching this commercial after school. It aired after Heathcliffe and before Vultron. We were the same age as the kids in this commercial. We can taste this commercial, and so can anyone else who was 12 in 1985:

The First Saturday Update of 2022

We picked up Mrs. Stroock and the Stroocklettes from the airport without incident. When one says the nation needs new airports, one is talking about Newark Liberty. Three terminals each with a level for picking up and dropping off which create traffic snarls punctuated by young policeman pissed off they're working New Years Eve shouting at one to get going. One is not supposed to stop at the terminal because this is what the terrorists do. What is this, 2003?

The schools are switching to half days next week. We think they'll go virtual after Monday. Normally we'd think concerned parents should show up at teacher's houses at 6 AM and drag them to work. But we know people who have the Wuhan Virus from Wuhan China and what's this stubborn cough we can't quite kick? It's everywhere here. We think going virtual for the next few weeks is solid policy. Maybe we're just a sucker. 

World War 1990: The Weser stands at 62,000 words and counting. There are a few details to fill in here and there. As noted before we didn't quite get in everything we wanted to get in, but we think we're moving on. 

We know we talked about The Bastard's Conquest, but we still have no idea what we're writing in 2022. We'll probably just spend January getting 76 and The Weser ready for the editor. We'll do a sneak in novel during the summer. The concept works. That will probably be World War 1990: Battle of the GIUK Gap. Remember, one forward, one back. Which means we will finish The Final Storm.

We have inquired about writing a few what if pieces for 19FortyFive.

Maybe we'll return to posting commercials we like for the hell of it. Here's one. Great Scot! The Champaigne wasn't Korbel.

The Final Saturday Update of 2021 and on Christmas too

A rainy and quiet Christmas morning. Not our first. We swear we came down the stairs and had a movie style flashback of Christmas past. There it was. We could see it.

Like a lot of postwar secular Jewish families, we grew up celebrating Christmas, tree, presents, the whole bit. We spent most of our Christmases in the 80's and 90's with our mother's family in Western Kentuckey. From 2003 till our grandfather's death in 2018 we had lunch at the Algonquin. For the last three Christmases Mrs. Stroock has taken the girls to see her father in Indiana. We had dinner with friends last night and we'll be heading to our sister's later.

It is with astonishment that we feel the march of time. It echoes. Sometimes it seems like that little boy who jumped up and down when he got Colecovision for Christmas in 1982 reaches through time and rings the bell. That 18-year-old who opened Statis Pro Football 30 years ago in Kentucky is winking at us. We're winking right back. 

All those years past now and the years that will pass. Why in just another decade (younger reader(s), on the other side of 30 the years just fly buy) we'll be 58 and the girls will be 25, 22 and 19.

[Well, you're just full of cheer-Ed]

On to the things.

We spent the week going over World War 1990: The Weser. The British section looks good and there's little more we can do to the American section. We had to fix a lot of things in the beginning to make a lot of things in the middle and end make sense. There was one idea we wanted to put in there, but it looks like it won't fit. Oh well. All that remains is to write the final chapter. 

What we're saying is it'll take us a month or less to get The Weser to the editor. Which is exactly wear The Great Salvation of 1976 stands. The novels go slowly and then happen all at once, don't they. Three novels in 2022, maybe four. 

A Confederate commenter said he's really looking forward to The Weser. Well thanks. It'll feel kind of like Polish Storm. Same general concept, anyway. 

We pondered, as is our wont, our 2022 plan.  We'll write something in the first half of 2022 and then do a 'summer sneak in', which is what The Weser was. Since the summer sneak in was so successful, we'll plan on doing another World War 1990 novel then. But which one? [Dear god, choose something-Ed]. At the moment we feel the juju for World War 1990: GIUK Gap. That would work with our stated goal of one novel forward one back. We'll spend January trying to finish The Final Storm, which comes out before The Weser.

As to what we're starting from scratch...A fellow North American suggested writing The Bastard's Conquest next year. Yeah, why not? Let's do something different. We know how the novel starts. It's the night of the Battle of Hastings. Our protagonist, the knight Robert d'Hautville, leads a group of men to find Harold's body atop Senlac ridge and bring it to William. The novel follows Robert over the next 20 years or so till William's death in 1087. We can spend this week outlining. We have a plan....

We'll spend the last days of 2021 reviewing 2022, which will be this blog's last year. 

Anyway, merry Christmas, everyone:

Saturday Updates

So, Trump slammed American Jews. What do you people want this blog to say? He's right. No caveats. I don't care. Trump is right.

The Sidewise awards are tonight and our own The Blue and the Red: Palmerston's Ironclads, has been nominated. Fingers crossed. We're not a winner. Never have been.

Alert readers will notice a new edition at the bottom of our Magazine Articles tab.

Just a great week at the gym. Two days running, two days lifting. We've plateaued on the treadmill, which is fine. But have yet to do so with the lifting. We may take the rest of the month off. We'll see. And we may switch back to the machines (rope pulley, stair master, etc etc) in January. We will also see. We have not gained weight this month, which is impressive, given the Mrs. Stroock penchant for Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa baking. [Kwanzaa? -Ed] Yes, I know. Not a real holiday. Anyway...

We didn't look at The Great Nuclear War of 1975 or The Great Salvation of 1976 at all this week. In fact, we didn't even think about them. The faire editor has the 75 MS and is getting ready to give it a second readthrough. We need to think about what Years (a series of stories about 77-81) would look like. One idea, a story about a special strike team that goes around America taking out local warlords and enforcing Federal writ. There'd be one in the mountains, one in the Louisianna swamps...Al Haig probably wins the presidential election of 1980. 

We spent the entire week going over World War 1990: The Weser. We have never had an editorial experience like this one. Things look great. We recall busting our hump on The Weser before putting the MS down last September. Still, we're stunned at just how good the whole MS looks.

Which is not to say we didn't have a lot of work to do. At this point the biggest problem is clarification. Whose doing what, now? And where? Just what are the Soviets trying to do? And which Soviets are trying to do it? And to whom? Note to self: next time just get all the units worked out first. Somehow, we think we've blogged that before.

One problem we've noticed, and were not sure it's really a problem, is the meetings. All the division commanders in NATO ad-hoc corps get together for THE BRIEFING. And then all the generals in the 8th Infantry Division get together for THE BRIEFING. As we've said, we're not even sure that's a bad thing. Afterall, we must needs outline what's happening. And the best way to do that is with a general pointing to a map and saying, 'Roy, your brigade will hit Point Bravo.' But it is repetitive. 

We're not pleased that we didn't get a book out this year. It is what it is, but we don't want to do that again. Talking about 2022, our thought at this point is we'll put out three books next year. We haven't looked at The Final Storm in a month, but when we put it down, we thought we had a tonne of work to do. We'll be picking it back up in January (probably).

Saturday Updates with an Emergency Monday Metal

A weird but good week at the gym. We missed a session so only three in all. We could do a makeup day today if we really wanted to. We lifted yesterday (a good session) so that would mean the treadmill today. We were planning to do some yard work this afternoon, and we certainly count that as exercise. We'll see. 

This blog hasn't commented much about the Kyle Rittenhouse case because we prefer to deal in things we know. And we don't know the law. It's lame for a non-lawyer pundit commenting on legal matters. However, this blog would be remiss if it didn't say something. So we're stunned that the Kenosha jury arrived at the correct decision. This blog also says without hesitation, USA-2, Commies-0. Degenerate commies at that. USA! USA! 

Aside from Portland we don't know of any riots last night. Now that they'll have a day to prepare, we expect riots tonight. 

The Things:

We have one last chapter of The Great Nuclear War of 1975 to read. We read The Falklands chapter yesterday and overall things are as good as we an make them. At some point one has done all that one can to one's masterpiece. From there one must step back and say, this is it, this is the novel. Steps to turn over the MS to the editor have been taken. We've one chapter left to go. Even the Looking Glass scenes are looking good. 

We've more or less written The Final Storm's Crimea scenes, if we decide not to add some Soviet POVs. Which might help. We're not sure what we're doing next week, but we know we're moving on from the Crimea chapter. Oh, we haven't written the Israeli section because we have the definitive account of the Israeli raid on Osirak and we why wouldn't we consult that before writing? But the book is in our book refugee pile and we have no idea when we'll see it again. We'll be doing a lot of work on The Final Storm in 2022.

What you people want me to write next?

World Waring It or Not

Here in New Jersey the state Covid case count continues to spike. At this writing, this year's November spike doesn't look to be as bad as last year's November spike. We'll see. Last year we had a lonely Thanksgiving. This year, family is coming. 

Yesterday's transmission rate was 1.11. Deaths are steady though, 15-20 per day, which is no consolation to the bereaved. Our own Bridgewater is seeing about 10 cases per day. Overall Bridgewater, a town of 44,000 + has 3,324 cases since March of last year and 109 deaths. 

Elsewhere in Bridgewater parents have been complaining to the school board about kids getting too much homework, The Bridgewater Breeze reports. There's a lot of it, that's for sure. 

The latest local 'get vaxed!' advertisements are slightly less condescending than those previous. Do note we've never seen a New Jersey 'get vaxed!' ad. These are all NYC ads. Mayor elect Eric Adams* can't move into Gracie Mansion quick enough. 

We are 2/3rds of the way through The Great Nuclear War of 1975. We're finally feeling it. We're finally seeing it. The MS feels like a novel to us. There's the novel. The Looking Glass scenes are coming along great too. The Falkland's chapter awaits. We don't feel mentally, emotionally, or spiritually prepared to edit it. We'll get to work this afternoon.

We also had some success with The Final Storm and we finally see a way to wrap up the Crimea scenes. So the Italian/Israeli chapter will be more or less wrapped up this week. Unless we get crazy and want to add a Soviet POV, do some stuff with all those Kilos in the Black Sea Fleet. Maybe.

We've spent a lot of time hemming and hawing this week about the novel to write next. We're on the verge of overthinking, a problem that surely would have surprised our parents and teachers 30 years ago. We thought, 'Do we really need to write another World War 1990 novel right now?' And then we remembered we just wrote a pair of non-World War 1990 novels. Still, we'll think of a couple of non-WW1990 ideas. 

Informal, off the record conversations show you people prefer World War 1990: Battle of the GIUK Gap for the next project.

However one thinks about the matter, we will need something to write in 2022.

*Pssst. He's really a GOP.

If it's Monday it's the day after a NY Jets Loss

...Humiliating slaughter is more like it. Of course our own New York Football Giants have been on a Jets like, decade long run of mediocrity. Mister we could use a man like Eli Manning again. 

What Will's Watching, (you guess it) Buffalo Bills at New York Jets: We've always found the slaughter of a bad football team both cathartic and fascinating. Yesterday the New York Jets did not disappoint. Some thought starting QB Mike White to be the savior after a few good performances this year. But the Jets already have a designated savior, first round pick Zach Wilson, who is hurt.  White threw four interceptions and then things got really ugly. Still think there's a brewing QB controversy Jets fans? Bills 45, Jets 17. It wasn't that close. When we see a child decked out in Jets gear, we're tempted to call the authorities. 

Lets see what the Israelis do in World War 1990: The Final Storm. Captain Ramon leads a flight of nine F-16s against the ICBM base at Perveromarysk. Hmmmm....as we wrote the above we realized we still haven't worked out the Backfire attack on Task Force Aigle and Gladius. On to the salt mines.

We see a tonne of polls showing Biden's approval in the sub-40 range and the GOP leading bigly in the generic congressional ballot. The election is a year off. But in our experience there's no coming back from sub-40 approval ratings. Some have speculated that the Supreme Court will overturn the Dred Scot Decision (or Roe vs Wade if you will) and this will drive suburban gals to the polls. This blog believes overturning Korematsu vs United States (or Roe vs Wade if you will) could be bad for Dems.

It's one thing to think abortion should be legal. Bill Clinton may have been spinning when he said abortion should be 'safe legal and rare', but that's what most people think. Abortionists think abortion is great. Abortion yay! A bunch of purple-haired land whales*, sexually dysfunctional 25 year old Millennials who think Pete Davidson is hot, and bitter 40ish career women bragging about how awesome their abortions were just isn't a good look.

We're experimenting with our online presence. This week we'll make use of our MeWe account, which has been mostly dormant since we opened it a year ago. We'll see if we can gain followers and build an audience. We think if we keep playing sooner or later we'll hit.

For Monday Metal, forgotten early 80's guitar god, Billy Squier. The poor man's Eddie Van Halen:

Those are some serious chops. They say the Rock me Tonight video ruined Squier. But we don't remember hearing this song till the 90's. Tastes may simply have changed, and young men wanted their guitar gods to be metal. 

*What are they even worried about?

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?