Monday and we have Little

We are primed to have a great week with The New American Order. We'll finish a scene where Al Haig ambitiously listens to the president's inauguration address, and another where Rumsfeld listens with disappointment. We have one town where they need to open up housing to refugees and another scene where they run out squatters. We'll have a foreign leader listening as well. Maybe the guy who runs Pakistan, to set up all the Indo-Pak trouble. We'll see

The New American Order will be 20,000 words at the end of the week and the first chapter will be completed. We're hoping for a 25,000 word at the end of the month, and 50,000 words by 1 June. 

In The New American Order the largest metro areas are Chatanooga, Evansville/Owensboro/Henderson on the Ohio, Bethlehem/Allentown/Eastern in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Fun fact, the governor of Pennsylvania is running the state out of Happy Valley. Sorry, SEC fans. Casper, Gillette and North Platte, Nebraska are the new centers of the Mountain West.

Monday Metal or not. Two clips from Dave Grohl of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters talking about music. Here's the first about American Idol, fuck yeah. Here's the second on young musicians and the modern music industry. Fuck yeah again. 'I don't want to sing like someone else I want to sing like me,' Grohl says. Quite right. Grohl is one of the last real rockstars and doing an admirable job of keeping that spirit alive. 

I'm probably segueing that into writing about writing this week.

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 4/17/22

Happy Easter to all our Christian readers. 

Sixty dollars (American) for a kosher brisket. Thanks, Joe. 

Twenty years ago this Passover, 'Palestinian' terrorists murdered 30 Israelis and wounded Dozens more in the Passover Massacre. At our Seder the night after the massacre we read, as we always read, the following from the Haggadah, 'Pour out your fury on the nations that do not know you, upon the kingdoms that do not invoke your name, for they have devoured Jacob and desolated his home. Pour out your wrath on them; may your blazing anger overtake them. Pursue them in wrath and destroy them from under the heavens.' Drive them into the sea. I don't give a crap. 

Yesterday a fan and Confederate holdout noted that Patton was one of the greatest war movies ever and too others were Full Metal Jacket and Kelly's Heros. Ahhh...the latter two are interesting choices. Reader(s) should write their favorite Kelly's Heroes quotes below. I'll start, 'I've been thinking positive thoughts about that bridge all morning...'

We hate Patton. We say that as someone who played Captain Brackett in the Hendrick Hudson Drama Club's production of South Pacific and modeled his speech after Geroge C. Scott's opener. 'Up until now, our side has been having the hell kicked out of it in two hemispheres...'* Patton does little to help us understand the real Patton. Not once did the script delve into the man's family, his mystical connection to his Confederate ancestors, his time commanding the tank corps in WWI, and his deep loyalty to Pershing. That movie sucks.

Our favorite war movies are about men, and war and human nature. To that end, here's our list.

Bridge on the River Kwai. Three different views of war. Saito and Nickolson are both stubborn, pigheaded, and nuts. Only Shears makes any sense. Nicholson figures it out in the end, 'My god what have I done,' while the nominally sane Shears is screaming, 'Kill him!' All while the train grows closer and closer. 

The Longest Day. Many of the English parts are silly and the film feels more like 1962 than 1944. But TLD captures the greatness and grandeur of D-Day while telling the tale of confused and disoriented men controlled by events. Best scene? A tie between the Pegasus Bridge assault and the French Commandos, no?

Platoon. Has stood the test of time, hasn't it? A character study in a story about coming of age in war.

The Caine Mutiny. No surprise to longtime readers of this blog. This film is about war, men, duty and loyalty.

Twelve O'clock High. See above. Also, leadership and the price of command. Also the redemption of Col. Gately, who started out a goat but ended up taking command at the end. 'No...tell Gately to take it.'

Apocalypse Now. Well duh. War is grand, banal, horrifying.

Anyway...our Confederate holdout also suggested that we show people discussing the points in the president's inauguration address after the fact. We had toyed with something like this, people huddled around the radio listening, like they did with FDR's fireside chats, but this post-address idea works a lot better. 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 4/17/22. Pakistan spends The New American Order harassing and pressuring India. Their ISI destabilizes Bangladesh, sponsors terrorist attacks in India and attacks Indian assets abroad, all in the hopes of forcing Delhi into some kind of deal on Kashmir. This leads to war. With no super powers to restrain them this could be the big one with the Indians deciding, aww hell with it. Let's take Islamabad. The Indo-Pak war could be its own novel in this universe. We'll see, we'll see if The Great Salvation of 1976 and The New American Order do as well as The Great Nuclear War of 1975.

*Thirty years ago this April, and I still remember it.

Saturday Updates

Blood, Frogs, Lice, Wild Animals, Cattle Disease, Boils, Hail, Locusts, Darkness, Death of the First Born...One dips a finger in red wine and touches a plate with each plague. Never ceases to give me chills. The recitation of plagues sounds even cooler in the original Hebrew*, like you can actually feel God smiting the Egyptians. When the Israelis launched their final offensive against Egypt in 1948, they called it Operation Ten Plagues. The Jews have a knack for really cool sounding operational code names. As the Imams say...

A fine, and shockingly fast Seder last night. Those dishes didn't wash themselves. We have a couple of teenagers in the family now, and per tradition they're allowed wine on Passover. Between that and the post-dinner sweets, the teens got a little punchy. We sent them away.

This is post 4902. According to calculations made by the Stroock families' crack mathematics team, at the current pace post 5,000 will be made on 24 July. You people know what happens then.

On to the things.

A frustrating and disappointing week working on The New American Order. The novel's opening chapter takes place at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Here the president will be sworn in for his second term and give his inauguration address. The three scenes we want to write are written, but we have not written the fourth and concluding scene we wanted to write. In fact, we don't know what we want to write because we're not sure how to transmit the president's four points without showing a speech. We don't want to show a speech.

That being said we made a lot of progress on TNAO this week, writing, re-writing, and adding to scenes, packing those scenes with more info and detail.  

We think TNAO's foreign plot will be about India, Pakistan, and the Commonwealth leading to Will's Good Idea for the Week of 4/16/22, which we'll write about tomorrow. You people know where this is headed. 

The question arises, do we want to write several novels in the universe? We know we're writing three. In fact, we sent The Great Salvation of 1976 to the editor this week. And we have a fifth idea for a novel. It all depends on sales. As of this morning 75 is still in the top 25 of its Amazon category. In theory this post-nuclear universe could be as big as the World War 1990 universe...

...Speaking of...people still have World War 1990: The Weser. More people will have it next week.

*Even cooler in Klingon, no?

Saturday Updates

This is post 4895.

We didn't get as much done as we wanted this week with The New American Order. Though we did make some progress. The brain keeps wanting to write vignettes, when the plan was to write a longer short story based around each year from 1977 through 1981(with a vignette on either end). We've already got a couple of vignettes dealing with housing issues, those empty and those occupied by squatters. An interesting problem. 

We know there will be a chapter dealing with warlords and independent whack jobs. We've already written the intro to that. For that matter the chapter seems to work written with a standard technothriller format. Meeting with Admiral Chambers, scene showing helicopter troops training, military assets moving into place...etc etc. Just go with it. What works, works.

We know there will be a dedicated foreign chapter, but we're still not sure what the subject will be. The Israelis? The South Africans?* We have an Australian scene with lots of Commonwealth talk. We like the concept. Maybe HMAS Melbourne goes to Africa for some reason.

We finished reading through World War 1990: The Weser. Honestly that last readthrough felt like self-abuse. We have done to The Weser all the things we can do to The Weser. We have handed the MS over to people. These are the beta-readers.

*The dedicated foreign part in The Great Salvation of 1976 is Greater Ulan Ude. 

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. 

A new Week...

...A new edit of World War 1990: The Weser.

We're hacking away at The Weser again this week. Our new deadline is 15 April. We'll be working on The New American Order as well with the goal of finishing a chapter this month, 20,000 words. We have two chapters started, one domestic, one describing events overseas. We may end up working on both. Hmmm...the collapse of the US Dollar, South Africa should be in really good financial shape, with all its gold Krugerrands, no? There's a South African story in there someplace. We just have to find it.

We had originally intended to end The Great Salvation of 1976 with President Rockefeller visiting congress at the Greenbrier and giving his inauguration address. We even wrote three scenes describing such, but cut them. We think this is the prologue to The New American Order. What does President Rockefeller talk about in his address. 

We projected first month sales of The Great Nuclear War of 1975 to come in somewhat behind first month sales of Nederland and Battle of the Three Seas. God laughed at us. After 28 days, 75 has surpassed both novels by a lot, more than 25%. There are two reasons for this. First, we grew our audience in 2020 and 2021. Second we think our efforts on Gab and Twitter have paid off.  Also, we are among the best at what we do. As of this writing 75 has 71 reviews and stands at number 17 in its Amazon category. 

Yesterday Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban's Fidesz party utterly routed the opposition (52-34) and won another 2/3rds supermajority in Parliament.  The opposition leader even lost his seat. Sad. All the right people are mad. God bless Victory Orban and the Hungarian people. Over at The American Conservative, Hungarophile Rod Dreher writes up Orban's victory. Reader(s) should click on through. Nut graph, as the J-School losers say, fight the corporate power, man. 

Monday Metal, spotted at the retro-arcade:

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?

Saturday Updates

This is post 4888.

Spring has arrived in New Jersey, more or less. April is usually cold and wet here. Spring doesn't really come till May. We actually had sub-freezing mornings this week. We groan. Spring means having to pretend to care about our lawn. This year the Stroock girls will be re-learning what they learned about mowing the lawn last year. 

Another fine week of exercise.  Two sessions with the machines and plenty of walking. We think we're nearing our plateau and it might be time to switch to weights + walking. We'll see. We're putting on weight, but this is muscle. We know this because the size 38 shorts we keep for fitting purposes fit the same. We could wear them about if we really wanted to. We feel a touch trimmer, actually.

The things.

As of this writing The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is #16 in its category and has 65 ratings averaging 4.3 stars. Here's the first review from Britain, 'Good story but based heavily in the USA. The most interesting parts were centered in other parts of the world. Let’s hope the next book spends more time outside North America. Would recommend.' Well yes on the first part, agreed on the second part, and thanks on the third part.

We'll have 30 days of sales data on 5 April. 75 is really surging, with the reviews coming in fast, and it's going to come close to Nederland's or Three Sea's first month. We aren't seeing a surge in sales of other novels though, which means we've exhausted our pool of readers.  Exit question, how to find new readers? Whatever you're thinking reader(s), we've probably already thought of.

Another weird week with the 3rd nuke novel, with much staring at a screen and wondering, 'What the fuck happens next?' We think we got the third nuke novel's foreign chapter started and we feel good about next week. Ju-ju often comes slowly, then all at once. A fellow north American suggested calling this novel, 'The New American Order,' so that's what we'll go with for now. Overall, the MS is 3,000 words.

The slog through The Weser is taking longer than expected. We haven't finished Part-I: The Americans yet. This is actually the toughest section. We're overthinking and in danger of overediting. But can it be better, we ask ourselves. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, we remind ourselves. World War 1990: The Weser will be out sometime in July.

Will Opposes Grooming, but Supports Indie Publishing

The Republicans should drag out the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings and call as witnesses all the pedophiles to whom she gave lenient sentences. Then the GOP should call Judge Jackson back to defend her sentencing. Doing so reinforces the GOP's anti-grooming narrative, set so brilliantly by Governor Ron DeSantis. Really MAGA nation, you see DeSantis slicing and dicing Disney and the media like a Cossack marauding through a Jewish village on the River Bug and you want to go back to Trump?

What Will's Reading: Titans. Publishers Chris Kennedy (who published Those in Peril, which has our own Palmerston's Iron Clads) and William Alan Webb have written a book describing the Indie publishing industry for science fiction, fantasy and horror authors. Lots of facts, details, and experiences from a bevy of writers. We mainlined Titans last night, nodded along, said, 'yep' and 'uh-huh' and 'that happened to me' or 'I did that'. This book confirms much of what we knew and suspected. Titans is a manual and a rally cry against trad publishing - those poor saps. 

We read Titans and thought, 'We're a well established Indie author' but wondered how we could expand. We're redoubling our social media efforts. New Twitter account. We've thought about running some ads but aren't sure where. In other words, we're stuck. One obvs answer is to write Esersito Italliano, which would break us into the Italian market. Not this summer. Our strongest market remains D-Day + Australia. To our knowledge we have never sold a book in the Netherlands. Huh. Wait, no, we just checked and we sold one...World War 1990: ANZACs. Huh again.

No, the ju-ju lies with World War 1990: Battle of the GIUK Gap. We upped our research game with The Weser and are going to have to up it again with GIUK Gap. We'll write at least one Soviet submarine trying to sneak through the Gap, General Lebed and the 106th Guards Airborne Division, we'll probably bring back our Sovietski Backfire bomber pilots. A very Soviet-centric novel. You know, since we can't collude with Inforos anymore.

The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is doing great. Of course it is. We are among the best there is at what we do. This morning it's #18 on Amazon's alternate history category. Yesterday it cracked the top 10. Which is nice. On the third nuke book front, it looks like Admiral Larry Chambers will be in command of the anti-warlord task force. The task force won't attack the Black Panthers first, as the Casper suits are worried about going after a black warlord before a white one. I dunno, too current year? This chapter will be completed by May Day. 

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 3/27/22

This is the email we sent our KGB handler yesterday: 'I write in hopes of preserving peace for all mankind. Would you please tell Putin that Joe has a dementia addled pudding brain. What Joe vomits forth are not the coherent, well thought out words of a man in possession of his faculties. Joe always was a loudmouthed,  know nothing braggart. The senility makes him more so now. Please tell Putin to disregard Joe's talk of 'regime change'.  

Allah Pundit at Hot Air writes aptly and eloquently* about Joe's unbelievably colossal fuck up. What a powerful rhetorical weapon Joe has handed Vladimir. As Allah points out, Putin can now frame the war in Ukraine as a defensive war against Western encroachment. This blog has written time and again that NATO flirting with Ukraine was always a terrible, no good, lousy idea. Now Putin can point to Ukraine and say, 'See!' If you think 81 million people really voted for this fuckhead, then can I interest you in some Arkansas real-estate investment opportunities?

Will got bored:

I hadn't opened Axis and Allies Pacific in literally 20 years. I thought I'd thrown it out a few years ago and was on the verge of ordering another when I checked the basement shelf. There she was. I opened her up and found the pieces just where I sorted them in March of 2002. 

I played a round or four yesterday afternoon. As Japan, I whacked Pearl Harbor and then fought out a Greater East Asian strategy. By turn four it was clear America's economic might was too much to overcome. They had a fleet of four carriers and two battleships moving through the central Pacific with an invasion force. I really should have gobbled up as much of Indonesia and South Asia as I could have for the economic points. Good fun.

Sales of The Great Nuclear War of 1975 remain acceptable, and The Great Salvation of 1976 is nearly completed. We're working on, or at least thinking about, novel number three right now. We've also considered novel number four. What if Israel consolidates control over the Middle East, pops off a few more nukes, drives out the West Bank People, and establishes Eretz Israel? In the process they piss off France. Let's say they go and bomb Saddam's nuclear reactor and kill some French scientists in the process. Could we not have the Franco/Israeli war? Think of the possibilities. 

We have a storyline. Nuclear war, followed by aftermath followed by recovery with a future history taking things to 2025. We're doing that. Do we want to maintain a universe where we play around with ideas and possibilities? Maybe. This leads to existential questions which we'll wright about this week.

*Yes, we agree with Ace's assessment of the man, for Ace is always right. Nevertheless, Allah has important insights. 

Saturday Updates

This is post 4881. We will write post 4900 sometime in April. 

A woman has two X chromosomes, a vagina, uterus, ovaries, breasts, hips, can carry and give birth to children and menstruates every 28 days from puberty through menopause.  

Mrs. Stroock did the taxes yesterday. Yikes. 

Retired Australian General Mick Ryan has a pretty good summary of the Ukraine War. We remark once again that the Ukes are great at info war while the Ruskis are terrible at it. No one really knows what comparative casualties are, and the western media repeats Uke talking points verbatim. There are many known unknowns and a few unknown unkowns.

Each week we are less inclined to support Trump in 2024. Sorry, he's not doing the things we wanted to see him do. Okay, he's lost some weight. But overall, Trump is acting like it's still 2015. He hasn't upped his game. His attacks lack focus, they're all over the place. Why pick a fight with Mo Brooks? Actually, we like Trump suing Hillary! Why not? Don't get us wrong. Trump won. But right now, we'd rather he didn't win the GOP nod in 2024.

On to the things.

We spent a lot of time this week staring at our computer and wondering what the third nuke book should be about. On Thursday we finally had our breakthrough and wrote a quick thousand words. The 1977 chapter will be about reestablishing sovereignty over all of the United States. There will be several contacts with local warlord types and assorted whack job preachers, including one obvious wacko. Prepare for a blast from the past. After consultations with a fellow North American, the Royal Navy will be dealing with Caribbean pirates. Heh. This chapter is our April project. 

The Great Nuclear War of 1975 has been available for nearly three weeks. Sales started slow, grew and have plateaued maybe...15% below where Nederland and Three Seas plateaued. The book hovers between 20-30 in its category and has 38 ratings averaging 4.1 stars. As usual the top four selling locations are the US, UK, CA, and AU. The Great Nuclear War of 1975 will not flop. 

As suspected we aren't seeing a sales spike of other titles.

We finished The Great Salvation of 1976 readthrough and made all the changes. The MS is 68,000 words. By way of comparison, The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is 80,000 words. This novel deals with interesting problems of reconstruction (elections, the Alaska Pipeline, currency etc.), has a nice little war, and follows Matt across the Midwest. There's something missing from 76, though.  Doom and urgency perhaps? 

Reviews, Leppards and Crabs

Def Leppard's Adrenalize was a pastiche of sounds, from early 90's pop to early 80's hard rock. Eventually they got back to that Hysteria sound of power chords, guitar licks and what we've always called 'Wall of D' vocals. We give you White Lightening:

Oh, there we go. There it is. If you're a Def Leppard fan, you waited four songs for White Lightening.  White Lightening is about Steve Clark's alcoholism and death. A trainlike bass drives the verse to a great bridge. There's an intense chorus followed by a long, multipart guitar solo. Whie Lightening goes right to the Def Leppard fan's brain. A perfect song for a serious subject. 

As of this writing, The Great Nuclear War of 1975 has 30 ratings averaging 4 + stars. Here's the two latest reviews:

Which is nice. Which was the point. Heh, the retired air force guy didn't notice I used Air Force MPs rather than the proper SPs. High praise though. High praise for sure. The Great Nuclear War of 1975 works because it's bleak, as the other above reviewer says, bleak AF. The story gets even bleaker after the little Malvines submarine adventure, with people freezing, starving or beating each other to death. [Malvines! Why you cheeky....Ed]. Readers will notice we took the teen summer camp fantasy trope (which we kinda used in To Survive the Earth) and made it a nightmare. 

Herein lies the risk for The Great Salvation of 1976. There's lots of cabinet meetings about problems we think are interesting, reconstruction, elections, etc etc. There's still plenty of vignettes but these are more hopeful. They feel kind of like the scene in Independence Day in which all the fighter pilots from various nations are gathered in the desert. Which was totally cool. We're almost done with the print readthrough. The ending feels a bit short. 68,000 words. We'll rap things up in April.

This blog has men on the ground all over Canada. Yellow Knife, Moose Jaw, White Horse, Cambridge Bay (Ok, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Quebec). One of them informed us that the communist NDP made a deal with the Libs for Justin to stay in power till 2025. Our man is skeptical the deal last that long, but still. You asked for Justin. You voted for Justin. Canada, you deserve Justin Trudeau. 

What Will's Watching, Black Crab: This Guardian review is spot on, 'There’s a civil war on in Sweden, and yet no one seems to know why. It’s gonna be a bad one, as imagined by the sporadically tense and consistently pointless Netflix thriller Black Crab, which sends the country into a state of dystopian devastation only five short years removed from the present.' Black Crab must sound more menacing in the original Swedish. At times the cinematography is beautiful, but overall Black Crab does not reach the heights to which it aspires. 2/4 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 3/20/22

This is post 4873...closing in on 5,000, people. 

Some spring cleaning yesterday. Mrs. Stroock rearranged the curio cabinet, 'You put my vintage Burge King Star Wars glasses on the bottom shelf,' I said. 'And?' she replied. 'Nothing.'

Once a day we like to search 'Inforos' on twitter and see what pops up. Usually we see a breathless tweet from a guy calling himself The Tracker @HTracker10. Here's a good one:

Important to keep aware of #Russian #disinformation. I am still seeing people sharing links to sanctioned #GRU #Inforos sites like #Infobrics and Oneworld press - @Twitter needs to not allow this https://t.co/AOBVvhLuho

— The Tracker (@HTracker10) March 18, 2022

Thanks there, Mr. Anonymous Twitter Sluth. For younger reader(s) The Tracker's profile pic is from 1983's Wargames. That's some nice Gen-Xing. In another post, Mr. Brave Twitter Anti-Russian-Disinfo Tough Guy names 'key' Inforos employees. Sadly I'm not on the list. Damn it. For the record, everything I've ever written for Inforos or anyone else is 99 and 44/100 percent true. 

With sales of The Great Nuclear War of 1975 surging, and the read through of The Great Salvation of 1976* nearly complete, this week we're going to start the third book in the nuke series. We need a break from The Weser.

Book three will be a compilation of four short stories, each about an event in a single year. So one story for 1978, one for 1979, one for 1980 and one for 1981 through to the inauguration of the next president.** The final chapter will be a future history taking the reader all the way to 2025. We'll probably write a long intro talking about our thoughts on the war, our methodology, and foundational ideas. We may also write-one off vignettes at either end of each chapter. 

Post ideas in comments. 

*75's success is no guarantee for 76. To Defend the Earth did great but To Survive the Earth flopped.

**Guess who. 

Saturday Updates

 We shaved:

We look good with our face smooth and kissable.

We went to bed with The Great Nuclear War of 1975 standing at something like 105 in Alternate History. When we woke up, well:

Which is nice. Thank you, Amazon algorithm, however you work. As of this writing The Great Nuclear War of 1975 has 18 reviews globally, which ain't bad for a book that's been out for two weeks. 

The things:

We spent all week tearing apart World War 1990: The Weser Part III and putting it back together. The Weser is much better for it. We thought we'd need next week to rework the epilogue, but found a couple of scenes in Part III that work better in the epilogue. We can Get The Weser to the editor on 1 April if we really want to. 

We began reading The Great Salvation of 1976 this week and we're moving right along. We'll talk more about this in tomorrow's Will's Good Idea for the Week of 3/19/20.

Trump Won, Hunter's Laptop is Real, and other True Things

To be honest we'd like to do the Saturday update today. Lots to report. But it's Friday. So, here's a normal Friday post. The Friday Flag will be below. We may do a Thursday Downer later today as we had an epiphany this week; even though today is Friday.

This blog remains stunned by the media/big tech combined suppression of Hunter's 'laptop from hell'. We are even more stunned at the New York Times' admission yesterday.  Well of course Hunter Biden's laptop is real. And let's recall all the current and former intel guys that insisted the laptop was classic Russia disinfo. And that's why we don't take seriously anything these people say about Russia. No fate is too bad for the organizations that suppressed the story. No fate.

This blog admits to preferring DeSantis over Trump. Here's why. We wanted to see President Trump grow in exile. That doesn't mean we want a kinder, gentler Trump. No. We wanted to see Trump up his game, sharpen his skills, streamline his stump speech. Trump hasn't done any of that. The man has taken off a few pounds. Which is good. We don't mean to be too critical, Trump did win.

Whoa! It was just yesterday that we realized Soviet T/72 and T/80s have three, not four crewman and use an autoloader. We're going over our Apache gunship book and notes. Cyclic not cyclical. Someone pointed out a mistake in The Great Nuclear War of 1975. We should have written Air Force Security Police, not Air Force MPs. Oh well. 

Sooner or later 75 will get some serious grognarding. 'Why everyone knows that according to SIOP 65-9 the US Navy was too...' Plans are nice. Anyone wanna talk about the way the US government acted on 9/11? No one knew what the hell they were doing till Bush said, 'No, I'm going to go back to the White House.' Remember how the Secret Service packed W away to Omaha for a few hours? They probably wanted W to sleep in NORAD or something. JFC. Plans...we laugh. We laugh in the most mocking way possible.

St. Patrick's Day marks the return of Will's flag display. Usually we pick up a few new flags over the winter, but haven't this year. Let's see if we can get an MCRN flag or something. Yesterday we put up our Israeli flag, given to us by a dear friend waaaay back in the mid-90s. 

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. 

Optimistic on Books, Pessimistic on Ruskis

Okay, a decent first day of sales...We'll call it friends and family +. The Great Nuclear War of 1975 cracked its categories' top 100. Not bad. KU reads are just ramping up. We'll see how sales develop over the next few days. So far, there's no reason to be pessimistic...yet.

We saw a few days ago that the Treasury Department has issued sanctions against various Russian organizations and Russians. Among those sanctioned are Inforos and our own KGB handler. Which is at once jarring and kinda funny. Wow, we know someone whose been sanctioned by the State Department. Cool! We're unclear as to what 'sanctioned' actually means. Best we can tell, our KGB handler can't pay us. No problem, the last articles are gratis, m'kay?

This blog admits the war hasn't gone the way the Soviets, sorry Russians, wanted. The press is bombarding us with images of shot down Russian jets, destroyed Russian equipment, and plucky Ukrainian freedom fighters poking the lumbering Russian bear. That's the media narrative. Wise observers approach the media narrative with great caution. 

Looking at the map, to our eye the Ruskis are slowly taking territory and moving toward their goals. We believe Ukrainian resistance will weaken slowly and then all at once. One day we'll wake up and see Russian tanks rolling into Kiev. Exit questions: what are Ukrainian losses and how long can the Ukrainians sustain those loses? 

[Are you defeatist?-Ed]

We are, and perhaps we should be reported to the authorities for failure to properly support the war. 

Will Pushes the Button

Fine. Here. The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is available. 

There it is. Eighteen months or so after starting a short story to go in Seven Stories, 75 is published. The first of two, possibly three novels. How many? That all depends on you people, the reading public, doesn't it?

We feel nothing but fear and trepidation. You know that scene in MacArthur where the general is sitting on the wing of a cruiser and watching the landing boats take the marines ashore at Inchon - and MacArthur damn near has a panic attack? That. This is like that. Wingate had the same thing as the transports took off at the beginning of Operation Thursday. Peter O'Toole used to yak every night before he went on stage. 

We have nothing but questions. What if 75 doesn't sell? We'll know within days (see the tragic fate of To Survive the Earth). What if 75 sells but people think it sucks? What if 75 sells, people think it sucks, and find all kinds of things wrong? There will typos, they're there, we guarantee. No matter how hard one works typos get through. We await the crits from the nuclear war experts who will grognard 75 to death. 'Why everyone knows according to SIOP-68 the US would retained its secondary strike capability...'

Whatever happens The Great Salvation of 1976 will follow apace. We're too far along. Might as well finish it up, no matter what. Until then:

The Great Nuclear War of 1975

In a Different 1975…

Superpower relations breakdown and a nuclear war all but annihilates the Soviet Union and devastates the United States.

100 million Americans are dead.

After Washington is destroyed, a smalltown judge delivers the oath of office to Vice President Rockefeller.

Surviving American forces on land, sea and in the air await orders from the new president.

Americans across the nation climb out of the rubble looking for a homeland that no longer exists.

In surviving capitals across the globe, governments ponder the implications of a world without the superpowers.

In Britain, a rump cabinet meets in the Cotswolds to plan a way forward without the United States.

Commonwealth Prime Ministers in Canberra, Auckland and Ottawa look to the UK for leadership.

In Buenos Ares, a weak government plots the takeover of the Malvines.

As radiation sweeps down from Siberia, the Chinese government faces unprecedented famine.

In New Delhi, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wonders how she will feed India.

 

In Rhode Island, one man will start a trek halfway across North America to reunite with his family.

Click here.