Rob's Update: I Have a New Title

Lots to talk about since last time, so let's get to it!

Greetings all!

I hope you’ve all been well since last time. Sorry about skipping the last two weeks but Gulf Wars got in the way. I’ll talk about how that went in a moment, but first, a new cat pic! Actually, it’s an old one of Aesc, yes the Aesc of Aesc & Thorn, as a kitten way back in 2005.

Next, I’m excited to announce what’s coming up on the podcast next week! It’s Chris Kennedy, the big boss himself, joining me. The main arc of the 4HU is coming to an end after 115 books! We’ll talk about that whole project, plus where CKP is going down the road.

If you want to join me, here’s the link: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/146575?from_scheduling=true

By the way, I’ve been working to make sure you all don’t get inundated with emails from me. One a week is fair. Two is pushing it and three is just annoying. However, I’m really enjoying the podcast and that’s my main focus here, at least right now.

Substack has been a great platform for this so far, in part because they’ve already add actually useful new features in the just the few months I’ve been doing this. One thing they’ve added is the ability for me to schedule these things ahead of time and that gives me the chance to put that link here. Hence, you can get the link every week, but I can condense it all down into my update email.

Thanks Substack, which has honestly been a great platform so far.

On to the last couple of weeks, which of course have centered around Gulf Wars. It was cold. I struggled a bit because of that and the health issues I’m getting past which I talked about last time. If you want to know more, I gave a fuller Gulf Wars AAR on my podcast this week, which you can find here:

I also talked about baseball. Happy Opening Day!

I made the usual sorts of predictions in the podcast, but I also talked about some of the newish tools available to fans. These tools let us understand baseball statistics at a deeper level, but do so quickly without a whole bunch of math.

The math is there, but you don’t really have to think about it. In the case of a new type of stat, denoted with a plus (like OPS+ instead of OPS), you just have to know that anything above 100 is good and anything below isn’t. Easy peasy, once you have the code. Best of all, this sort of stat can be used in every sport and across every era since that baseline of 100 represents an average year.

Anyway, I find them fun, but if you don’t know what WAR, FIP, BABIP, and the “Plus Stats” I just mentioned are, well, they’re going to be opaque and annoying. In truth, they’re pretty smooth concepts so if you want to know what they are, just watch the show.

You may get tired of baseball stats, but OPS+ and WAR are really useful, especially if you want to compare, say, Honus Wagner with Shohei Ohtani.

Because of Gulf Wars, I didn’t get as much writing done as I wanted. I did get some foundational work done on a series. This isn’t plotting, per se, more an overall operational order. I have these things I want to get done, so let’s make sure the history matches.

They’re historical fiction, by the way, set in my time period of the early 900s, and it’s been fun pulling out my various resources to do a deep dive in some stuff I haven’t looked at in years. Man, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has so much fun stuff in it! Maybe one day, I’ll use it as a basis for a MilSF.

I do have a MilSF that keeps pushing itself to the forefront, by the way, and I’ll write some of it today. I don’t know when or if it’ll actually be published, but sometimes it just demands I throw words on the page.

By the way, if you’re curious what I’ve got going on, check my Information Booth periodically. You can find it here:

I’m putting all the business stuff there so these updates aren’t filled with so much of that. I want these to be more about cool stuff, not the boring business side of things.

Again, thanks to all of you for being a part of my journey!

And with that, I’m going to go write. Have a great week, everyone!