Nancy Stroer's Blog

When I posted about my friend Marty Cesana on Memorial Day, some of you said you’d like to know more about him. We’re all too complex and cool to summarize, of course, and most of what you’ll read about him is that he was a West Pointer and a combat engineer and really good at it and all that stuff. But those are the easy outlines. He was also quiet and smart and fixed all our bicycles. He had a cat named Tigger. He joined the rest of our group of lieutenants when we got rowdy, but when he’d had enough he would disappear without apology. He was my pen pal when he was stationed in Korea. Maybe I’ll share some of his letters next Memorial Day.

In the meantime, please enjoy his recipe for Kahlua brownies. Yes, big tough combat engineers also sometimes bake their own brownies for the potluck. I tend to prefer brownies from a cheap-ass boxed mix, but for homemade these are pretty good!

You might also enjoy a creative non-fiction story I wrote titled “Dirtbag Lieutenant” that publishes today, in the Military Experience and the Arts annual Veterans Day issue, “As You Were.” I pulled this one straight from my guts, with the help of the good folks from Consequence Forum and the So Say We All veteran writers division. Have a look at some of the other stories and poems and photographs while you’re there!

Enjoy your free meals at Chili’s, all you other veterans! You paid a lot for them.

Salute,

Nancy

Should I make this post like one of those aggravating internet recipes, where you have to wade through the history of each ingredient before it finally tells you how to make the freaking thing?

No. Those drive me nuts, too. So without further blah-blah, here’s who won my extra copy of Doll Parts, the delightfully creepy debut novel by Penny Zang*:

Congratulations, Ann! I’ll be in touch to get your mailing address (and I’ve popped a picture of the book cover and other swag at the bottom to remind you of what’s coming your way). Thanks to everyone who entered the draw!

In other news, here are some of the other ghost-y books I’ve read this year (so far):

I’ve been on a total T. Kingfisher bender this year, and have enjoyed everything of hers that I’ve read. What Moves the Dead is a retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher, but even though there are quite a few remakes around (I liked the Netflix one) T. Kingfisher always spins cool-ly on the retellings she does. Plus she was a Navy brat growing up, so! My friend Kirsty and I still talk about a panel we attended at the London Book Fair one year, where authors and editors discussed remakes of original works. This particular group didn’t mind adaptations that were unfaithful to the original. On the contrary, they enjoyed seeing what a fresh pair of creative eyes could do with their ideas. I thought that was an interesting take and it’s helped me approach remakes with an open mind and not so much nit-picking.

Kirsty is also the bookish friend who recommended the Michelle Paver classic Dark Matter, definitely the most thoroughly creepy book I’ve read this year. I’m going to deconstruct it to see how Paver built tension on the page. It’s so much harder to do than in a film where you have quick changes in camera angles and music and other ways to build an emotional response in a viewer. But Dark Matter was scary as hell just with words, as was Seven Terrors, which is about the aftermath of the Balkan War. I was going to write a review but then Nate D already left this one on Goodreads, which sums up my thoughts better than I could.

I also rewatched The Blair Witch Project (holds up pretty well!), The Grudge (ditto), and Ghosts of War. At the beginning of Ghosts of War I was thinking, wow, this is a lot hokey-er than I remember. But as it turns out, there’s a reason it’s so full of clichés in the beginning. Besides providing lots of awesome jump-scares and a fair amount of gore (but not too much IMO), there’s an Inception-y twist at the end that explains the clunky beginning, and the story makes some interesting points about grief and remorse after combat. I watched it on Prime if you’re in the mood for some (not exactly – you’ll see why!) WWII in Europe ghostiness.

Yes, I know October is over but I’m often in the mood for ghostiness throughout the dark months. I do have a military-related announcement to make on Veterans Day, plus Marty Cesana’s long-promised Kahlua brownie recipe to share. Stay tuned!

all best,

Nancy

*Here’s the spooky fun coming Ann’s way:

The Military Writers Society of America announced their 2025 Awards winners and Playing Army earned a Bronze Medal! Click here to read their review:

Like the dork that I am, I didn’t really clock that submitting my novel for a review from MWSA meant I was also entering it for judging but hey, the recognition is very nice! Especially since it comes from the community of military writers.

Reviews are more important than awards, though, and I’m so grateful to each of you who’s taken the time to read and review Playing Army. If you haven’t had a chance to write a review yet, there’s no deadline! If you’ve been mulling over your thoughts about the story, even if they’re conflicted, please feel free to put them out there on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211147246-playing-army

Or Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1DBRLL8/

Or Barnes & Noble, or your own platform, or wherever you go to talk books.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/playi n g-army-nancy-stroer/1145379154

Reviews help future readers make choices about whether to pick a book up – not for bolstering the fragile egos of authors – so just write what you think. Truly.

And if you haven’t had a chance to read Playing Army yet, it’s available on all the online places (my favorite is Bookshop.org for its strong support of independent book sellers) or at your local bricks-n-mortar book store.

Thanks so much for playing army! Stay tuned for a list of some of the spooky books I’ve been reading, and ghost-y movies I’ve been watching in October

All the best,

Nancy

I like a good, quantifiable goal. I’m sure you’ve seen S.M.A.R.T. goals on a briefing slide somewhere, but if you haven’t tripped over that acronym before, you can read about it here. It’s hokey but I like them, and keep my goals and New Years resolutions achievable and quantifiable – write 300 words a day, read 50 books in a year, that sort of thing.

But this year when I was setting my literary goals, I found myself writing “poetry” on the list with no quantifiers or qualifiers. I’m pretty sure I don’t mean to actually write any poetry this year. I have a couple of lines rattling around in my head, but I don’t know what I’m doing with them. So, read more poetry? But poetry makes me…anxious. Impatient, almost. I don’t know how to explain myself better than to say it’s too intense, and I prefer to relax into stories. Poetry feels like going into direct sunlight without my Ray-Bans.

Sometimes, rather than give up things for Lent, I memorize 2-3 poems over the 40 days (here’s looking at you, Ozymandias), so I did put on my list to memorize 5 poems this year. I’ve committed exactly zero to memory, though, so please let me know if you have worthy suggestions. I’m open to whatever. If you want to challenge yourself, may I suggest the Rilke poem, “Der Panther.” Auf Deutsch, natürlich.

Or maybe my vague goal includes listening to more poetry, although at first I didn’t think this was quite it, either. I have a CD of poems read by the authors and I literally hate the sound of Sylvia Path reading “Daddy.” (Now you have to poke that bear, don’t you? Don’t say I didn’t warn you).

But I have been hanging around poetry a bit this year, and to keep it all loose feels appropriate to the genre. Best not to be too uptight, I think. You don’t want to have too much of a choke-hold on the words. I’ve gone to two local poetry events, both celebrating the launch of my friend and fellow veteran Leah Fletcher’s first anthology as a publisher:

Leah at the Portly Pig, before a poetry reading during the Ripon Theatre FestivalAt the launch of This Here, This Now, at the Claro Lounge in Riponhttps://uk.bookshop.org/shop/littleri...

It was all so normal to listen to local people read their (often very good, in my unschooled but still opinionated opinion) local poems in local pubs. To be around novice and accomplished poets, people writing about nature, funny human interactions, their own places in this city and this world. I love knowing that ordinary people are shaping their thoughts into words – all ages and socioeconomic levels and accents. I wanted to hug the young, bloke-y dudes who hopped up to read unselfconsciously, like it was the most ordinary and accepted thing for a young bloke to do. These poets are helping me render poetry a little less rarified.

Also this year, I’ve ben asked to read and review four collections written by female poets from the military community:

Epistolary poems from Lisa Stice – incisive and addictive! You can read more about it here.A poetry collection about the most deeply personal of choices and experiences, by the poetry editor of Wrath-Bearing Tree and military spouse Amalie FlynnAmalie ‘s collection Watermelon, about child casualties in Gaza – awful but un-put-downable – and Jehanne’s Dubrow’s forthcoming collection Civilians (third and final book of poetry about military marriage)

These women aren’t pulling any punches, y’all. Their collections are the reason I find reading poetry so hard. There’s no way to hide from the truth in such spare, beautiful, awe-full writing. But it’s a good medium for writing about the military. Perhaps contradictorily, I can handle reading poems about military life.

So in an unquantified way, I think I’m achieving “poetry.” I’m exploring a new genre and being startled into new ways of looking at life. Do you read or write poetry? Please link a poem or collection below!

In one of those tricks of time that feels like forever and also no time at all, Playing Army celebrated its first birthday this week. I’m supposed to say, “It’s been a wild ride!” But it hasn’t been, and I am weirdly grateful for that. So here, in no particular order, are some reflections on what a quiet year after publication has been like for me:

1. I hadn’t expected to feel so comfortable with such an intensely personal story being available to just anyone. Prior to Playing Army’s debut, I’d had short fiction pieces published that made me feel super exposed. I wanted to change my name, cower behind a smelly dumpster, never leave the house or at the very least, not make eye contact with anyone who read my work. And the stories weren’t even true! But they contained pieces of my soul and that’s what had me in a vulnerable crouch. Maybe people—other military women, especially—would read these pieces and grind them under their boot heels, and that would have hurt. So I thought I’d feel something similar with the release of a whole-ass novel. Instead, and surprisingly, I’m fine. I wrote the story I wanted to write. It says what I wanted to say and I’m at peace with it being in the world. That’s a thing no one told me to expect but I was really pleased to discover.

2. The deeper message for me is that I can let myself be known by people outside of my innermost circle. It feels risky, vulnerable, but also okay. Good, even. This is a conclusion that Minerva reaches in Playing Army, too. But she learned it at a much younger age than I did.

3. Having said that, I’ll confess that I’m still very much learning about personal vulnerability—by which I mean, I’m finding book marketing way harder than I thought I would. Pitching articles and podcasts and author talks are a different kind of vulnerability, a different way of putting oneself out there, and I’ve had a months-long war with myself over it. I deeply admire authors who talk about their work in interesting ways, steadily and from fresh angles that don’t feel like they have a sales agenda. I’m learning from them, but only just beginning to get my head around that skill set. I wish I’d known more about this aspect of emotional risk-taking before publication but maybe this is a lesson I had to learn the hard way.

4. I’ve journaled about it, gone to therapy, and bent the ears of all my writer friends about this issue, which I’ve decided is not feel of failure but actually fear of success. There is SO much more to say about that, and in the coming year I’m planning to try to pin some of my discoveries onto paper. I also want to talk more about military women and their bodies. Specifically, how eating and exercise become punitive, but also how under the microscope we were/are, especially sexually. I want to talk about women in leadership roles, when we’re leading people who don’t want us there, and about women defining for ourselves what it means to be a woman, outside and inside all the stereotypes. Publication of Playing Army has only just begun to start the conversations I want to have, and I’d love to hear what you have to say as I go along. Thanks so much for being on this quiet ride with me.

Remembering Marty Cesana

My friend Marty died as a result of a stupid training accident at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, in 1996. Military training itself is not stupid. We train as we fight, which can happen day or night, in the dust and heat of the desert or in the brutal cold at the dead of winter. Sometimes people practice for war so much that they don’t take it seriously enough, though, or straight up goof around on training exercises. That can lead to tragic outcomes as happens in Playing Army. Training accidents happen at Fort Stewart, Georgia and other military training installations too often to be statistical blips. I don’t think the accident that killed Marty was because of carelessness. Someone else was just in the wrong place at the wrong time for him, and he (and everyone who knew what an awesome human and soldier and friend he was) suffered the consequences. We honor this kind of sacrifice, too, because the senselessness of it does not in any way diminish the pain we felt and still feel. The Army, and the world, lost one of our best.

You can read Marty’s obituary if you click on his picture. Or ask me about him and I’ll tell you some more in the comments. Don’t forget to ask about his Kahlua brownie recipe!

I have often thought that putting together a group exercise class is like telling a story: first, there’s a beginning. There are peaks and valleys and a conclusion you hope feels satisfying. A class literally moves people. It makes them feel things and teaches them something about themselves. Ideally, an exercise class uses its physical and emotional power for good. In my novel Playing Army, the main character, Minerva, dogs her soldiers out during physical training to make a leadership point—that she is strong and the boss of them. Okay, maybe this lesson only makes sense in a military context! It’s not cool to muscle up on participants in a civilian exercise class! But I hope I’m making my point about how stories and fitness classes can be similar.

In recent years I haven’t really wanted to teach fitness while I was focused on writing. Teaching uses the same source of creativity that writing does, and in a way, I felt like I’d accomplished what I wanted to with fitness for the time being, even as I knew I’d return to it at some point. For being such a dyed in the wool introvert, I do love exercising in the company of others. It’s probably the only way I’m more energized at the end of a gathering rather than depleted by it.

I’ve been feeling drained of all creativity lately, and decided to dip a toe back into the fitness world. In January and February I helped a group of midlife women get more comfortable with strength training, and it helped ME so much to feel useful, to lend some of my physical confidence to them (I’m lacking in emotional confidence but possess it in my actual skin and muscles and bones—is that odd?). To be looked at as an authority on something, an element sorely lacking in my day job. And I’d forgotten how important it is to be of service. Nor to siphon positive strokes from people who are in a one-down position to me, or to be anyone’s great white hope or role model or anything self-aggrandizing like that. Just to give a little of my energy, time, and knowledge to be of genuine help, no strings attached. And in doing so, I was repaid in more energy.

Maybe it’s a bit of a paradox but giving my physical and emotional energy in the context of fitness is a force multiplier—my day job sucks me dry but teaching fitness pumps me up again. I’m still not writing much but at least I feel better about myself.

So I’m starting a core strength class this week. We have a lot of very desk-bound people in our community, with all the stiffness and muscular imbalance and back pain to go along with it. I’ve been feeling pretty rudderless with writing—so much to do, so very little time, that it’s hard to prioritize and buckle down. I’ll be so happy if my little once a week class helping others develop a stronger center, a sturdier backbone, has a similar outcome for me. I could use a reminder about what is most important.

Wish me luck! And thank you for reading!

Nancy

P.S. If you’ve read Playing Army and enjoyed it, but haven’t yet left a rating or review, please could you leave one on Amazon? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1DBRLL8/

And on Goodreads? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211147246-playing-army

Thank you again, you amazing people, you!

*Did you know I’m a gym rat? I earned my first fitness certification in 1992!

The blank page is winning, y’all.

I still get up early every morning; I still open the ol’ notebook, but then the page stares me down and I’m the first to avert my eyes. I don’t know what to say about anything at the moment. As it turns out, my entire existence in the military, in public service to military communities, has only ever been an exercise in woke nonsense. Time to put a stop to all that and submit to our AI-crypto-whatever futures.

But I’m going where the energy is. I’m reading a lot. That, at least, has finally shaken loose after a couple of years of feeling like a chore. I discovered Brandon Sanderson and found him intriguing/delightful:

I read a Belinda Bauer crime novel for my local book group and thought she nailed the character with Aspergers:

I picked up Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow on the free swap shelf at the library and am thoroughly enjoying it. It’s better than the miniseries, of course, which we also liked. I didn’t expect the book to be so … droll? But it’s as magical as you have all said.

And I’m finally tackling Black Lamb & Grey Falcon, the definitive tome on the Balkans by Rebecca West, as research for my current novel in progress. What a writer. It’s from the 30s so a tiny bit of the language is dated, shall we say. But otherwise, wow.

On other fronts, I battle on. My website guru says WordPress might be imploding*, so on her advice I’m looking at Substack as a possible replacement. I’ve signed up for two ghost story festivals/workshops/conferences, for fun but also to help with my WIP. I’ve also signed up for a short course with Consequence Forum, a military lit journal, in an ongoing effort to wrestle my nonfictional military experiences onto the page. I’m making as many writing dates with friends as possible so we can (positively!) pressure each other into producing some work.

It’s only February, way too early to declare that I won’t meet my writing goals for the year. But lordy, I could use some encouragement.

Thanking you in advance for any thoughts you’d like to share.

*Let me know if you’d like me to share her newsletter on this topic. It’s really dismaying, considering MOST websites run on WordPress!

It’s Boxing Day* so my fancy has lightly turned to thoughts of violence:

Chain Gang All Stars is a barely dystopian story of prisoners turned gladiators. It’s a book about our culture of violence, but even though the brutality is written beautifully (something I personally have a problem with) it doesn’t glorify it. Quite the opposite. It’s full of insights into death and the value (or lack thereof) of life, on power and reclaiming that for oneself in even the most desperate of circumstances. Horrible decisions are made and the characters grapple—literally—with the fallout in gut-wrenching (literally) ways. It’s not a comfortable book in the slightest and it is at times heavy-handed (you guessed it—literally) in its messaging about race, incarceration, and capital punishment. But it is a masterpiece; the kind of novel that should and will be taught in courses on social commentary in literature while still being utterly readable and compelling on a story level. Read it when you’re feeling pugilistic about the world, or just read it.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on how violence is portrayed in the media. Does it horrify or glorify it to you? Does it sensitize or desensitize?

*In the UK, Boxing Day is the day after Christmas, when traditionally the nobility opened the church alms boxes and gave money and gifts to the poor. These days people hold open houses, go for walks, and/or go shopping. In Ireland it’s St. Stephen’s Day and an excuse to go to the pub. No actual boxing takes place (that I know of)!

A bit of a book review, more moodlin’ than maudlin

A conversation went deep at the Little Ripon Bookshop the other night, discussing how family stories are shaped and told (in reference to Kate Grenville’s Restless Dolly Maunder, a not very sympathetic fictionalization of her grandmother’s life that was shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize). The book group’s ideas ranged around legacies: not financial storehouses or objects, but bodies of experience, the tally sheet of remembrances, both good and bad—and how, depending on who is telling the tale, this could vary widely in its fondness.

I have what my friend Colette calls an aptitude for self-referencing, in that, what I do is because it’s important to me, not necessarily out of concern for what others might think. I love this about myself. I think it shields me from a lot of the anxiety I see others suffering, the ones who are (to me) overly concerned what others think about how they look or act or present in the world.

But also, I recognize that I’m not entirely self-referencing. I do worry about what some people think of me in this life. I want my friends and other loved ones to see me as I really am and having seen that, to regard me highly nonetheless. After I leave this life, though, I guess I’m not all that attached to what people will think. I’ll be dead, right? It’ll be interesting to sit on the ghostly sidelines and see how it all plays out, but I won’t be able to influence opinions. I’ve done things people have probably not liked. (I’m reading lots of ghost-y literature, perhaps in training for haunting you all from beyond the veil, but mostly to help me write The Next Thing, so after-images are very much on my mind).

In a way, this is how I’m feeling about having a book published. As I was writing and certainly during the final rounds of edits, after which there would be no more opportunities to improve Playing Army, I firmly had the reader in mind. I wanted to be sure I was saying what I wanted to say, in the way I wanted to say it (there’s that self-referencing element) but also I wanted all of you to enjoy it, to get it, to think it was good. After it was done-done, though, I didn’t feel the anxiety I was expecting about how it would be received. It was done. Readers were either going to like it or they weren’t.

I wonder what Restless Dolly Maunder would think of this unflattering portrait her granddaughter has painted of her. Angry, ambitious, restless Dolly Maunder who was born in the wrong place and time (late nineteenth century rural Australia) to make much use of her talents and energy. I’d like to hope she doesn’t care a whit that her family history isn’t being kind to her. I hope she’s learned the lessons of the mistakes she made, especially in regards to being so parsimonious in showing affection and love to her children. But I hope she doesn’t feel apologetic in the least for having striven more than what the world allowed her. This feels particularly relevant right now.

Restlessness. Lately, I don’t seem to want to hibernate in the dark days like I used to. Maybe it’s because I feel the winding down of my own clock that the season of death makes me sleepless instead of sleepy. I’m beset with thoughts that I’m doing the writing thing all wrong,  that others have book marketing all figured out while I poke along, self-referencing and just doing the promotional things I feel like doing, even as I feel stretched and that I’m doing too many things, too incompletely. But maybe the things I’m fretting about don’t matter. I’m pleased with the book I wrote and I like how The Next Thing is shaping up even though it’s going to take forever to write it at the rate I’m going.

Maybe I’m just stressed out about the writing group I’m leading during November, and the Pink Tea/Book Reading I’m doing on Veterans’ Day—both of which I love and am very much looking forward to. Maybe it’s silly and self-aggrandizing to ever worry about reaching a jillion readers, when I already have all of you.

Thanks for letting me ramble, and thank you, as always, for playing (Army)!

In other news, here’s the 2020 Mustang Bullitt that’s currently parked in our spot:

Yes! It’s really ours! If you’ve read Playing Army, you’ll understand!

More on irresponsible but joyful choices later!