In his own words...
I first became seriously interested in creative arts as early as second grade when
I drew a pastel crayon rose in a vase and won a blue ribbon for it. By high school, I wanted desperately to make a
living from writing novels. From that point on, writing and reading everything possible
became my passion. Perhaps I committed my greatest folly when I sold my only means of transportation,
a 360 Honda motorcycle, in order to study intensive ancient Greek at UC Berkeley.
Even while in High School, I wanted to learn the classics; unfortunately the pulblic schools do not offer
such luxuries as ancient Greek and Latin, at least not in Fat City (Stockton, California)...or most anywhere in America for that matter.
Maybe it had something to do with popular demand?
It turned out that learning ancient Greek opened my mind to a whole new world of a fascinating language and culture.
At the time, I believed that a career in academia would satisfy my artistic ambitions.
I taught two years of German language and literature at the University of Oregon. But academia remained an unfamiliar
world to me -- a place where scholars analyzed literature with scalpels, pliers, and tweezers.
My graduate studies occurred during a time when "deconstructionalism"
and other such academic exercises in futility were a la mode.
I couldn't relate to academia...too often unconcerned with real world issues.
I experienced literature from a visceral point of view in which people deal with class struggles, political conflicts,
racial tensions, inner demons, and the like -- not art for the sake of clever analysis and stilted tea cups and cookies.
Since mastering German as my first foreign language one word at a time, the power and joy of words
have become my life. I've made a
living from words. First, translating mostly French and German...then composing pages as a copy
writer, and later arranging them into longer documents as a marketing
writer. After almost twenty years of creating the fiction commonly
known as marketing, I bit the bullet and started going public with my own stories.
Mojave Winds
isn't my first novel. It's only the first one I've wanted to share with the public.
The story idea came to me after reading so many nonfiction books
about history and current events, and then reading Hombre by Elmore Leonard (1953).
In Hombre John Russell
lived many years among the Apache and then inherited property in the white man's world.
How a man readapts from one culture to another has always fascinated me.
It compelled me to write a book about this. Leveraging my own experience living in
Europe and, perhaps more importantly, from my father who had fought several years in World War II,
I began to write Mojave Winds.
Creating the protagonist, Kris Klug, in Mojave Winds,
forced me to look closely at post traumatic stress syndrome. Quickly the subject
became a more personal issue than I ever dreamed. I discovered how extended combat experience in World War II
had affected my father. I knew the war had wounded him physically; I could see scars of various sorts on him, some from shrapnel.
What I discovered after all these years were the invisible emotional scars, all the symptoms of PTSS...what he called battle fatigue
during the rare times he was willing to talk about it.
As a kid, I only assumed that certain quirks in his personality were normal...only as an adult, learning more about
PTSS, did I become aware of his emotional wounds and how they affected him and, consequently the entire family.
Before I knew it, I was following the old adage, "write what you know." I simply applied it to the current
situation where soldiers are retained for extended combat missions in Iraq by the Stop Loss law which aggravates the emotional strains.
Using personal knowledge of PTSS,
I saw the novel's characters came to life
and took the story into places that taught me more about myself and my past.
Eighty-eight thousand words later, this piece of fiction had expressed
the story in a surprisingly personal way.
Reflecting
on my past, it's not surprising I would write about a soldier returning from war.
From an early age, I could see firsthand how my father's experiences in WWII had affected him.
Through him, I experienced the anguish in the war stories which he told me near the end of his life.
I wanted to express his struggle to deal with his past as a combat soldier.
My father and all his brothers had served in WWII.
Perhaps most sobering is learning how much America seems to have changed since then.
My father held a strong sense of honor. However, in our current conflict in Iraq, there is honor
only between the soldiers who fight at their sides in their own units.
For most men and women in uniform now, the sense of greater purpose and a just cause has greatly weakened, or altogether vanished.
Everywhere, most people see that the invasion of Iraq had little to do with the 9/11 attack, much less the WMD's, or harboring terrorists.
Since the end of WWII, America has become a superpower. Power in Washington seems to have lost
the core values of what my father taught me about our country.
Hundreds of thousands of innocent children and civilians have died in Iraq. Thousands of well-intended
US soldiers have died there and many more return home now seriously wounded both physically and spiritually.
At the end of the day, we have to admit, it's all about the oil.
Rather than innovate in energy alternatives...as President Carter warned us in the '70's...
Back then, we didn't want to believe it. Since then,
our elected officials have whored themselves out to Big Oil
and Islamic monarchies...using the US military as a mere security service for petro-dollar profits...
sometimes called national interests.
Truth is often simple, although more often concealed.
To find the simple truth, though, one need only courage to look.
Oh...I sound almost like I'm preaching some unpatriotic drivel...but then I'm only repeating what others are now willing to admit.
Only after retiring from government did former Federal Bank Chariman Allen Greenspan admit to this simple truth
in his autobiography.
Funny thing is, there's maybe some 3% of the American population out there that still believes
the Bush Administration invaded Iraq because Saddem Hussein developed WMD's, or helped terrorists...
But then, there's a percentage of Americans who also believe that the earth was created when a turtle curried it
into being on its back. Or that God created it in six days and then rested on Sunday.
People are free to believe what they want in this country. Think God for that.
At the end of the day, though, it's truth that keeps a democracy alive...not reassuring, sentimental fantasies.
As patriots, we have to seek the truth, regardless of how naked and raw it be.
Sometimes that takes courage.
It's required, though, because truth's the thing that sets us free.
And America's all about Freedom, right?
In
Mojave Winds
I wanted to discover the reasons why terrorists commit horrible acts.
They are human beings. To understand them is to understand how we can resolve the problem.
The solution lies not in dropping bombs on cities or allowing mercenaries "to shoot'n don't ask questions."
Young men and women now return to civilian life here in America burned out
after extended missions in Afghanistan and in Iraq. They return with combat memories.
Such experience can weigh down a soul. At some point, one comes to the question: Why?
What was the purpose? Was it justified? The answers have long since been revealed.
And that is what makes dealing with combat experience even more toilsome.
Mojave Winds
shows the personal drama of how one soldier struggles to find a peaceful America. He wants
to earn a living, find a woman to love. But he then discovers that inside his own country
he faces turmoil.
While
launching Mojave Winds, I began a second book.
Follow the Sufi's Ghost sequels Mojave Winds. It takes place
mostly in Saudia Arabia. Former Green Beret Larry Larson takes an early retirement from the CIA.
Disenchanted from CIA bureaucracy and political correctness, he wants to make some real money from the bounty on the heads
of al-Qaeda leaders.
Follow The Sufi's Ghost
is a story based loosely on real events in Saudi Arabia, its religion, and its history.
Once back in Saudi Arabia, Larson feels compelled to help Carmen escape the country
after she leaves her long-since estranged husband, a Prince. Disobeying a husband constitutes
a capital crime in many areas of the Middle East. That alone makes the book
worthwhile. Then Carmen finds a trail that takes them both on the adventure of their lifetime...one that
could alter the history of religion, especially of Islam.
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