My hat's off to Amazon: the Kindle version was available within 5 hours of my clicking the publish button and the paperback was ready long before the expected 5 to 7 days.
Now that the book is published, I will be working on the third Sgt. Dunn novel, unnamed yet, but my posts will be more along the lines of what's below. I also plan to provide "advice" for writers based on my work habits and what works for me, as well as tips about self-publishing and any other things might be interesting.
If you have specific questions about anything, from my books to World War II to writing, please leave me a comment. I promise to reply as soon as possible.
Why write about WWII? Part 1
I grew up in the 50s and 60s, a child of postwar United States. At a young age, I was enthralled by the many WWII movies that seemed to run on TV every weekend (although they really must not have - there were only 4 stations in Kansas City, and one was PBS). When I got into the 8th grade, I'd started reading first-hand accounts by fighter pilots. I even gave a book report on a book about several pilots and their amazing performances. I was the only one to do a report on non-fiction. Not a lot of applause there. :)
I built many model planes including the Avenger torpedo bomber, the Hellcat, the P-38 Lightning, and my favorite, and still my favorite, the P-51 Mustang. It's no coincidence that one of the central characters in both books is a P-51 Mustang pilot, an Ace (5 kills), of course (Captain Norman Miller).
In Kansas City, there is a World War I (not WWII) memorial across the way from the Union Station, Liberty Memorial. I visited it several times as a youth and was fascinated by the items there, the torpedo, the rifles, all of the accouterments of war, as were my friends.
In high school, I joined Army ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) and the organization and structure of the army suited me at that time. This was during the Vietnam War, however, and sometimes when we were outside performing close order drill (marching) with firing pin-less Garand M1s, we would be called baby-killers by groups of people driving by. We weren't too naive to understand the implications.
Fast forward to 2001 and the Band of Brothers. Here was a thoughtful, and pretty accurate depiction of what happened in Europe during WWII. I watched every episode, then bought the dvd box set. I watch it annually.
In 2000, the year before, I had started writing with a new intensity and with a goal, shorts stories, though, a novel wasn't even on my mind. I gave myself five years to get published. If I didn't, then I would consider giving it up. Thankfully, I didn't have to face that fork in the road, for in November 2003, I sold "He Wasn't Always Old" to GRIT magazine, which had a circulation of 100,000. When I got the acceptance letter and check, I felt validated and was overcome with emotions. Someone thought my work was "good enough!"
Thanks for sharing your time with me.
See you next time. I may not post on Sunday, the 27th. I "plan" to take a day off. Well, we'll see if that really happens. Why? Because I just love writing. It's that simple.
Upcoming post idea: how do I actually plot my books?
And why?
