Super Summer Book Sale

It's Super!

It's Summer!

It's Now!

Sci Fi, fantasy, horror, short-story collections—including my very own Death Honk—military sci fi, dystopian sagas. All waiting at bargain prices such as 99 cents or free. I'm fired up to begin collecting my summer reading material. Thanks to author/scientist Hans G. Schantz for organizing this awesome sale. Deals galore until Wednesday, June 22. Go now!

Aether Czar 

Beta Readers Report in on New Non-Fiction Book

 

thestoryofreadingape

More have reported in with their opinions. Quite a long blog title, yes? That's my nod to SEO. Right now, I'm dealing with an email service and hope to start fixing—or hiring someone to fix—my Squarespace website. And I need to come up with a premium for signing up on the forthcoming email list. I thought I'd prepare something animation-related for non-fiction and a short story for fiction. That means writing things for free. But that's what I mostly do anyway, so why complain?

How to Run a Marathon in 13 Years Races to Publication

NewsPostInsider

I'd like to show the fine cover, but won't until I set up an email service and fix my Squarespace website. The first email service I tried—Mailer Lite—was a bust that wouldn't allow me to complete the sign-in process. I'm learning toward Mail Chimp or Adwebber. More on that soon.

As for my JP Mac author website, it's an unfinished hash. Lots of great opportunities for SEO and I squander them. I'm thinking of hiring someone on Fivrr to tidy it up.  It shouldn't take that long. I want everything appearing fresh and professional before I launch the next book in September.

Funny how a website with the name Write Enough! is mostly comprised of short comedy videos. Another mystery in this great life. 

Memorial Day Memories

 Note: Orginally published January 23, 2012.

Reposted: May 26, 2014.

United States Flag Wallpaper

 

Ever in Transit

There was a time when I burned through military history books by the gross. I read famous authors like Band of Brothers' Stephen Ambrose and not-so-famous guys like Keith William Nolan. My history book reading has fallen off lately and so I just learned Nolan died three years ago from cancer. His specialty was the Vietnam War and his works relied heavily on interviews with American veterans who fought there.

Ten years ago, I had vague plans of producing a film based on Nolan's book about Operation Buffalo, which centered around the ambush of a Marine company in 1967. As I was returning to Cambodia for a project with State Dept./USAID and Warner Bros.—a story in itself—I made plans to visit the battlefields in neighboring Vietnam.

And so I contacted Keith William Nolan and asked for an option to develop a project based around his 1991 book Operation Buffalo: USMC Fight for the DMZ. I mentioned I was a former Marine who had served during the Vietnam era.

He let me have the option free.

That is simply not done in these parts.

By email, I thanked him for his generosity. In time, I toured the landscape of Operation Buffalo, a dangerous patch of ground still peppered with Viet Cong mines and booby traps as well as unexploded American and North Vietnamese artillery shells. I walked the narrow, red dirt lanes on which B Company was ambushed in an action that grew into the bloodiest day for the Marines in Vietnam.

I drew a crowd of Vietnamese, hardly any who had lived there back in the day. (Most had been relocated in 1966, the year prior to the fight.) At one point, I was invited into a hut and asked to tell a few elders what I knew of the event. With kids and dogs yelling outside, I spoke in bursts of English which my interpreter translated into Vietnamese, explaining how a battalion of North Vietnamese lured an understrength Marine company into an trap that wiped out two platoons and shot to pieces a second company that came to help. Some enemy units dressed in captured Marine uniforms to move in close and backed their assault with flamethrowers and heavy artillery—based in nearby North Vietnam.

We drank tea and smoked cigarettes as the sky grew darker outside. Reciting Nolan's book from memory as best I could, I told how the Marines returned the next day to retrieve the bodies of their dead and that turned into another fight. More reinforcements poured in on both sides, culminating in a massive North Vietnamese attack preceded by an artillery barrage. The Marines cut down the charging troops, sealed off breaches in their lines and held. The enemy withdraw back to safety in North Vietnam. Marine patrols from the hill base at Con Thien set out once more to sweep the area and the pattern of Operation Buffalo would be repeated in minor and major keys for the next several years.

Outside the kids gathered around as I reemerged from the hut. There was a huge freaking spider the size of a catcher's mitt hanging in a web attached to a nearby pole. I refused to look at the monster for fear the kids would knock the hulking arachnid down with a stick and chase it toward me to see what the tall foreigner would do.

I came home and the option expired and my movie idea eventually migrated into a rather large folder of unfinished products. Nolan wrote ten books on the Vietnam War, but never made a pile of money. His publisher wanted him to write about "popular wars" because Vietnam didn't sell. But Nolan felt he had an obligation to veterans who were treated quite shabbily. He felt someone had to tell their story.

He stayed true to that calling.

A non-smoker, 44-year-old Keith William Nolan died of lung cancer. He left behind a little girl.

Nolan's books are more than just the story of battles, interesting to history buffs like myself. They are our heritage, our nation's story, told by those present, their deeds preserved for kids like Anna Britt Nolan.

One hot August night, I was at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Little gifts, flowers and tokens are often left at its base by families, friends, and old comrades come to visit the names of the dead. Apparently a grade school class had passed through earlier and left various letters on lined paper in huge kid scrawl. One in part read: "Dear Grandpa, We saw the Vietnam Wall. I'm sorry you could not tell your stories."

Keith William Nolan could.

(And while many of us are short of money, I'm including trust fund info for Nolan's daughter. If you can, please donate.)

Anna Britt Nolan Trust
c/o First Bank
6211 Midriver Mall Drive
St. Charles, MO 63304

Images: Two-Seven Tooter

Comic Eleanor Morton Short Bit

 This video's been around a bit, but Scottish comic Eleanor Morton does a lot with a little in her Bob Newhart-style take on a woman's first day at work during the French Revolution.

Eleanor Morton

Seven Miles in May

Health and Well-Being

 

 

A perfect morning for running with the temperate in the low 60s and a nice marine layer. I focused on staying relaxed and hydrated. Now I'm done with the seven miles and working to finish the third draft on my running book. Two coaches are standing by to review the manuscript so I'm hurrying it up. (Pausing only to blog.)

And while the book is readable by strangers, more drafts await. I still don't like the last chapter. Anyway, I can start getting feedback now.

Longest Run Since the Marathon

pixelstalk.net

How Long Exactly?

Seven miles, to be precise. I employed a 4x1 run/walk ratio and finished the last mile in 10:38. I passed a runner more elderly than I as we both enjoyed good running weather—around 70 degrees with a light breeze. 

My book is parked between drafts two and three. Many tasks require my attention including setting up a new email site, redesigning my author website, and creating a lead magnet for people signing up for said website.

There's also lining up editorial reviewers, regular reader reviewers, a proof reader and copy editor, designing a back cover for the softcover version and researching audio books. 

Everything takes longer than you think and costs a bit more than your budget. But that's the yoke of self-publishing. 

According to research, non-fiction books don't sell as well in summertime. Since I won't be ready by June, I'm aiming for a Labor Day release. Friday, September 2 is the tenative release date. 

I love the cover design and am excited about putting out the book. More soon.

Criminal Flees the Big Apple

 New York City crime is way out of control. Listen to a bad guy tell it.

Ryan Long

Prostate Cancer: Real Talk Ep. 11

 "Doctor, Doctor give me the news." So said the lyrics of a long-ago song. But the words still ring true today for men. Find out what the Doctor says on the latest episode of the go-to prostate cancer podcast.

Prostate Cancer: Real Talk

Ryan Long on Adhesive Girlfriends

 Some times are simply meant to be guy times.

Ryan Long

Meeting Someone after Fifty Years

They don't teach you how to do this in school. 

My friend Gary and I attended grammar school together in Skokie, Illinois, a northern Chicago suburb. We attended two years of high school at Notre Dame High School in Niles, played football together, then enlisted in the Marines and completed boot camp together.

Then fell out of touch.

A few days ago we met for the first time in 48 years. (Fifty sounds better for a title.)

Body builder and super athlete, Gary had taken a health beating the last ten years. This included a brain embolism with subsequent induced coma and, a few years later, a massive stroke and heart attack. The general outline of Gary remained the same, but his once muscular frame had shrunk.

(Not that I'm any beauty. )

I stayed at his place in Phoenix. We watched the Masters and traded gruesome health tales, talked of our families, and our plans, and, of course, the past. But the key element was that the old days were not the focal point. In other words, our friendship had survived the decades. We were comfortable discussing the present and future. It doesn't always go like that. 

We'd been roughed up by the decades. But, in some ways, we'd never ceased being who we'd been.  

And it's hot in Phoenix. But I already knew that.

From left to right: Gary, myself and two other guys at Camp Pendleton.