For those of you who may not know, I'm a career soldier. I went over my twenty year-mark in service almost two years ago. In all that time I've been to a lot of different places, and some of them have not been pretty. On my last trip to Afghanistan, back in 2011, stuff happened. Bad stuff. Roadside bomb stuff. I ended up coming home sooner than I expected, on a stretcher, with both bones in my lower left leg reduced to gravel. Doctors were able to make sure I kept my leg, and I'm thankful for that. Sure it still hurts, every damned day, but I function. Like the stupid insurance commercial says: it's what you do. Ask any career soldier and he or she will tell you the same thing. Tough shit that you're hurt. You want to keep going, doing the job, then just fucking do it. Bones heal, mostly. The scars on my leg are not terribly obtrusive. I don't even have to use a cane (maybe later, but not yet). You get past it. BUT... In your head, sometimes it's hard to get past it. The nightmares, the blinding headaches, the unexplained hyperawareness, it gets goddamned old after a while. I wanted to explore that in a story, so I wrote Casualties. Something evil is about to be born on Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The only people who can stop it are Sergeant First Class Chris Williams, who is plagued every night by terrible memories of his time in Afghanistan, and his wife Molly, a woman who has to confront the idea every day that the man she married is not the same man who came back from the war in Afghanistan. How can a family already strained and fractured by war hope to thwart the birth of a demon on Earth? Casualties is my third novel, and it's the first one that will not only be available for purchase in virtual bookstores online, but will also be available through actual brick-and-mortar bookstores. It's due out on February 16, 2016. It's not available for any sort of preorder yet--maybe by January--but when it is, I'll make sure to let folks know. I love writing, and all the stories are important, but this one...well, this one's important for a different reason. Get ready. Casualties is coming, PTSD and all. I think you're gonna like it. |
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