The pitfalls of privatizating the military is a major theme of my novel. Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army bestowed on me invaluable insight in my development of that theme.
To a long-struggling writer who never got into it for the money, an advance is an advance.
There’s a common, not terribly clever term many writers use to capture the toil and frustration involved in the submission process: banging one’s head against the wall.
Why expend the energy of replying to an unknown author’s email? Just because you state on your company web site that you welcome unsolicited emails and make every effort to respond in a timely fashion? Pfft, get real.
Writing the ending can feel like a process of closing off all the wonderful options you gave yourself at the beginning and all throughout the middle. It’s a kind of heartbreak.
The essays of Where To Invade Next create an incomplete yet compelling portrait of the hysteria that injected itself into American foreign policy in the days immediately following the 9/11 attacks.
Some works dazzle you from one moment to the next while some works quietly sink in, infiltrating the reader’s psyche without their noticing.
What I most remember about Let There Be Light is the African American soldier who can’t stop crying, due to what he describes as “nostalgia.”
Looking into drivers’ faces becomes for me a handy reminder of the essential humanness of humanity: we are many, we are trying, we are struggling, we are on our way.
Had a bit of a panic attack on the day before Christmas, brought on by my acrophobia.