Tag Archives: war

FREE KINDLE BOOK this weekend, Feb. 23/24!

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Pretty Much True…, recently featured on Faith Middleton’s Book Show (NPR), is free on Kindle this weekend.

I’m a fan of free things. And if you are, too, pick up a free copy of Pretty Much True…! (Live in the UK? Here’s yours.)

Promotion ends Sunday, Feb. 24. I hope you’ll take advantage!

Pretty Much True...I’ll be honest: this isn’t the sort of book I go for, but I’ve been trying to step out of my comfort zone when it comes to fiction, and in this case, I’m glad I did. Pretty Much True… challenges the typical definition of a war novel. – Todd Keisling

If novels were people, Pretty Much True… would be the love child of The Bell Jar and The Things They Carried. –UnfunnyMe‘s TMarie

There are few stories written from the point of view of a loved one back home waiting, and waiting some more, not knowing if or how the soldier will return home. Perhaps that’s because so few have found an interesting way to write such a story, but that has changed, thanks to Kristen Tsetsi. – Carol Hoenig, the Huffington Post

The ban on women in combat has lifted; let’s not take advantage.

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The Pentagon has lifted the ban on women in combat, but what does that mean? After all, we (and by “we” I don’t include me – I mean “we women”) have been in combat roles for some time. Unofficially.

What it means is that we should be eligible for the draft. (We should have been for some time.)

I say this not as someone who hates feminists

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A military spouse’s “unsung and noble plight”?

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Bethanne Patrick, in a recent editorial for The Daily Beast, asks that we take a moment to step away from the characters in the forefront of the General Petraeus cheating scandal (characters include Petraeus, his former sexual partner Paula Broadwell, socialite [I can't believe that's an actual title] Jill Kelley, and General John Allen) to remember Petraeus’ wife, Holly Petraeus.

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The nonfiction behind the fiction of Pretty Much True…

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A friend told me I was being too “journalistic” when answering interview questions about
Pretty Much True… .

You wrote a fictional story in which the characters and actions were different but the feelings and the fear were the same. Get PERSONAL.

I never wanted to do that before, because I wanted to emphasize that the overall feeling of the experience, not my experience but the experience, was what was important. But she made me see that one experience, the story, wouldn’t exist without the other, the reality. Continue reading →

The things you forgot you put into your fiction…

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I just found this in a file while doing a search for something somewhat related. After spending so much time with Pretty Much True…, there are actually times, now, I can’t remember whether something in the book happened only in the book, or whether it’s a real memory.

A lot of Pretty Much True… rings true because I used my experience to guide the fiction, but now and then I’ll be reminded of just how many little pieces of reality also became Mia’s reality. The following true (real true, not pretty much true) account was saved as a file called “guest post,” but I don’t remember who it was for or whether it was ever sent: Continue reading →

One quick thing…

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I just wrote something very close to the following (it’s been very lightly edited for blog-worthiness) in a personal email and thought it was worth sharing here.

I didn’t write PMT only because I wanted to tell a story – I wrote it because the experience of Ian being in Iraq was so overwhelmingly … overwhelming (!) and so many other people were experiencing the same thing that I knew it was one of the sides / impacts / experiences of war that more people should be aware of. I knew it was something that would be easy for those who had never lived it to disregard unless they knew more about it. Continue reading →

Resenting the Deployed

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I found this search term in my website stats today:

“resenting husband for being deployed”

If you copy and paste it into a search field, one of the results to turn up is a blog post written by a woman who resents her traveling husband for spending a lot of time away from home. A military spouse comes to her aid in the comments section:

There are LOTS of things you can do!!! I’m an expert at this! I’ve been an Army wife for 12 years. We’ve NEVER lived near family (we are currently in KS and family is in FL). And, during the past 8 years my husband has been deployed to Iraq more than once (he’s there right now). So, I am a single mom for 6-12 months at a time. I have 3 kids (5y, 2y, and 6mo). Here are my suggestions…

It’s not uncommon to read/see military spouses in this role: practiced when it comes to separation, pros at living the all-but-romantically single life, independent, and happy to help others learn to be independent, too. But Continue reading →

News Coverage of Sheen v. Soldiers: 1 Vote for Sheen

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[Originally posted at DailyKos]

When Charlie Sheen received wide, feature-length media coverage of his erratic, self-indulgent behavior while soldiers dying in Afghanistan received little to no mention by the networks, someone disgusted by the media’s priorities created Continue reading →