THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS

I wrote about the Vietnam War in The Pig Parts Series in part because I wanted to better understand it.

The war lasted many long years. Some Americans blamed young recruits for its length and brutality.

Career military believed that politicians hindered their efforts by limiting the weapons they were allowed to use and compared it to being asked “to fight with one arm tied behind their backs.”

Many Americans considered the draft to be unfair as well as unjust. Blacks, Hispanics and the poor fought and died in Vietnam in unfair numbers while some young men of means and position found ways to avoid service: college deferments; National Guard service; real or imagined physical ailments documented by sympathetic physicians; or, as a last resort, escape to Canada or Mexico. Many Americans believed the U.S. had no business intervening in what some considered to be a civil war.

Americans took sides, and families fractured. Patience ran out while protests and counter protests swelled and clashed, sometimes leaving protesters and innocent bystanders dead.

Troop casualties soared, and most Americans personally knew someone who had been killed, wounded or disabled. TV news featured the carnage every day, up close and in color for the first time ever. Many young men serving in country considered themselves “cannon fodder,” and many Americans agreed with them.

As the war dragged on, most Americans wanted to be done with it.

WAR AS ENTERTAINMENT?

Above all else, I want to involve the reader in the characters’ lives and transport him to their world.

One of my life’s greatest pleasures has been reading, and I want to give back. Life for too many has turned hard in recent years, especially for young people. I hope to provide readers a brief escape.

So why write a story set around such an ugly part of America’s history?

For one thing, I feel that I owe a debt of honor to the young men who died way too young as well as to those who survived grievous wounds. Many of them suffered through the rest of their lives in pain and disability.

Fifty years later, some still blame the young soldiers for the war’s brutality. From my perspective, it was not that those who served in country were callous and brutal to begin with, it was that some ended up that way given what they endured. I believe that happens in every war but was more visible during the Vietnam War.

No other American war has been opened up so thoroughly to the civilian public. News pictures and films from World War II and Korea had been mostly in black and white. Brief film clips shown in movie theaters were accompanied by patriotic music and stirring description. In the Vietnam War, dramatic images appeared on TV every day, at length and in color. For the first time ever, blood and gore became highly visible. Time allotted to news programs increased from 15 to 30 minutes. The entire world tuned in every day to the suffering of young Americans as well as North and South Vietnamese civilian and military populations.

Massive public opposition to the Vietnam War led to tighter military controls levied on reporting subsequent American wars.

Do I really think that anyone today will be interested in reading about the war and its times? I don’t know, but I hope so. However, I have recently read that books about the war are currently out of favor with publishers.

I still intend to keep pushing for publication of The Pig Parts Series. The series of novels offers a unique perspective on the war, that of the wife… a celebrity and business woman. The vast majority of books published on the war are memoirs from the soldier’s perspective. I believe the series is entertaining on so many different levels and deserves to be published.

Now I have to get it done. As Nick, the heroine’s Vietnam bound love would say, “Piece of cake, Baby.”

Sure.

TA-DAAAA

After years of good intentions punctuated by starts, stops and neglected self promises, I have finally written a book. Actually I ended up with seven novels, The Pig Parts Series. I hope to get them published.

Everything I read from publishing experts informs me that I should establish an active presence on social media if I am to have a chance of publication in a world rife with aspiring authors and legions of hopeful manuscripts. Hence this blog.

The deliberate involvement of strangers in my life does not fit with the privacy I have always enjoyed. It was difficult enough to record fictional  thoughts and feelings knowing others might one day read them. Documenting personal observations and opinions to attract potential readers to my hopeful literary career is foreign to my sensibilities. I was raised on the philosophy underpinning the famous quote from Thomas Fuller, a seventeenth century English churchman and historian: “Fools names, likes fools faces – Are often seen in public places.” Amen to that.

While I want to be published, and I want my books to be enjoyed by others, I have never desired fame. Fortune, of course, would be nice.

I have always wanted to write a book. I suppose I wanted to be like J.D. Salinger, a writer so skilled that the only interaction he had to have with the reading public was to speak cordially to the post office clerk who accepted his manuscript for posting to his publisher. After that, he escaped back into self-imposed exile in the countryside. His publisher took care of promoting and selling his book. Salinger was left with more time to do what he did best – write. That sounded good to me.

But alas! That world appears to be long gone, at least for a wannabe like me who will never measure up to Salinger. So here I am interacting, or so I hope.