As a young paratrooper back in the day, there were many times when I wanted to escape from everything that reminded me of my job. But there were other times when I couldn’t get enough.
Literarily (is that a word?) speaking, I was probably spoiled. All around Fort Bragg, it was easy to find stuff to read that appealed–namely: anything that offered more excitement than what I was getting out of real life. During my escapist periods, I gravitated toward sci-fi, sword & sorcery, and pulpy adventures (I was a big Indiana Jones fan, to give you an idea). When I was gung-ho, I read Vietnam novels, WW2 novels, military sci-fi, and tons of paramilitary fiction. The 100-mile radius around Bragg probably has the worst male-to-female ratio in the world, so options were limited for off-time–especially when on DRF-1 (a ready-stand-by status for the Rapid Deployment Force; when troopers were on a short leash and had to be close and sober awaiting deployment).
Surprisingly, I ran into other fledgling authors with similar goals.
The revival did happen–albeit on a small scale (because men have by-and-large given up on reading). Some of us carved out a niche for ourselves. My most focused effort to date is Tier Zero.
Fellow author, blogger, and men’s adventure fan Jack Badelaire over at Post-Modern Pulps has a nice post about his connection to the revival, combined with a review of my testosterone-fueled shoot-em-up.
The e-book is currently on sale for 99 cents at the online stores. But for those of you who don’t have time to sit down and actually read, there’s an audio version you can listen to while driving or performing mundane tasks, narrated by Johnnie C. Hayes.