Below is a video interview that I did at the Miami Book Fair in November 2019, following the launch of Hunter’s Moon. Raymond Elman interviewed me for the Miami arts e-magazine Inspicio, and Lee Skye and Rosy Ayala handled the taping and production.
They broke the longer interview into a series of short topics, ranging from my experiences with journalism and writing to looking back at my first book, Rumor of War, and the war that inspired it. Each segment runs between 30 seconds and 5 minutes. Click on any video to watch.
INTRODUCTION
INSIGHT & INSPIRATION: 2:37 min.
Q: “Can you tell us about Hunter’s Moon, your latest book?”
RESILIENCE: 3:35 min.
Q: “Your first book, A Rumor of War, was a landmark exposure of the Vietnam War for most people. What did it feel like to transition from being a gung ho marine to losing faith in the U.S. military command? And were you aware of the anti-war protest movement back home?”
SELF-CONFIDENCE: 3:14 min.
Q: “Where did you grow up, and when did you first believe that you could be a writer?”
CRITICAL THINKING: 1:41 min.
Q: “I consider journalism to be an art form, but journalists I talk with insist that they aren’t making art. What are your thoughts?”
SERENDIPITY: 3:10 min.
Q: “Is there anything you learned in school that helped shape your writing or gave you the confidence to start writing?”
SELF-CONFIDENCE: 2:30 min
Q: “What were you thinking, and feeling when you started to write your first novel? Are you a person who has great confidence that they can do anything?”
UNDERSTANDING THE BUSINESS OF ART: 2:03 min.
Q: “After “Rumor of War” became a runaway bestseller, did you feel like you had a safety net for the rest of your life?”
SERENDIPITY: 1:18 min.
Q: “What’s been the role of serendipity in your work?”
EMPATHY: 2:35 min.
Q: “Rumor of War” has so much authenticity. What was your reaction to the Vietnam War films “Platoon” and “Apocalypse Now”?
OVERCOMES CHALLENGES TO SUCCEED: 0:28 sec.
Q: “Do you still have dreams about Vietnam?”
CRITICAL THINKING: 0:50 sec.
Q: “If we knew then what we know now, would we have done anything different regarding the Vietnam War?”
Thank you, thank you, thank you . . . I can’t begin to explain how something so simple like a few answered questions in a video helps me right now. I grew up with a dad that had been drafted at age 26 (a little old for WW 2), and became a prop specialist and Staff Sgt crew chief in the ground eschalon at the invasion of Holland and Battle of the Bulge. He talked about funny or interesting things that happened, and his war stories eventually got replaced by stories about being a uniformed firefighter in the Bronx. His favorite movies were All Quiet on the Western Front and a Gary Cooper movie called “Friendly Persuasion” about Quakers in the Civil War. I was an only kid, ‘horse crazy’ and I really love that movie, it’s kinda slow paced… I was wondering if you ever saw it, and what you thought.