When I first started writing Green Bay Outsiders, my current work in progress, I knew one of my characters was going to be a Vietnam War veteran so I delved into stories that highlight the experiences of such men and women. Although Sylvester Stallone often serves as the butt of jokes because of the many atrocious movies he has made during his career, many other films he has made have significantly more merit, including the first “First Blood” movie. The film, released in 1982, approximately a decade after the end of the Vietnam War, shows a war veteran displaced by the trauma of his experiences overseas whose buddies back home are dying from various ailments and who can’t find a home for himself back on American turf.
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Vietnam War
The Accidental Novel: How Green Bay Outsiders Accidentally Became a Book
Back at the State University of Binghamton, where I was a creative writing student in the mid-1990s, I wrote a short story called “Shakespeare’s Night on the Town”. It wasn’t a very good story–overly moralistic (hey, I was raised Catholic!) and slightly naive. It was also a very long story. I told my professor, Liz Rosenberg, that I struggled to write short stories. “Maybe you’re a novelist,” she responded. I have never forgotten she said that. It resonated at the time, and it continues to resonate now.
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Living With the Consequences of Our Decisions in Literary Fiction
The upcoming collection of short stories, Three Billy Maddox Stories, is underway and I’m a little bit more than halfway through the second story, “Green Bay Outsiders”. It’s longer than “Billy and Darla“, the first story that is already done. “Green Bay Outsiders” is a coming-of-age tale about differences in perspectives across the generations.
[Read more…] about Living With the Consequences of Our Decisions in Literary Fiction
