Remembering Our Veterans by Writing By Rick Barry

We all love to honor our veterans, and author Rick Barry does it in a unique way. A mighty "thank you" to all like my dad, father-in-law, and husband who served! -- Sandy

Rick: Is Veterans Day just another day on the calendar to you? Or does that holiday evoke the emotions it deserves?

Of course, not every person who enlists in the armed forces of the United States ends up fighting a war. However, each person who has either enlisted or responded to a draft notice understands there is always the chance he or she will become a target. Those who accepted that danger and put on the uniform deserve to be remembered and honored.

One way to honor vets is to ask permission to shake their hand and thank them for serving their country. Other ways include beautifying a deceased vet’s grave, or anonymously paying the tab for a vet eating in a restaurant.

Personally, I like to remember veterans with my keyboard. Ever since 7th grade when I happened to watch the World War II movie The Great Escape, I have read countless true accounts of men and women who found themselves caught up in the conflict. Some stories have happy endings. Many don’t.

When I began writing for publication, I naturally gravitated to events connected to WWII. With the aid of research and imagination, I enjoy cracking open the pages of history and writing articles, short stories, and now novels to keep the sacrifices of “the Greatest Generation” in modern readers’ minds.

My first WWII novel, Gunner’s Run, stars a 19-year-old who accidentally tumbles out the open bomb bay

of a B-24 while on a mission. Thanks to his chest parachute, Jim Yoder survives. But there he is, alone and on foot in the last place he wants to be—Nazi Germany. (Odd events really happened.) That book was first released in 2007, and recently JourneyForth Books reprinted it a third time. I’m thankful for its role in “bringing alive” the dangers of that bygone era for modern readers. (One school teacher told me she reads a chapter of Gunner’s Run a day to her classes to help them picture those events of 70 years ago.)

On September 27 of this year, Kregel released my latest novel, The Methuselah Project, a suspense story about a captured P-47 pilot. Instead of taking Captain Roger Greene to a regular POW camp, his captors use him as a guinea pig in a hush-hush German experiment meant to outlast the war. The story is highly imaginative, the result of my combining genuine history with a huge “What if?” One Amazon reviewer calls it the “ultimate Past Meets Present story.” (Speaking of reviews, I praise God that 95% of reviews for The Methuselah Project fairly glow. Its combination of history, suspense, romance, plus a tinge of speculative truly appeals to a wide range of readers. Hallelujah!)

So, no matter how you personally do it, please pause to remember our nation’s veterans. As the old cliché states, freedom isn’t free. Veterans past and present paid the price for the freedom you and I enjoy today.

Do you have a veteran you'd like to honor today?

~~~~~

Rick Barry holds a degree in teaching foreign languages, speaks Russian, and has visited Europe more than 50 times in connection with Christian ministries. He has authored over 200 published articles and short stories, plus three novels. A writer with an adventurous spirit, Rick has jumped out of perfectly good airplanes, visited WWII battlefields and cemeteries in France, climbed mountains in Colorado, and explored evacuated buildings in Chernobyl, Ukraine, among other personal adventures. Visit him at...

www.rickcbarry.com
Or at facebook.com/AuthorRickBarry
Or on Twitter (@WriterRickBarry)

Happy Memorial Day

To those who gave a part, most, or all of their lives to keep our country free -- including the freedom to write and worship as we wish -- the team at Seriously Write would like to say,

"Thank you."

Did you or a member of your family service in the military? If so, please let us know. Comment below with your (or your loved one's) name and branch of the military. And, if you're able, give them a hug from us.

What I Learned In Vietnam by Catherine West

Veteran's Day is Friday. I daresay everyone reading this has had a loved one or known someone who has been a veteran. But unless we've actually served in the military, how do we really know the sacrifices they've made to protect our freedom? 

Catherine West has written Yesterday's Tomorrow, about a journalist who travels half-way around the world to bring the Vietnam war home to those left behind. Today she tells us how she came to write that novel on such a difficult subject. Be sure to check our her blog (http://www.catherinewestblog.blogspot.com) for a chance to win a copy of her book. She'll be giving it away on Veteran's Day, this Friday, November 11th.

~ Angie

Many years ago, an idea for a story came to me.

Why it did, I'm not sure. But it took hold and hasn't let go yet.

I heard a story about combat-journalists, many were young women, who left home, some left their jobs, to fly halfway across the world into a war zone. They risked it all, risked their lives, to cover The Vietnam War. And I wondered why. I wondered what that would be like, what those women were like, what made them tick, and what a story like that would look like. And I knew I had to write it.

A few years later, I completed a manuscript called Yesterday's Tomorrow. It takes place over a span of a few years, 1967-1975, predominantly in Vietnam, during the war, and the female protagonist is a young woman who strikes out on her own as a combat journalist.

For a long while, I didn’t fully understand why I wrote this story, why the pull was so strong, why it meant so very much to me. Thanks to OakTara and their willingness to take on what is sometimes still seen as a controversial setting and subject, now that Yesterday’s Tomorrow has been published, I’m starting to find out.

I was too young to remember the Vietnam War being fought. Living in Bermuda, I'm sure my parents didn't get as much news as they would today. Although I don't remember it, there is something undeniable about that time in history that draws me.

I have never been to Vietnam.

But as I wrote this story, I lived there.

As I read the stories of those brave men and women who were in the thick of it and survived, I went there with them.

Writing this book took months of research. I didn't set out to write a war story, so it was never my intention to bog down the story with military information, but I knew it had to be authentic. So I launched my attack on every book I could find, every website and every photograph that covered the era I would write about. 

Writing Yesterday’s Tomorrow changed me.

Up to that point, I had no idea what war was all about.

War was a faraway concept. Something I learned about in school. Something I read about in the newspaper, watched reports about on television.

Something I would certainly never have to face or deal with firsthand.

While that is still true and I pray it stays so, I have a greater understanding of what it means to go into battle.

And I know that is a good thing.

I remember getting to a point in my story and having to stop and take a break and pull away.

I even questioned whether I should continue writing it.

Somehow I felt as though I was stepping on holy ground.

I was.

But, with a lot of encouragement, I pressed on.

They say Vietnam gets into your soul.

It does.

Those who were there and came back will never be the same.

War does that to a person.

Although the war ended thirty-six years ago, it lives on in the hearts and minds of those who came home. It lives on through the memories we have of those who didn’t. It lives on in the legacy that the courageous men and women who lost their lives in Vietnam left behind.

I learned that even after thirty-six years, there are things you just don't talk about.

After thirty-six years, the pain doesn't end. Maybe it lessens a bit, but it never really goes away.

I am not sure a writer can ever capture that kind of truth in the way it needs to be told.

I don't know that one can ever accurately portray the fear of being in a helicopter heading for a hot zone or wading through a dark, dank and putrid swamp with no idea who might be hiding in the depths of that jungle. How can you describe with any authenticity what it must be like to watch a friend die in your arms?

But we try. And I believe we should try.

Because all these things—the horrors of war, the deep bond created between those who served there, and the ultimate sacrifice so many made—should never be forgotten.

Although my book is a work of fiction, I have heard from more than a few people that it has helped them see Veterans in a different light. It has given them a new perspective on war and its many facets. In some small way, it has helped them understand. And to that, I say, thank-you, God.

I came away from this project with this question: Do we write merely to entertain? Or do we write to enlighten, educate and encourage our readers to examine their hearts on matters they may have previously ignored?

"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13

That's what I learned in Vietnam.
---------------


Yesterday's Tomorrow

Vietnam, 1967.

Independent, career-driven journalist Kristin Taylor wants two things: to honor her father's memory by becoming an award-winning overseas correspondent and to keep tabs on her only brother, Teddy, who signed up for the war against their mother's wishes. Brilliant photographer Luke Maddox, silent and brooding, exudes mystery. Kristin is convinced he's hiding something. 

Willing to risk it all for what they believe in, Kristin and Luke engage in their own tumultuous battle until, in an unexpected twist, they’re forced to work together. Ambushed by love, they must decide whether or not to set aside their own private agendas for the hope of tomorrow that has captured their hearts.

---------------

Educated in Bermuda, England and Canada, Catherine holds a degree in English from the University of Toronto. When she’s not at the computer working on her next story, you can find her taking her Border Collie for long walks or tending to her roses and orchids. Catherine and her husband live on the beautiful island of Bermuda, with their two college-aged children. Catherine is a member of Romance Writers of America, and American Christian Fiction Writers, and is a founding member of International Christian Fiction Writers. Catherine’s debut novel Yesterday’s Tomorrow, released in March 2011 through

OakTara Publishers. Catherine’s next novel, Hidden in the Heart, will be available in the near future, also through OakTara.

Website: http://www.catherinejwest.com

OakTara Website: http://www.oaktara.com

Blog: http://www.catherinewestblog.blogspot.com

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVQUMRlYhkM