Veteran’s Experiences
Thanks General Berger!
I know the Commandant isn't going to read my blog, but on the off chance he's trolling the internet while he should be running the Marine Corps I wanted to give him a big "Thank You, Sir!" You see, General Berger just released his selections for the Commandant's Professional Reading Program (colloquially known as "The Commandant's Reading List") and my first book, After Action, is on it. I'm humbled and honored that General Berger, and the Marines tasked with narrowing a metric butt-ton of books down to 46 titles, felt my book was important enough that all Marines should read [...]
A Step Back
The recent suicide of yet another Marine I served with compels me to write this post. It's a cliff-notes version of the concepts I describe in detail in my book, Continuing Actions, and I add them here in the hopes of reaching even one person suffering in silence. Don't Go It Alone I've read an assload of books about PTSD and wrote two books detailing my own struggles with Moral Injury/PTSD that bestselling author and PTSD specialist Dr. Jonathan Shay hailed as valuable and important. In the end, I still needed to talk to someone and the Vet Center was [...]
How to address veteran suicide–other than filming ourselves doing pushups, I mean.
I've done the 22 pushups-thing. Other than giving my giant mutt unfettered access to thoroughly tongue my ears, I can't say they accomplished much. That's not completely true--my ears are sparkly clean--but that wasn't the point. The short videos were supposed to help raise awareness that an alarming number of veterans are choosing to take their own lives. I don't know who started the whole campaign but I think it has, thankfully, run its course. Veteran suicide, on the other hand, hasn't gone away. Funny thing, that. Letting folks know about the problem is one thing. Addressing it [...]
Continuing Actions: Free 9-12 Nov for Veterans Day
Two months ago I made the ebook of Continuing Actions: A Warrior's Guide to Coming Home free so people could read, review, and feel comfortable recommending it to the veterans in their lives. Here's a link to that post: https://www.dansheehanauthor.com/mines-no-seriously-mines/ Here's the second free period: The ebook version of Continuing Actions will be free again from 9-12 November, 2018. Veterans often reunite with each other around Veterans Day, even if only over profanity laden texts. I hope that by offering my book for free, veterans will feel comfortable recommending it to their buddies when those yearly texts lead to more serious discussions about [...]
DD-214: End or Beginning?
Unless you plan on dying in uniform, eventually you're going to get out of the military. When you do leave, you'll walk out of Admin on your last day carrying several copies of your DD-214; the official record of everything you did (good or bad) in uniform. It will follow you everywhere you go for the rest of your life. The question is: Does a DD-214 signal the end of a journey, or the beginning? The answer to that depends greatly on why you joined the military in the first place. If you joined for educational or monetary purposes, then [...]
A Vet’s Take: Quit Jerking-Off
I'm a veteran. Many, if not most, of my friends are veterans as well. My social media feeds are full of veterans--some I know in real life, some who are friends of friends. In the aftermath of the attacks in Paris, you can't swing a dead cat around my Facebook feed without hitting a dozen posts from veterans proclaiming their readiness to gut every ISIS bastard they can find and fill their chest cavities with bacon. Images of Lady Liberty rucking up and yomping across the ocean toward a smoldering Eiffel Tower compete with those of a bald eagle sharpening [...]
Marketing Strategy: Reviews
You are probably saying "What? Why's Dan writing about his marketing strategy on his blog about coming home from war?" Well, because it involves you, that's why. As you probably know, I've just published my second book, Continuing Actions. Now that the book is available on amazon.com, my efforts shift from production to marketing. Hence, this post. The most valuable marketing tool available to a self-published author are the reviews posted on the book's amazon.com product page. These reviews allow potential readers to see what other readers, just like them, thought about the book. The best reviews give a little background [...]
Continuing Actions v.s. After Action
"What's the difference between Continuing Actions and After Action?" This is the response I've gotten from several people after I told them about my upcoming second book. In fact, I've heard that question enough times that I decided to write this post to explain the difference. To begin with, let me list their similarities: Both books are non-fiction, both about combat and its after effects, both include my personal experiences in Iraq and afterward, and both were written to fill gaps in our modern understanding of what it means to be a warrior. They both contain information I wish someone had [...]
American Sniper?
Prepping for a mission with MCSOCOM Det One, Baghdad 2004. I bumped into a friend while dropping my daughter off this morning and she asked me what I thought of the Clint Eastwood movie, American Sniper. I answered that I hadn't seen it so I didn't really have an opinion. It was only later that I realized I was wrong. I may not have watched the movie but I certainly have an opinion. I haven't gone to see it yet because the movie wasn't made for me. Nor are just about any of the war movies set in [...]
Feedback for “Continuing Action: Completing the Warrior’s Journey.”
Just before Thanksgiving I sent copies of the book I've been working on, Continuing Action: Completing the Warrior's Journey, to a few people for some "test reads." I'd gotten the manuscript to the point where I needed some fresh eyes to tell me if it made any sense. I kept the number of readers small but spread them out across several key demographics. While my target audience is centered on veterans and their families, I needed to get feedback from classical scholars, leaders of non-profits, mental-health professionals, and active-duty military personnel as well. This is because Continuing Action addresses shortcomings in the way modern [...]
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