Author of The Warriors, The Renegades, Silent Enemy, and The Mullah's Storm
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, as I anticipated an activation of my Air National Guard unit, I saw a photo of a pro-al Qaeda demonstrator in Pakistan. He held a sign that said: The World is Red With Muslim Blood.
I wanted to ask him, “Where? Shed by whom?”
I’d like to ask a similar question to the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings: “What did Americans do to you, other than give you refuge?”
Author Tom Young in the flight engineer’s seat of a C-130 on an airlift mission over the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Twenty years ago, Sarajevo burned. From 1992 to 1995, the Bosnian capital endured one of the worst sieges of modern warfare.
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of other significant events from the Bosnian war, as well. In 1993, the United Nations declared a number of “safe areas,” including the town of Srebrenica. Two years later, thousands of Muslim men and boys died at Srebrenica in the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II. The siege of the city of Mostar, as well as mass murder in the Lašva Valley, both took place in 1993.
You’re flying along on a combat airlift mission over the Sunni Triangle. External lights off, plane blacked out, night-vision goggles on. Baghdad fell just days ago.
Just a few miles from Saddam International Airport–it has yet to be renamed–a burst of tracer fire comes up off the left wing. Needles spearing up into the night. Maybe a half mile out, not close enough to threaten. You call out tracers at nine o’clock, but you don’t need to break off course. Hmm. Weird.
Next night, something similar. Over the outskirts of Baghdad, antiaircraft artillery blossoms a thousand yards out at two o’clock. Whatever.
Thanks to the United States Marine Corps for help with researching a future novel. They graciously allowed me to observe a Mission Rehearsal Exercise (MRX) at Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia. This building simulates an American embassy at an overseas hotspot, where a Marine Corps Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team provides protection.
On a Writer’s Digest blog, I share a few thoughts about researching a novel. (You can travel the world, or you can do research right at home. Just depends on your budget, schedule, and needs.) To read more, click here.
Japanese editions of THE MULLAH’S STORM and SILENT ENEMY.
A recent Parade Magazine article featured Kevin Powers, the author of a searing new Iraq War novel titled THE YELLOW BIRDS. In a sidebar to the article, there’s a list of other books by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. My thanks to Parade for including my novel THE MULLAH’S STORM. Click here for the article.
Scenes from a recent Air National Guard deployment: This is a mural painted on a concrete barrier at an air base in Afghanistan.
Many thanks to National Public Radio for their kind words about THE RENEGADES. Here’s a link to hear the review.
Many thanks to Jim Bohannon for the opportunity to speak with him last night on his radio program. Click here to listen to that edition of The Jim Bohannon Show. Enjoyed chatting with him about my new novel, THE RENEGADES.
(My segment begins about forty minutes into the audio file. You can slide the play bar to the right to skip ahead.)
