Home for good and ready to write!
A little over a year ago, I was gifted a deployment rather than the retirement I hoped for. It was to a hot, desert-y area of the world that, beginning 28 February of this year, became the biggest news story of the year. Not the quiet trot into the sunset I anticipated. I came home almost two months past my original return date and had to speed run through retirement, bringing us to today, where I am four days from it.
That picture is right before the fun began.
Retiring is a convoluted process. I’m four days out from my final day and still getting forms signed. As well, I came back with some new health issues, physical and mental. I consider myself on the mend in both regards, but some of the damage is permanent. You can’t un-feel believing you were about to die.
But life is a garden, dig it? And my reunion with my family was a big dose of the medicine I needed. We went to Big Bend, one of our favorite places in the world and where we found and adopted Chisos the pit bull the year before.
I got to work growing the beard. It’s actually more maintenance than shaving every day. A couple weeks after that, I reunited with my Sobelo Books brother L.C. Marino at StokerCon. It was a real psychological boost to spend time with him and all my writer friends.
Check out the awesome “Miranda” shirt my wife (Miranda) had made for me.
Things were happening in the writing world. While I was deployed, I wrote an entire novella (What Do We Tell the Kids) that was picked up by Bad Hand Books two days after we went on submission. I wrote 54K words of another novel, which I have yet to finish but am aching to. I got right back to business editing for Sobelo Books and we had our biggest novel to date on the horizon, We, the Missing by Arwyn Sherman.
The almost-retired life suits me just fine. I’ve been to a few concerts, getting used to the feeling of being in crowds again. I saw Jinjer, No Cure, My Chemical Romance, and 156/Silence.
Johnny and Celso and I finally made good on our longstanding plan to hang out for drinks and talking shop. I also got to see CJ Leede on her Headlights tour and hang with her and Johnny after.
Retirement ceremony was in the books and I cried almost immediately. My old buddy Josh (a lieutenant colonel somehow) officiated the ceremony and was the perfect choice. Reconnecting with my family was priceless, and we’re going to make it an annual summer tradition.
The days go by so quickly now. Between sharing responsibility for school pickup to walking the dogs and making dinners. I have been shedding the military muck for months now. I am lucky I have another passion to pursue. Many veterans feel lost on the other side of retirement, but writing is what I’ve wanted to do since I was ten. And…
I’ll be able to share details about the above very very soon. Like, I signed the contract tonight soon so … just have to let the ink dry. I am so excited to talk about it and thrilled with the publisher and the editor’s passion for the story.
I am just a few days from being a veteran. I’m ready for it. I’m ready to introduce myself as “author” instead of by my rank. The military gave me a lot, but it took its fair share. Happy to have done it. Happy to leave it behind.
