1. My last interview left his Truncheon here… can you tell me what is about to happen?
    No, but this reminds me of a fun joke: What did the knight say when he couldn’t find his truncheon? Wait for it— “Where the hell’s my truncheon?”
2. Alright, lets just forget about my big stick for a second. Are you generally a happy person?
    Yes, except when the subject turns to truncheons and big sticks. I’m a very happy person. Considering what I’ve seen and done and owned and accomplished, if I complain about anything someone ought to slap me. The sex? Man, that one in the Fall is great! You bet I’m happy.
3. Why?
    I’m generally happy because I don’t have a frickin’ clue what will happen next, and I’m fine with that. A Lincoln was right when he said “...we have nothing to fear but General McArthur and spiders.” That was Lincoln, right?
4. What inspired you to write your first novel?
    That Beowulf fellow and his arch-nemesis Grendel. I figure he, whoever ‘he’ was, sat around the mead hall making stuff up, and it’s lasted 15 centuries give or take, so maybe I can do it too. The mead helps. Seriously, a book I read when I was a very young lad, way back in the twentieth century is what started it. It was titled Kon Tiki, and though non-fiction, Mr. Heyerdahl’s fine little travel book whispered in my ear that I could write. As for why I write at all, I’m second of ten, couldn’t get a word in edgewise, so I started writing. Good damn thing, I’d’a starved.
5. So you were a pilot… I guess you like getting high?
    Still do. Love that mead! Yes, a helicopter pilot for nigh on forty years. I flew all over the world, for several different operators, doing all manner of things. Most rewarding was my 20 years in Iowa City flying for the University Hospital there, UIHC. In that time I flew 3,200 patient missions. It’s all in my book, The Sky Behind Me, a Memoir of Flying and Life. Thanks for letting me plug it.
6. Do you think we live in a dying world?
    I know we do. Let me rephrase that: we live in a dynamic world. We ought to drop this save the earth conceit and talk about saving ourselves, because no matter what damage we ass-wipe humans do to it, the earth will recover and be fine, whatever fine means. Heck, at one time it was a gigundous ice ball, and look at it now, a gigundous melting ice ball.
Why do men have nipples?
    They do? This reminds me of a funny joke: boy baby says, “...you mean if I cry, boobs appear?”
8. What made you decide to start writing your memoirs?
    When I retired from aviation in 2005 I planned to sit around and watch reruns of my favorite shows, Lone Ranger, Leave it to Beaver, Little Rascals, Hill Street Blues, but I couldn’t figure out the damn remote, so I decided to write instead. It was time to put it down, especially the Vietnam part. It’s not a war memoir at all, but we Vietnam vets never talked about that little dustup. Ever. So I figured it was time. I’m sure it’s a better book because I waited.
Are you interested in writing fiction?
    A lot of TSBM readers think I already do. Some of the stories in it are rather fantastic. I hardly believe them myself, looking back. But they’re all true, they all happened, even the Vinh MY story, my rescue flight for a pregnant Vietnamese girl in August 1970. That mission made me a pilot. (BTW The Mile High Club’s a real thing, swear to god)
10. What is next on your literary plate?
    I’m mostly done with a draft of a novel titled Final Sky. Love story about hospital air medical crews. Oh, I used to watch Sky King, too. Stupid %#&! remote!
11.Speaking of plates, are you hungry? Want to make some sandwiches?
    Only if we can have mead with them.
12. What's your favorite kind of sandwich?
    Earl of Sandwich? Oreo sandwich? Knuckle sandwich? Maybe White Castles. They go great with mead, but then my wife says I have to sleep somewhere else that night.
13. What do you think about when you're on the toilet?
    Marriage equality. Seriously, those same-sex couples never have to worry about leaving the seat up or down. Think about it.
14. When the day is done and all noises cease, will you be content with all you have achieved?
    I’m sure you meant cease. Anyway, let me get serious here for a few lines. Speaking of fiction, I chucked religion a long time ago, and here’s what I believe. That we accumulate debts as we mature and grow, and a great achievement in life would be to pay back what we owe, then have a few weeks, months, years, to pay forward a bit. To leave the campsite cleaner than we found it. I hope I’m on track to do that, and I think I am, so yes I’ll be content. Plus, there’s the mead.
15. What do you do when you are not writing?
     Breathe?
16. Do you still fly?
    Nowadays I soar. Seriously, I fly in a different way, that is, I look for others trying to fly and help where I can. I’m a big equal rights advocate because I’ve always been for the underdog, and those opposed to equality can just go piss up a rope. Stinkers and negative people annoy me; I avoid them.
17. If you were a superhero, what superhero would you be?
    AuthorMan, able to leap tall participles in a single bound, banish evil adverbs, rescue damsels in dialogue distress, rewrite the 2000 election and erase the designated hitter rule!
18. Do you believe in life on other planets?
    Where there’s mead there’s life. I’ve actually given this some thought. Those searches we do for extra-terrestrial life? I think there are sentient beings who’ve received our signals, then took a look at us and said ‘no way, baby, those earthlings are flippin nuts! Look at the Kardashians! And that Trump guy, what’s with the hair? Is that a spaceship on his head? And what about those so called Republicans? I mean, seriously, if you got wind of Michelle Bachmann would you respond? I’d run like the wind.
19. Star Trek or Star Wars?
    Star Wars, definitely. I wanna come back as the guy who owns that bar. How cool would that be?
20. Can I hold your hand while we finish the rest of this interview?
    Not my writing hand, please.
21. What music gets you in the mood to be AWESOME?
    The music from the bar scene in Star Wars. Otherwise, anything by Dvorack, Norah Jones, Brother Iz, Secret Garden or my 3 year old grandson on his ukulele. He does a mean Uke version of Joe Cocker. The lad’s going all the way I tell ‘ya.
22. Do you think humans will always be finite beings?
    Lord I hope so. Can you imagine living forever? Shit the bed, eighty-year old men drive bad enough. At 300 they’d never switch the damn turn signal off! Never!
Last question, if you could do it all over, would you? Assuming you would, what would you change?
     Do the interview over? No way. Oh, you mean life. I wouldn’t do it over, partly because, well, see question 14. Been a great gig. When it’s my time, Aloha baby! Lot of folks really outlive their welcome on this big ‘ol melting ice ball, know what I mean? Could be the reason it’s melting is all the hot air out there, you dig? Hey, thanks, Todd! I’m gonna shut up and write.

Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
The script for a play in High School titled BC Brain. It was standard banal HS fare, with a mad cave-man scientist who discovers all these amazing things, long before the supporting infrastructure exists. He invents TV, for example, long before electricity. That invention brought the most memorable line in the play, when he says, “Guess we’ll have to watch TV by candlelight.” That may tell you how the play was reviewed right there. Coincidence or not, I don’t know, but I’ve yet to write another script, and that was fifty years ago, so…

What is your writing process?
I have a terrible affliction for a writer; I sit and write a thousand, two thousand, sometimes three thousand words a day without difficulty. Mind you, I didn’t say three thousand ‘good’ words, but I can whip off a bunch of copy in a very short time if need be. My process, as it were, is to freewrite, then try to find a plot if it’s fiction, and then go where it takes me. My writing always, always benefits from a steeping process, that is, from sitting dormant for a time, sometimes a very long time, before I rewrite it. The truth is always in the rewrite.

What are your five favorite books, and why?
First on the list has to be Moby Dick. Melville’s epic contains the DNA of America, our sometimes senseless pursuit of our own white whale, and the depredations we’re willing to commit to get it. It has racism, class division, our work ethic, our travel obsession and our pseudo-aristocracy and… You get the idea. The others, in no particular order would be To Kill a Mockingbird, in my estimation the greatest novel of the twentieth century, Lolita, believe it or not, for Nabokov’s willingness to create art from the sludge of our worst taboo, The Things They Carried, O’Brien’s brilliant essay-istic paean to Vietnam grunts and Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury for the way he uses Benjy as Shakespeare’s idiot, telling his tale signifying nothing.

What book marketing techniques have been most effective for you?
Good old word of mouth. There’s nothing that works better. Those hucksters and pucksters offering help to sell your masterpiece? Save your money.

Describe your desk
Plastered with post-it-notes, but otherwise pretty clean. I’ve started to stand up to write more than half the time. Keeps the pounds off, and I think the writing’s better, too. It worked for Hemingway.

When did you first start writing?
Shortly after birth, I think. I’m second of ten, so I couldn’t get a word in edgewise around the dinner table, a place where concentration was required lest hunger follow. I’ve written as a long as I remember.

What's the story behind your latest book?
The Sky Behind Me, a Memoir of Flying and Life--available at Amazon in paper and Smashwords as an E-book, is memoir based on my forty year career in commercial aviation. I lost my childhood dream to be a priest. A priest took advantage of me for his own perverse pleasure and I was forced out of the seminary. I got drafted out of college, went to Army flight school and flew Hueys in Vietnam for the 101st Airborne Division. After the war I found a commercial career flying helicopters all over the world. Aviation was a replacement dream come true, and a way for me to recapture a long-lost desire to help people when they most needed help. The book’s tag line is: “The heart of a man can want no more than this.” I had a marvelous life in the sky doing the work I dreamed of as a child, while soaring in a very different way than I anticipated.

What is your greatest joy as a writer?
Knowing someone has enjoyed the words I put together. An unanticipated pleasure of having The Sky Behind Me out there is hearing from readers that the writing is so strong. I kinda assumed the stories would resonate, but hearing how well written the book is has been tremendously gratifying.

What are you working on next?
I have three books in progress. One is an Air Medical novel about flight nurses and pilots based at a hospital who’ve found themselves cynical, disillusioned and feeling hopeless, both about the work they do and their industry. Working title ‘Final Sky’ has all the juicy stuff—intrigue, danger, adventure, sex (tasteful, worry not), inside info and a damned satisfying ending. Next comes Growing Up Crowded, my family memoir of being second of ten kids in a robustly Irish Catholic family in the fifties. Waiting for Willie Pete, my Vietnam helicopter novel is based on the Moby Dick model— a crazed company commander in Vietnam is obsessed with a North Vietnamese colonel who injured him as young lieutenant. ‘Captain Ahearn’ will take his vengeance on this NVA fellow, or kill himself and his company of aviators trying.

Favorite authors?
Melville, for sure, Harper Lee, William Faulkner, Christopher Hitchens, Tim O’Brien and myself.

Do you remember the first story you ever read, and the impact it had on you?
First book I ever finished was a paperback version of Thor Hyerdahl’s Kon Tiki. I read that book in fifth grade, actually devoured it, read it over and over till the pages blurred. It’s such a grand tale that I may have to read it again. Kon Tiki showed me people who understand danger, and how we have a choice to either let fear govern our lives, or ignore it and have a real adventure. I’m happy to say I’ve had a wonderful adventure, because I understood that principle. And I think I picked it up from Hyerdahl and his band of sailors on that leaky little raft in the middle of the Pacific ocean. I’m not afraid of anything. Hey, I’m a writer, fear is not a factor.