Ask the Author: Tom Glenn
Answered Questions (10)
Tom Glenn
As Saigon was about to fall, a Vietnamese army officer I knew planned to escape with his wife and his three children as soon as the U.S. ambassador issued an evacuation order. But when the ambassador chose not to call for an evacuation, the officer, to escape capture, torture and execution by the victorious North Vietnamese, shot to death his three children, his wife, and himself.
Tom Glenn
Where would I travel? To Vietnam during wartime, before April 1975. That's the land of J.M Graham's Arizona Moon, Phil Caputo's Indian Country, and Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn. It's also the home of much of my own writing, retelling the events that shaped me as a man. I'd want to relive the brotherhood I shared with combatants who died by my side. I'd feel again the bond with men who'd die to save my life, just as I risked mine to save theirs. I crave to feel again the love—we don't call it that, but that's what it is—between men who fight side by side against a common enemy.
Vietnam as it is today has no appeal for me. I've never gone back and don't want to. What I yearn for is not there. It's here in my heart. I've never forgotten.
Vietnam as it is today has no appeal for me. I've never gone back and don't want to. What I yearn for is not there. It's here in my heart. I've never forgotten.
Tom Glenn
The mystery of how my mother died. She was fatally ill with lung cancer. Despite wanting to comfort her, I couldn't bring myself to do it. She was an alcoholic much of her life and a very poor mother—I was left to raise myself on my own. Her brother was her doctor. I could see that she was hurt by my inability to respond to her, but I couldn't help it. She died suddenly the night after our last meeting. I've always wondered if her brother offered her a lethal potion to end her emotional and physical suffering.
Tom Glenn
Your question made me stop and think hard. I finally concluded that Tristan and Isolde, as portrayed in the Wagner opera, are probably the couple I like best. Their love for each other is complete and consuming. It’s expressed in passionate love-making in which they are equal partners. Each would die for the other and end up doing so.
The next-best couple to my liking is one that I created myself: Josh and Mimi in the novel I’m working on right now, tentatively titled Josh at the Door. They’re both in their eighties and are quite different from each other. Yet they end up completely committed to one another, despite multiple obstacles. What I like best about them is their determination that, despite their age, they will enjoy and give to each other a deeply-rooted devotion based on the sexual fulfillment they’ll give to each other. In that, they demonstrate great courage and initiative. I admire their spunk.
The next-best couple to my liking is one that I created myself: Josh and Mimi in the novel I’m working on right now, tentatively titled Josh at the Door. They’re both in their eighties and are quite different from each other. Yet they end up completely committed to one another, despite multiple obstacles. What I like best about them is their determination that, despite their age, they will enjoy and give to each other a deeply-rooted devotion based on the sexual fulfillment they’ll give to each other. In that, they demonstrate great courage and initiative. I admire their spunk.
Tom Glenn
Nearly all my writing has drawn on my war experience or my efforts to come to terms with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury. The Last of the Annamese (March, 2017) tells almost exactly what I went through during the fall of Saigon. It's fiction in name only. The now-finished novel, The Secretocracy, that I'm currently peddling, is based on my experience in the intelligence community. Even the untitled novel I'm working on now deals with PTSI. Some life experiences never leave you in peace.
Tom Glenn
I've just started shopping around my novel The Secretocracy, and I'm now sketching out the story of Josh and Mimi, two eighty-year-olds who fall in love and decide to have an affair. I don't know very much about either protagonist yet—they will reveal themselves to me at their own pace, not mine.
Tom Glenn
The best thing about being a writer is being able to write. It's the hardest and most frustrating work I've ever done, but there's nothing I'd rather do. I've been a spy, translator, musician, composer, actor, public speaker, and government executive. I've loved each of them, but none as much as writing.
Tom Glenn
I never suffer from writer's block. My problem is finding enough time to write. I spend more time than I want to promoting my books, keeping my blog up to date (https://tomglenn.blog/), and doing presentations and book signings. I know successful writers have to do all that, but I'd rather write.
Tom Glenn
Learn the craft. Writing takes a lifetime to master, and fiction is the hardest thing to write except poetry. Never cease sharpening your skills by reading, writing, and living.
Tom Glenn
I write because I have to.
I knew from the age of six on that I was a writer. I could refuse the calling, but that would mean I’d never find fulfillment or even relief from the constant nag to put what was in my head into words. So I’ve been writing all my life.
I suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury as a result of the unspeakable things I lived through in Vietnam. Because I held top secret codeword-plus clearances, I couldn’t seek psychiatric help—I would have lost my clearances and therefore my job. So I wrote and wrote about the monstrous events I had lived through. I volunteered to help others worse off than I was. I worked with AIDS patients, the homeless, dying people under hospice care, and sick and dying soldiers in a VA hospital. I found that when my attention was focused on those I wanted to help, my unbearable memories receded. And I learned that compassion heals.
So now my writing spans the worlds of combat and disease and is mellowed by being a father. Love and loss dominate my work.
I knew from the age of six on that I was a writer. I could refuse the calling, but that would mean I’d never find fulfillment or even relief from the constant nag to put what was in my head into words. So I’ve been writing all my life.
I suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury as a result of the unspeakable things I lived through in Vietnam. Because I held top secret codeword-plus clearances, I couldn’t seek psychiatric help—I would have lost my clearances and therefore my job. So I wrote and wrote about the monstrous events I had lived through. I volunteered to help others worse off than I was. I worked with AIDS patients, the homeless, dying people under hospice care, and sick and dying soldiers in a VA hospital. I found that when my attention was focused on those I wanted to help, my unbearable memories receded. And I learned that compassion heals.
So now my writing spans the worlds of combat and disease and is mellowed by being a father. Love and loss dominate my work.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more