Marc Liebman's Blog, page 54

Drudgery

There are some things an author shouldn’t be asked or forced to do. High on my list is going through a mailing list and updating it. It is boring, tedious and time consuming. I keep putting it off, but the press of getting the word out that CHERUBS 2 has been released is pushing me along this path. The only saving grace is that when one is done, there will, at least theoretically, be fewer invalid email addresses. Hopefully!!!

Next on my drudgery list is updating my programs on my laptop, smart phone or tablet. First, what is easy for someone who does it hundreds of times is a pain in the neck to me. The system, under the guise of being “user friendly” and “easy to use,” asks me all sorts of inane questions about some nuance of the software package. They’re couched in choices without an explanation of what the impact of each choice might be. So, how can one evaluate them?

Then, once they are “updated,” one finds that the software maker has made changes in the graphics, tabs, drop downs, etc. and it takes a few hours or even months to figure it out. Once you learn, guess what, it’s time for an update!!!” Why can’t they leave the package alone or better or give us a choice!

I’m lucky if I use ten percent of the capability of any one package. Somehow, I just can’t get excited about a new release of a software package.

Number three on my hit drudgery parade – filing. Despite the wonders of Microsoft and all the apps in the world, one still has to print documents and then keep them in some sort of order so you can find them two or three years later.

What gets me is that when one gets a document from a government agency such as the IRS or Health and Human Services, the document is sent with three copies. Buried in it are several paragraphs listing all the paperwork reduction acts the government agency complies with. Then, when you go to their web site that touts how paperless the agency is, they require a copy of the document, usually notarized, sent back to via either mail or fax. Electronic copies are not acceptable!!!

Then there are the files themselves. What seems to be a logical method today may not make sense two or three years from now. It doesn’t matter whether it is electronic or Pendaflex, I often worry if I will be able to find in it in the future. Invariably, what someone or some firm wants to provide “proof” is lost in a file, logically filed several years ago, but where the heck is it?

So, to escape from the drudgery, I decided to write about it. Hence this blog.   At least, I hope you could identify with me when and maybe it was a break in a task that you considered drudgery.

Marc Liebman

August, 2015

Struggling with a new plot outline

As I peck away at this blog entry, three books are out – BIG MOTHER 40, RENDER HARMLESS and CHERUBS 2. I’m under contract for a fourth that has the working title of INNER LOOK and it should be out late this year or early next.

In the can, so to speak, are full drafts of five more in the Josh Haman series – MOSCOW AIRLIFT, THE KURILE WEDGE INCIDENT, FORGOTTEN POWS and FLIGHT OF THE PAWNEE. Some of these need work and others are ready, with another run through to go to a publisher.

Yet, there another one I want to write this summer has the working title of MANPADS that is the acronym for man portable air defense system. These are surface–to-air missiles fired from the shoulder. Think Stinger, Redeye and Russian made missiles with the code names Grail, Gremlin, Gimlet and Grinch. If you are in an airplane or helicopter in range of one of these small missiles and don’t have the right countermeasures, you’re going to take a hit and probably crash.

The first step is creating what I call the story line. This document lays out the plot and summarizes the lives of the key characters in about five thousand words. Next step is expanding it into a scene-by-scene outline of the story. Once that is done, I can start writing the actual manuscript.

I’ve tried taking shortcuts and each time I don’t like the outcome. The lesson is the follow the process that I know works.

About halfway into the story line, everything came to a screeching halt. The plot had boxed me – the writer – in a corner because where it was, there was no plausible way the main characters could continue in the story.

Back to the drawing board. One of the things I do is that before I start hacking away at the document, I save it and create another version. This way I have something to go back to see where the plot has been.

It this point, I don’t think overall main players will change, but the plot has to be simplified. That’s going to take some work. I don’t think my vision for the novel will change much because in many ways it is a warning on the danger MANPADS pose to the flying public and unwillingness of the government to be real about the threats to our lives.   That won’t change, but it looks like how the book lays out will.

Strangely enough, for me figuring out the story line is the hardest part. One it is done, I know the outline of the character’s background and its then up to me to tell the story through their eyes.   Getting to that next step is hard and that’s where I’m struggling. Stay tuned.

Marc Liebman

July 2015

CHERUBS 2 is out… Finally!!!

Originally, CHERUBS 2, the third novel in my Josh Haman series was scheduled to come out in September 2015. It was released this week – a mere 10 months later than planned.

A lot of things conspired to make the book late and someday might make an interesting plot for a novel. Combine a cat fight between the chief operating officer and the owner of the publishing company that started with a difference of opinion in the direction of the business.

The differences led to an offer by the COO to buy the company that flew like a lead balloon so he left to start his own publishing firm. The result was that decisions/commitments made by the departing COO were not met. Add in competition for the same freelance editing resources, an owner who had a day job who had to either learn how to run a publishing company or shut it down and one has a mess.

Schedules went up in flames. The manuscript needed some rewriting and editing and it gave me more than a spectator’s role in the politics. All I wanted was to get the book out which meant I wouldn’t take sides. Listening and gentle prodding was the order of the day.

Version control also went out the window with employee turnover because one editor wanted one approach to certain scenes, another wanted the passage written differently. Passages that I thought were added weren’t and vice versa.

The days and weeks flew by. September turned into probably January which turned into maybe March which turned into definitely by mid-May which turned into June, but in reality July.

Out of all this, three great things happened. One, CHERUBS 2 will now out. Better late than never and that makes three books in print.

Two, from the discussions I had with editors that led to writing additional scenes for CHERUBS 2 with new characters. Those that wound up on the cutting floor morphed into a new manuscript. Over the winter, I finished the book with the working title FORGOTTEN POWS and am now sitting on it, so to speak. Like most drafts, it still needs a lot of work, but I really like it.

Three, I am under contract for a fourth book titled INNER LOOK. The contract is with a different publisher and based on what I know at this moment, it should be out in late December 2015 or January 2016.

The moral of the story is out of most bad situations good things do happen!

On being retired

It has been awhile since my last blog entry.  My day job interfered and I just didn’t have the time or energy.  I was in the midst of the final re-writes of CHERUBS 2 which will be out in a matter of days and writing FORGOTTEN POWs to say nothing of working 60 -80 hours per week.

On June 30th, 2015, everything changed for the better.  On that day, the ranks of the unemployed went up by one. Why? Because I retired!!! Since I am not drawing unemployment, according to the government, I am not on the unemployed roles so theoretically I am not unemployed. Go figure!

The really cool thing is that I no longer have to set an alarm clock because I HAVE to go to work.

I’ve been talking about retiring for years, but finally I pulled the trigger. It was time. The mental switch flipped from continuing working to I need to retire on a business trip to India in November of last year. My motivation to work went up in a cloud of smoke. Working went from fun and exciting to an unpleasant chore.

Like most things in life and in the business world, timing is everything. I was in the midst of several important projects and I owed it to my employer to finish them. That was one thing that drove the timing.

Greed was another. One had to be employed at the end of the fiscal year to be eligible for my full bonus. The firm’s fiscal year ended on March 31st so I waited until I had all the data in mid-April that went into my bonus calculation submitted before I pulled the trigger.

As a senior executive, two weeks notice is normally not enough time to properly transition. I had one end date in mind and my boss had another that was the end of June. Looking back, there was wisdom in his timing.

A lot of people have asked me what were the first words that came into my mind when I rolled out of bed on July 1st.

Freedom! No more early a.m. conference calls. No reason to rush to check my e-mail or texts or my phone for messages. My life was now driven by what I wanted to do, not by the agendas of others.

When I got up on the morning of July 1st, the relief was palpable. I could feel the stress evaporating from my body. A life long dream was about to be fulfilled because I was about to become a full time author.

What I didn’t realize was what the transition would be like. Work habits honed during a career are hard to break.

A PTSD type malaise set in and it was tough to concentrate on anything. I am about to turn 70 that is a milestone in itself because it comes with the depressing realization that most of my life is behind me, not in front.   That date imposes an unmovable but unknown deadline.

I found myself in an unexpected situation – in retirement of all places – I am in a hurry. It is not a business deadline, but a life one. I have more books to write and get published and time is “a wastin’…”

So I’d better get back to work!   I didn’t retire, just changed careers.

 

Marc Liebman

July 2015

PoWs, Beheadings and a New Book Idea

My father was an Air Force officer whose career started before World War II and ended during the Vietnam War.  Several of his friends were now PoWs in North Vietnam which added to the list of those who spent time in German and North Koreans PoW camps.  hew didn’t talk about them much, but both of us knew that becoming a PoW was a risk that every military aviator faces the moment he takes off on combat mission.

By the time I was a sophomore in college back in 1965/66, the Vietnam War was raging full bore while roughly at the same time –  1965 to 1971 – a popular TV sitcom called Hogan’s Heroes was on the air.  I wanted to be either an Air Force pilot or a Naval Aviator and the humor in the show was lost on both my father and I.  Even today, I still don’t find the show funny.  To me, being a PoW is not a laughing matter.

In 1973, 591 of 1,350 men thought to be prisoners of the North Vietnamese came home in Operation Homecoming. Since then, the question has been asked over and over again, what happened to the other 759?  Or the other 1,250 men who were declared missing and presumed dead?

I realize that we will never know what happened to some of these men.  Many were blown to bits when their airplanes exploded.  Others were killed landing in the trees in the jungles of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.  Some may have been shredded by an artillery shell in a special forces camp that was overrun and their bodies never found.  In every war, we will always have men and women classified as missing in action, presumed dead.  It is why we have monuments dedicated to their memory.

During my career, I served with men who were PoWs of the Vietnamese and read the debriefings.  Trust me, they are difficult reading and will keep you up at night.  The hardships that they endured were both mental and physical.  Some made phony confessions when they couldn’t take the torture any longer.  Yet, none gave in fully because they all knew that someday, some or all of them would get to come home and tell their story.  They had hope that some day, the would come home.

So where am I going with this heavy subject?  My subconscious somehow connected three unrelated events after a dinner with some friends and somehow, the discussion came around to PoWs and the question - “Did we leave men behind in 1973?”

The second was the very real threats, later carried out to behead American journalists who were for all intents and purposes prisoners of war.  ISIS may know about, but clearly does not intend to abide by any of the Geneva Conventions and Protocols.  Fighting terrorism or an organization like ISIS is a war in which each side is fighting by different sets of rules.

The third was a private conversation I once had with a former resident of the Hanoi Hilton who I asked “What was the worst thing that could have happened to him while he was a PoW?”  His answer was simple.  “Be left behind knowing that I would never return home…”

By the middle of August, I completed an detail chapter and plot outline for a future novel that has the working title FORGOTTEN POWS.  The book starts with a shoot down of a Naval Aviator, a botched rescue attempt and his disappearance into captivity.  His name was not on the list of given to the U.S. as having been found dead or died in captivity in Vietnam.  Despite U.S. and Vietnamese government denials that there were still in captivity, six are found, rescued and brought home nearly nine years after the Vietnam War ended.

For these former PoWs, they were returning from the dead to find their wives had started new lives and families.  For others, they are threat.  Senior military leaders and members of Congress want to know if there more men still being held in Laos, Cambodia and/or Vietnam?  And if so, why have they not been brought home?  When two of former PoWs are assassinated, some in the military start asking who is doing the killing and why?

Turning the outline for FORGOTTEN POWS into a book is my next writing project.  My third book – CHERUBS 2 – takes priority because it is in the editing process and should be released in late October or early November, 2014.  As soon as it is out and nothing changes, I’ll start writing FORGOTTEN POWS.  This one should be interesting to write because there are several characters who have an axe to grind.  Stay tuned.

Marc Liebman

September 2014

Revenge is not all it is cracked up to be

On July 2nd, I finished the total rewrite of MOSCOW AIRLIFT.  It took about six months.  Technically speaking, it is the first manuscript I ever completed way back in 1988.  The original plot was complex – maybe overly so – and had interesting twists and turns.  When I finished the first draft, something told me that as good as it was, it wasn’t good enough.  So, I put it aside and started on another one which had the working title, THE KURILE WEDGE INCIDENT.  I didn’t like where that manuscript was going and just stopped.  Looking back, I think it was because I didn’t know how to write a novel.

Fast forward to 2014, 16 years later.  Something was keeping me from tackling MOSCOW AIRLIFT and fixing it which meant either a major editing or rewriting project.  Honestly, I don’t know what….  So with BIG MOTHER 40 and RENDER HARMLESS out, I made a New Year’s resolution to re-do MOSCOW AIRLIFT using the lessons I’ve learned.  It was, in some ways, much harder than I thought and in others, much easier.  I plan to put it away for a month or so and then begin the process of editing and tweaking it so it will be ready for a publisher.

The first thing I noticed was that the plot was overly complex.  So I went through the painful exercise deleting scenes and passages, many of which I now remember slaving over.  Then I went through what was left and decided that it was sort of O.K. but didn’t have the message/plot that I wanted.  So I saved that version, cut it down to another, bare bones one and wrote a detailed chapter outline.

With that done, I started writing.  The more I wrote, the more the plot changed.  For me this was not alarming because when I am writing a scene, I become the characters and think like them.  Even though they were taking me down a different path that I originally outlined, I liked it where the manuscript was going.  What I realized about halfway through was that this was becoming a story about revenge.  Not the obsessive, consuming desire to right a wrong, but a chance for a major character to close a chapter in his life.  When the book begins, he doesn’t know their names or even if they exist.  In fact, he only knows only about the actions in which their lives intertwined.

I won’t get into the how and where, but the main character then finds out that O.K., he has fulfilled a promise he made to one of the victims.  Now what?  The rage and anger that had been suppressed in his mind for many years is still there.  He is still angry that the original event because one cannot bring a person back to life.  So, what has he really gained?

Stay tuned for more about MOSCOW AIRLIFT…

Marc Liebman

July 2014

– “because they can…” It’s the answer to why hackers do what they do…

Sometime earlier this year, some nutcase decided that he had nothing better to do than screw up another web site.   Why he or she picked mine, I’ll never know.  When I asked a CIO friend of mine why people spend their time hacking, he simply said, “because they can…”

Someone could and did…  The first indication I got was from a friend who was on my web site reading my blog and he called to say “did I know Google was warning people that your site had been hacked….”

When my site was first created, Christine Horner (the designer of my web site) and I discussed a way for people to e-mail me through my web site.  It was set up as a way of contacting me and the first step in selling signed copies of my books.

That led to a barrage of malcontents using software to harvest web site addresses who then sent me e-mails offering everything from fast, easy money, cialis/viagra/testosterone at a discount to legitimate comments on my books, blog and writing.  To those who were harvesting or sending spam, I have a suggestion – Learn how to write in the English language!!!  It may reduce your rejection rates….

To cut down the spam, Christine installed an application that forces you to read those crazy tilted and distorted letters and numbers.  It had the desired effect, spam dropped off to a trickle but every once and awhile, one slips through and I hit the spam button to block further attempts from that source.

Cleaning out all the malware and unwanted code was a tedious process and Christine said now the site is clean, again.  Both of us were surprised to find out there is a lot of helpful information out there to help professionals clean-up the mess created by some nutcase who thinks hacking is a fun thing to do between video game sessions.

I talked to GoDaddy who hosts my site and was stunned to learn that they do nothing to protect those who use their servers for web sites.  So, thinking this was an anomaly, I called several other hosting sites and none provide any protection.  All told me that security is my problem, not theirs!!!

Great, now I am a mini-Target…  They spent millions – as do other firms – and they are for the most part successful, but every once in awhile, something spectacular happens and it makes the news.  Hacking my site wouldn’t make CNN or FoxNew, and I don’t have millions to hire a staff to install, maintain and update anti-hacking software.

Why someone screwed up my site is beyond me.  There’s no link to any kind of financial information so you can’t get credit card numbers or people’s addresses.

So I keep coming back to what my friend and former co-worker who was the de-facto CIO of a consulting firm I worked for…  They did it because they can.

Marc Liebman

April, 2014

A whole lot of “buts…”

When I first started trying to write novels way back in 1988, I envisioned a series along the lines of the books I devoured, read and re-read as a kid about the Royal Navy, i.e. C.S. Forrester’s Horatio Hornblower series and Patrick O’Brian’s books about Jack Aubrey.  By then, Clancy had his first four books out.  I was thinking, wow I can do this, if he can, so can I!

My first attempt was titled THE KURILE WEDGE INCIDENT and about halfway through the first draft I realized two things.  One, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and two, this book would never get past a review by the U.S. Navy.  Back in those days, I still held a high security clearance and anything I wrote for publication had to be reviewed for possible security violations.  Back then, the Navy was (and still should be) paranoid about security in light of what it was learning about what John Walker gave away.

Fast forward five years to 1993.   The word retired came after the title Captain, United States Navy and I started pecking away on another book called MOSCOW AIRLIFT.  In the interim, I’d talked to a few authors who’d published novels and decided to try again.  It was much, much harder than I imagined.  However, this time, I finished the manuscript and put it on the shelf to redo.  I didn’t know what needed to be done, but instinct told me no, not good enough.  The question was, what was needed?  I didn’t know so it went on the shelf.  Actually, to be accurate, onto a floppy disk, then to a CD and now on a thumb drive.

My conclusion was that it was a saleable story and decided to start another.  Lo and behold, my first book – BIG MOTHER 40 – came out in September, 2012 and the second, RENDER HARMLESS –was about to be released in March 2014.  In the interim, I had completed four more manuscripts – CHERUBS 2, INNER LOOK, a totally revised KURILE WEDGE INCIDENT (in reality, only the title is the same) and FLIGHT OF THE PAWNEE.  Hopefully, one day they will all see the light of day.

So back to December, 2013.  BIG MOTHER 40 is out, RENDER HARMLESS was due to be released shortly so one of my resolutions for the new year was to apply the lessons learned to MOSCOW AIRLIFT from the first two books.  Now roughly 25 years after finishing my first attempt at writing a book, I opened the manuscript for the first time and started reading, editing and re-writing.  About seventy-five pages in it, all I could think was “God, what a mess!!!”

The next thing I did was “decompose” the novel to see what could be stripped out and used in a later book.  That led to a lot of “buts” such as:

“That was a good scene, but…”

“I liked the way I wrote that, but…”

“The plot is still interesting, but…”

“There are some cool characters in the book, but…”

And the list of “buts” goes on…  So, I decided to start over.  It seemed easier or maybe less painful!  Since then, I re-did the outline and started writing.  As I can use some of the stuff from the original manuscript, I am.  But, there’s that word again, it is tough because it has to be adapted/edited/rewritten to fit the new plot, characters, etc.

And, as I write the new version, all of the memories and thinking that went into the original manuscript still rattle around in my mind.  It’ll be many months before I finish and hopefully the end product, unlike the original will be worthy of being published.

Marc Liebman

March, 2013

Cherubs 2 – its an altitude not a spiritual being

After BIG MOTHER 40 came out, it became obvious that there was a book to be written about Josh Haman’s first tour in Vietnam.  So I began noodling about a plot line and nothing excited me.  Then I had a conversation with a good friend of mine with whom I flew in Vietnam and something got us on the topic of what would the next book would be about.  He then reminded me of an incident in which he was flying as the co-pilot and they had an opportunity to go make a rescue but the aircraft commander said no, it was too risky.  The pilot was captured but never turned up on any PoW list.

On these types of ad-hoc rescue missions, you really don’t know how dangerous or difficult the pickup will be until you get close enough to evaluate the situation.  There is a risk that you’ll run into trouble before you get to the scene.  Even if you go in and get everybody out, there is a chance you’ll be second guessed.  If you go in and get everyone killed, then you’ve had a really bad day and while your actions maybe criticized, you aren’t around to hear it!  In the end, it is a judgment call.

What I realized from the discussion is there is an interesting continuum in combat.  At one end, there are the heroic acts and they’re easily recognizable.  In most cases, medals for valor are awarded.  At the other, there are the cowardly acts.  In a perverse way, one could say that they take a different kind of courage.  Someplace in between there are those which are overly cautious.  So where’s the line between being risk averse and cautious and being cowardly?  It is very, very gray fuzzy area with no definitions.

So out of that conversation popped the plot outline for CHERUBS 2 which is a prequel to BIG MOTHER 40.  The title comes from a term that Naval Aviators use to describe their altitude.  If you are at five thousand feet, if asked how high you were, the proper answer is Angels Five.  If you are at two hundred feet, the proper response is Cherubs 2.  I can’t tell you how many hours and it’s a lot, I spent flying a helicopter two hundred feet over the water or the land, night or day, good weather or bad.

Josh Haman, fresh out of the Naval Air Training Command and HS-10 which trained him in the H-3 reports to HC-7’s Detachment 1 at the Naval Air Station Cubi Point in the Philippines.  There’s he’s shipped off to jungle survival school and when he returns, he is told the squadron is short of co-pilots for the H-2.  Josh is given twenty hours in type which is ten less than he should have gotten and shipped off to an H-2 on a destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.

After he’s flown a few missions, he senses something wrong because it is clear there is tension between the enlisted men and his aircraft commander who is also the detachment office –in-charge.  In this small detachment of two officers and twelve enlisted men.  So is his HAC a coward or is he overly cautious?  Or, is he just an asshole?  For a junior officer on his first assignment, it is difficult position to be in.  What should or could he do?

Its finished and I am about to dump it into the publishing pipeline as soon as RENDER HARMLESS comes out.

Marc Liebman

Decemeber, 2013

Marine Drill Instructors – a valued but misunderstood breed

Anyone who gone through the Navy’s Officer Candidate School has met a Marine Drill Instructor a.k.a. a DI up close and personal, very personal.  The one Lou Gossett played one in the movie “Officer and a Gentlemen” was close, but no cigar.  Gossett had the look, purposeful movement and bearing of a DI, and portrayed the public perception of a DI, but his vocabulary was, shall we say limited!  Back in the day, before political correctness, a DI’s “patter” was quite creative but was only a means to an end in delivering the real value they perform for both the Marine Corps and the Navy.

The Marines select the best and brightest to become drill instructors in boot camps and the best of these are sent to ROTC units and the Navy’s and Marine Corps Officer Candidate Schools to help mold potential young officers into the leaders they want to take them into battle.  Why?  Who is better to teach an officer candidate with two left feet how to march and salute properly?  More importantly, the Navy’s primary mission is power projection which really means put Marines ashore and then sustain them.  As Naval and Marine Corps officers and aviators, the lives of the Marines depend on the decisions we make and our determination to help them in battle.

Or, as Sergeant Cruz – one of my DI’s – put it, “Sir, someday, the life of me and my men are going to depend on your ability to accurately drop a bomb on the bad guys or your determination to fly in to pull me out of some shit hole if I am wounded or before I get killed…”

In BIG MOTHER 40, the Marine major general, Hector Cruz was named after Sergeant Cruz.  He is the only person I know who could scale the fifteen foot wall, run to the next one or two obstacles to show us the easiest way to get over or under or through them.  In the ninety degree Fahrenheit, eighty percent humidity of a Pensacola summer, he could do it without creating sweat stains under his arm pits, getting sand on is uniform and keeping his corfam shoes shiny and not dusty.  Sergeant Cruz, if he was an inch, was about five foot five!

The character Jesus Montemayor in BIG MOTHER 40 is the HC-7 Detachment 110 Officer-in-Charge.  In real life, he was Sergeant Montemayor, United States Marine Corps and a drill instructor entrusted to teach leadership to potential young naval officers like me.  Sergeant Montemayor was the largest man I ever met.  I still remember standing at attention in front of him and if my left side was aligned with his right, my right arm would be just past the row of buttons in the center of his shirt with perfect creases down through each pocket.  He could, had he not grown up dirt poor on an Indian reservation, have gotten a college football scholarship because the school didn’t have a football team.  The Marine Corps was his way off the reservation.

After I had given Sergeants Cruz and Montemayor each a silver dollar for the honor of giving me my first salute from an enlisted man as a newly commissioned ensign, Sergeant Montemayor told me that “leadership was all about commitment.  Commitment to your service, your squadron, your crew, the men you lead, but most of all, it was a commitment to yourself to never let any of them down.”

Heavy words that I remember to this day, even though they were spoken to me in the summer of 1967!

Marc Liebman

August, 2013