The Next Big Thing

"The Next Big Thing" is a blog hop where writers around the world share what they're working on by responding to ten questions. Thanks to author Abigail DeWitt, who invited me to join the project. You can learn more about her right here.I'm tagging Rosemary Austin, Kyle Lang, Mary Emerick, Mary Kay Zuvraleff, and Laurie Foos. If all goes well, you can check out their answers next week. (I'll link to their individual posts). Here goes:What is your working title of your book?I'm calling it The Longest Day of the Year. Most of the novel takes place on June 21st, 2009 and is set in Afghanistan. Where did the idea come from for the book?It's inspired by two short stories published in Flashes of War, my collection forthcoming from Loyola University Maryland. The first story, "The Quiet Kind," features a US soldier and his wife and their lives back in North Carolina after the soldier's tour of duty. The second story, "Aaseya and Rahim," features an Afghan couple living in Oruzgan Province. Last summer, an agent suggested to me that I might try writing a novel. I laughed at the suggestion, but was likewise intrigued. Could I write something that long? What would I learn if I tried? After some discussions with authors Jaimy Gordon, Patricia Ann McNair, and Anne-Marie Oomen, I decided I had nothing to lose if I tried. These mentors heard me out in my early vocal brainstorming for the novel, as I described "The Quiet Kind" and "Aaseya and Rahim" to them, and the unique parallels between the two couples caught up in the same war, but from completely different cultures.Who or what inspired you to write this book?Researching and writing about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been an interest and obsession of my for three years and counting. It's very important to me to look at these wars and ask questions. Writing about them is my way of moving closer to an answer. Recently, author Alan Graz asked me this question, and the interview will be published in the coming months. Likewise, this book trailer takes a stab at answering the very complicated question of why I write about war.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?This novel deals with the ramifications of a true incident in war, focusing on the 2009 breaking news that US taxpayers' dollars are funding the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. In short, the US pays Afghan trucking companies to deliver goods all across Afghanistan to the US Military bases. These Afghan trucking companies have to hire security to promise safe delivery of the goods, and those "guards" are often insurgents or members of the Taliban, who take their US cash payments and put them to work against US soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan. This novel looks at the very real consequences of that, and brings the matter to the forefront of the heart by focusing on American and Afghan characters caught in the middle, just trying to do what's right.