Nan McCarthy

author of Since You Went Away, Chat, Connect, Crash, & Live ’Til I Die

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    • Since You Went Away, Part Three: Summer
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Posts By Nan McCarthy

2 Military Families Magazine 2022 Holiday Shopping Guide

  • December 9, 2022
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Blog · Books · fiction · Military life · News · Publishing · Writing

Support military-affiliated small business owners this holiday season by purchasing gifts from verified entrepreneurs including military service members, veterans, & spouses.

Military Families Magazine, in conjunction with The Rosie Network, has published its 2022 Holiday Shopping Guide where you can find Rainwater Press listed among the more than 180 businesses owned by service members, veterans, and military spouses. Categories include Books, Clothing, Accessories, Home Decor, Self-Care, Food, Coffee, Spirits, Fitness, Families, Kids, and Pets.

Each business in the Holiday Guide has been verified by The Rosie Network / Military Families Magazine so you know you’re supporting a bona fide military-owned small business when you purchase gifts using the links listed in the directory. This is the first year Rainwater Press is featured in the guide and I am super excited to be included alongside other military-affiliated businesses such as R. Riveter (handbags made by military spouses) and K9 Salute (a natural dog treat company that gives back to military working dogs).

To celebrate our inclusion in this year’s directory, prices for all four books in the Since You Went Away series are still 25% off! We had one of our best-ever sales months in November with this promotion so I’ve decided to keep the sale going into the holiday shopping season. (Discount applies for both print and ebooks, at Amazon only.)

Military Families Magazine is owned by AmeriForce Media, a service-disabled, veteran-owned small business founded in 1999. The magazine makes use of talent from the military community to provide content that informs, entertains, and supports today’s service members and their families. The Rosie Network, founded in 2012, is a non-profit organization that promotes the entrepreneurial efforts of veterans and military spouses.

***

Click here to order the Since You Went Away series in either paperback or ebook.

Click here to view the Military Families Magazine 2022 Holiday Shopping Guide.

 

about the author:

A former magazine editor and tech journalist, Nan McCarthy founded Rainwater Press in 1992 and began selling her books online in 1995. She is the author of the Chat, Connect, Crash series (fiction), the Since You Went Away series (fiction), Live ’Til I Die (memoir), and Quark Design (non-fiction). Nan and her husband, a veteran who served 29 years in the Marine Corps, live in Kansas City.

 

 

Since You Went Away, Part One: Winter

(Rainwater Press, 2017) 172 pages

ISBN-13 (print): 978-1888354126

F I C T I O N, epistolary, literary, family life, war

 

 

 

Since You Went Away, Part Two: Spring

(Rainwater Press, 2017) 226 pages

ISBN-13 (print): 978-1888354133

F I C T I O N, epistolary, literary, family life, war

 

 

Since You Went Away, Part Three: Summer

(Rainwater Press, 2019) 216 pages

ISBN-13 (print): 978-1888354140

F I C T I O N, epistolary, literary, family life, war

 

 

Since You Went Away, Part Four: Fall

(Rainwater Press, 2020) 308 pages

ISBN-13 (print): 978-1888354157

F I C T I O N, epistolary, literary, family life, war

 

 

Cover design for all four books by David J. High, Highdzn.com.
Cover art illustrations by Larry Jacobsen (Part One), Jut / Dreamstime (Part Two), Greylilac & Jboy / Shutterstock (Part Three), and Radiocat, Rudall30, Lana, Samcorp, & Kevin Sanderson / Shutterstock (Part Four).

 

 

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0 25% off (finally!) all four books in the Since You Went Away series

  • November 16, 2022
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Blog · Books · fiction · Publishing · self-publishing · Writing

It only took 168 hours but a certain large retailer finally updated the sale prices

Remember the Veterans Day sale that was supposed to happen last week but didn’t because my price discounts weren’t taking effect at a certain online bookstore? Well, the prices were finally discounted… two days after the sale was scheduled to end. Since the sale never happened I had planned to go back into my publisher dashboard and raise the prices back to their regular amounts. But instead of doing that I’ve decided to keep the 25% discount in place for now and extend the sale through Thanksgiving. Because why not? So from now until midnight on Black Friday (November 25th), you can buy all four books in the series (either print or ebook) for 25% off the regular price. My loss is your gain! (Or, to put it another way, one large bookseller’s incompetence is your gain.)

This is the first time since the books’ publication that all four books in the series are being discounted. (Usually I only discount Part One, with the idea of reeling in new readers, who then purchase the next three books in the series ’cuz they can’t wait to find out what happens next.) This means you can get all four paperbacks for under forty bucks or all four ebooks for under twenty bucks. Whether you’re shopping for yourself or your favorite reader, the epistolary-style format of the Since You Went Away series has been known to keep readers turning pages late into the night. And the covers are pretty nice too.

An update of the 1944 film of the same name (& 1943 book the film was based on), this slice-of-life dramedy charts a year in the life of a modern-day military family during deployment. Featuring a deeply human cast of characters and propelled by a plot that draws you in from the first page, Since You Went Away portrays in intimate detail the effects of a distant war on the families and returning veterans at home.

“While most war stories focus on the drama on the battlefield, McCarthy shines a light on the battles being fought on the homefront, creating a world that’s eminently relatable to readers both inside and outside the military.”

***

This offer is available exclusively on Amazon—worldwide wherever Amazon books are sold—through midnight November 25th only.

Click here to order the Since You Went Away series in either paperback or ebook.

about the author:

A former magazine editor and tech journalist, Nan McCarthy founded Rainwater Press in 1992 and began selling her books online in 1995. She is the author of the Chat, Connect, Crash series (fiction), the Since You Went Away series (fiction), Live ’Til I Die (memoir), and Quark Design (non-fiction). Nan and her husband, a veteran who served 29 years in the Marine Corps, live in Kansas City.

 

Since You Went Away, Part One: Winter

(Rainwater Press, 2017) 172 pages

ISBN-13 (print): 978-1888354126

F I C T I O N, epistolary, literary, family life, war

 

Since You Went Away, Part Two: Spring

(Rainwater Press, 2017) 226 pages

ISBN-13 (print): 978-1888354133

F I C T I O N, epistolary, literary, family life, war

 

Since You Went Away, Part Three: Summer

(Rainwater Press, 2019) 216 pages

ISBN-13 (print): 978-1888354140

F I C T I O N, epistolary, literary, family life, war

 

Since You Went Away, Part Four: Fall

(Rainwater Press, 2020) 308 pages

ISBN-13 (print): 978-1888354157

F I C T I O N, epistolary, literary, family life, war

 

Cover design for all four books by David J. High, Highdzn.com.
Cover art illustrations by Larry Jacobsen (Part One), Jut / Dreamstime (Part Two), Greylilac & Jboy / Shutterstock (Part Three), and Radiocat, Rudall30, Lana, Samcorp, & Kevin Sanderson / Shutterstock (Part Four).

 

 

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1 Kinda pissed at a certain online bookstore right now

  • November 12, 2022
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Blog · Books · fiction · Publishing · self-publishing · Writing

Plans to offer my annual Veterans Day book discount didn’t pan out this year and here’s why

Here’s how the promo for my 2022 Veterans Day discount was supposed to start: “From now until midnight November 11th, readers can purchase the entire Since You Went Away series for 25% off both print and ebook editions.” Except I wasn’t able to run the promo this year, because a certain large online bookstore somehow wasn’t able to lower the print price of my books—even though I’ve been offering the same Veterans Day discount almost every year since 2017, when the first book in the series was published.

As a small business owner and independent author, I depend on promotions like this to get the word out about my books. Especially for my Since You Went Away series—a fictionalized story about a modern-day military family—Veterans Day is the ultimate tie-in opportunity to draw attention to the series and, if I’m lucky, see a nice little bump in sales. And to be honest, as an indie author, spreading the word about my books is an uphill battle. I’m not getting rich here, and I’m okay with that. I love what I do and I love being an author who publishes my own books. I’ve had my books published traditionally by one of the Big Five publishers (or are we down to the Big Four now—it’s hard to keep track these days), and I can tell you from hard-earned experience that being an indie author is way more fun than going the traditional route. And at this stage in my life, I’ll choose self-agency and fun over group think and bureaucracy any day of the week.

But even indie publishing has its limits, because as self-publishers we still (mostly) rely on other vendors to distribute and sell our books. Even today in the age of social media and online bookstores, our success is often determined by our ability to work the system. In many ways self-publishing today is harder than it was 27 years ago, when I self-published my first book in 1995. Back then there was no Instagram, no Facebook, no Twitter, no WordPress, and definitely no such thing as an ebook. (In fact in those days if you mentioned the word Amazon, most people thought you were talking about a river in South America.) But the widespread availability of such technology—like social media that makes it easier for authors to broadcast our latest book news to the world, and ebook sites that make creating books more accessible than ever—is also the very thing that makes it harder to get noticed, because we are now competing with millions of others across the globe trying to get our work in front of potential readers.

But I digress. The point is, you can’t run a promotion for discounted books if the books aren’t discounted. And therein lies the problem. This past Monday morning leading up to Veterans Day (which fell on a Friday this year), I logged onto my sales dashboard at a certain online bookseller to lower the price of my Since You Went Away series in anticipation of kicking off my annual promotion at some point mid-week. Since this particular retailer quotes various timelines of 24-72 hours to allow for price changes to take effect (and in the preceding five years of my experience with this retailer, price changes invariably took less than 24 hours), I believed I had allowed plenty of time for even the most gigantic retailer on earth to make a simple price change. Or so I thought.

For indie authors, running a book promotion is not as simple as logging onto a sales dashboard and changing a price. There’s the blog post (like this one was supposed to be) announcing the promotion featuring book blurbs, graphics, and links to the various retail sites. Then there are the social media posts, which can be based on your original blog copy but need to be tailored to each site’s word limit, photo specs, audience, and overall “vibe.” If you’re detail-obsessed like me, you spend a lot of time writing, editing, and tweaking each individual post to make sure it optimizes such an important promo opportunity without needlessly flooding other people’s social media feeds and end up annoying or alienating potential readers rather than attracting them.

I won’t bore you with the gory details on how much time I spent this past week emailing, live chatting, and phoning customer support trying to figure out why the prices for the paperback versions of Since You Went Away weren’t being discounted on this particular site as requested. The prices on the ebook versions of the series were updated in less than 12 hours, so it was puzzling that the print prices were taking so long to update. And as of today (six days later—the day after Veterans Day and twelve hours after the sale was scheduled to end) the paperback prices still haven’t been discounted. So I gave up on this year’s promotion. It’s not about the lost sales really. It’s not even about missing this once-a-year opportunity to share my books with people who might like to know about them. For me, it’s a reminder that as much as I love being my own boss and running my own business and hiring cover designers and editors of my own choosing, I’m not as much the master of my own fate as I thought I was, even when it comes to writing and publishing my own books.

Funny thing is, I’m not as upset about this stupid price debacle as I thought I’d be. Yeah, I was hella frustrated this week trying to deal with customer service people who say they value your business and want to solve your problem but do absolutely nothing to actually solve said problem. We’ve all been there, done that a million times over, right? First world problems as they say.

BUT… there’s that teeny-tiny part of me that’s still kinda pissed off about the whole thing, you know? The part of me that rails at big business stomping on the little guy because they can or they just don’t care. Whether you’re a musician or painter or sculptor or comedian or—yes—a writer who either can’t get past industry gatekeepers or chooses not to submit themselves to faceless corporate sales forces, you have to make the decision, every single day of your career, to not let the bastards get you down (as my mom used to say). To keep fighting the good fight. I may have lost this particular battle with earth’s biggest bookstore, but I’ll never stop writing, never stop creating, never stop sharing my work with others. And because of this experience, I’m even more motivated than ever to find new and different ways to promote and sell my books and reach new readers. Like adding an online store to this website for example. These things take time, so I ask you to stay tuned. Meanwhile, I’m going to nurture that small part of me that’s still kinda pissed off. Because sometimes you have to listen to that little voice inside your head. The one that says fuck you to the fucking fuckers.

 

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0 Wondering what to read this July 4th weekend?

  • July 1, 2021
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Blog · Family · Military life

Since You Went Away: Part One 25% off (print) & 50% off (ebook)

Most war stories focus on the drama on the battlefield. Since You Went Away shines a light on the battles being fought on the homefront, portraying in intimate detail the effects of a distant war on the families and returning veterans at home. Featuring a deeply human cast of characters and propelled by a plot that accelerates with each turn of the page, McCarthy creates a world that’s eminently relatable to readers both inside and outside the military.

Written by a military spouse (now a vet spouse), this fly-on-the-wall account of a fictional modern-day military family lifts the curtain on the most challenging and emotional period in the lives of those who serve and those who love them: deployment. With jaw-dropping plot twists, McCarthy spins a tale as humorous as it is heartbreaking. Readers will find themselves immediately drawn into the realistic yet entertaining orbit of the Mahoney family, turning pages late into the night.

From now until midnight July 5th, you can purchase Part One of the Since You Went Away series (print) for only $8.20 (normally $10.95 on Amazon & $14.95 in bookstores). Or download the ebook version on Amazon for only $2.99 (normally $5.99).

The story of military life is lived by only a small percentage of Americans. This July 4th, immerse yourself in the lives of the Mahoney family. Find out what military life is really like—not through the eyes of those on the battlefield, but through the eyes of their families back home, who keep watch and wait.

Offer available exclusively on Amazon, through midnight July 5th only.

Click here to order the paperback.

Click here to order the ebook.

about the author:

Nan McCarthy is the author of the Since You Went Away series, the Chat, Connect, Crash series, Live ’Til I Die, and Quark Design. Before her career as a writer, Nan was the editor of an English-language magazine in Japan, the managing editor of a computer-industry magazine in Chicago, and a contributing editor to several design- and technology-related publications. She founded Rainwater Press in 1992 and began selling her books online in 1995. Nan and her husband, a veteran who served 33 years in the Marine Corps, are the proud parents of two adult sons.

Since You Went Away, Part One: Winter

Nan McCarthy

(Rainwater Press, 2017) 172 pages

F I C T I O N

Part Two: Spring, Part Three: Summer, and Part Four: Fall now available!

 

cover design by David High.
cover art by Larry Jacobsen.

 

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7 For the Ones Who Startle Easily

  • January 15, 2021
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · biography/memoir · Blog · Books · Family · Featured · Live ’Til I Die · Parenting

“Nowadays, when I look back on that day my dad died 50 years ago, what strikes me the most is not the memory of my own sadness, but the faces of the people who cared for me.”

Nan McCarthy

My dad died 50 years ago today, January 15, 1971. I was nine years old. I remember walking home from Macarthur elementary school on that cold snowy afternoon in South Holland, Illinois. I was about half a block away from our house when my mom passed me in my dad’s red Chevy Malibu. She slowed the car and waved to me. I’ll never forget her face. She smiled but her eyes were sad.

As I came through the front door I could see my Nana in the family room, crying while she mopped the tiled floor. She paused when she saw me, still holding onto the mop, her cheeks stained with tears. My Papa milled about behind her, hands in his trouser pockets. He was crying too.

I made my way to the kitchen, where my mom and older sister had already gathered. My mom asked my sister and I to have a seat at the kitchen table. She sat across from us and said, “Your dad went to heaven today.” She’d obviously been crying but at this moment she was composed. She delivered the news gently but matter-of-factly. More than anything, she looked exhausted. 

Learning of my dad’s death was not a surprise to me. He’d been in and out of hospitals for months, battling alcoholism the last several years of his life—a battle that had most likely begun before I was even born. In the years leading up to his death the battle that raged within our house and within his body was intense, violent, and bloody. Only after I became an adult did I understand my dad was just as much a victim of his addiction as my mom, sister, and I were. 

Anyone who has lived with and loved an addict knows the particular, slow-motion horror of watching helplessly as the person you love is destroyed from within. It’s an epic battle that is sometimes won, and oftentimes lost. Thirty years after our dad’s death, as my sister and I took care of our mom while she was dying of cancer, I had the same feeling of watching someone being eaten alive from the inside. The difference between cancer and addiction is that most people find it easier to empathize with the person dying from cancer. It’s harder to empathize when the person suffering from addiction leaves behind a trail of arrest records, restraining orders, DUIs, totaled cars, gambling debts, barroom brawls, damaged careers, lost friendships, broken marriages, domestic violence, traumatized children. 

It wasn’t until a therapist explained it to me in my early 30s that I came to realize I had grown up in a war zone. Looking at my childhood through that lens explained a lot of the things I experienced as a young adult—the sleepless nights, the nightmares, the anger that seemed to come out of nowhere, the feeling of not being able to trust my own happiness because I was in a perpetual state of high alert, bracing myself for the inevitable crisis that was most assuredly lurking around the next corner and would rear its ugly head the moment I allowed myself to relax. 

The irony that I married a man who served 29 years in the Marine Corps, who deployed to geographic war zones while I continued to work to overcome the fallout of growing up in a familial war zone, has not escaped me. Of the two of us, I’m the one who startles easily, who needs to sit facing the exit in a restaurant, who remains vigilant when I have every reason to sit back and relax. On the upside, I tend to be extraordinarily calm in crisis situations. The ability to focus on practical matters during life’s various emergencies can be handy at times, yet that sense of calm in the eye of the storm also comes at a cost—unlike my husband, who’s very much in touch with his emotions in the moment, it often takes me days, weeks, months, or even years to come to terms with the normal range of emotions stemming from various life events.

Nowadays, when I look back on that day my dad died 50 years ago, what strikes me the most is not the memory of my own sadness, but the faces of the people who cared for me. In their eyes I saw concern, love, grief—not for themselves, but for the two little girls who just lost their dad. Remembering their faces is the thing that makes me cry. I imagine how difficult it must have been for them as parents and grandparents, the worry and responsibility they felt for the impact this day, and the years leading up to this day, would have on the lives of two little girls. Through them, I learned one of the most valuable emotions in life—after hope—is empathy. When bad things happen, it’s hope that propels us to keep getting out of bed every morning when our instinct is to stay burrowed underneath the covers, and empathy that allows us to close our eyes every night to slumber in peace, knowing we are not alone. 

I’m 59 now, and still reminding myself to take that deep breath, live in the moment, embrace my own happiness. Because I have a lot to be happy for. Life continues to present us with challenges at every turn, as it does for all of us.  And that’s another gift that cold snowy day in 1971 gave me—the knowledge in my bones that each of us is fighting an epic battle, that nothing is permanent, that hope and empathy sustain us.

 

Ben Johnson

July 25, 1931 — January 15, 1971

copyright © 2021 Nan McCarthy

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1 Since You Went Away, Part Four: Fall

  • November 13, 2020
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Books · Family · fiction · Military life · Since You Went Away (Part Four: Fall) · Titles

Since You Went Away, Part Four: Fall 
Nan McCarthy
(Rainwater Press, 2020) 308 pages
F I C T I O N

In the spectacular conclusion to her Since You Went Away quartet, Nan McCarthy delivers jaw-dropping plot twists that will keep readers turning pages late into the night. McCarthy deftly weaves multiple plot threads with surprising reveals until the very last page, wrapping up each character’s storyline with a heart-stirring, satisfying finale.

Set against the backdrop of the Iraq war in the year 2008 and featuring a deeply human cast of characters, readers will find themselves immediately drawn into the realistic yet entertaining orbit of the Mahoney family. While most war stories focus on the drama on the battlefield, Since You Went Away shines a light on the battles being fought on the homefront, lifting the curtain on the most challenging and emotional period in the life of a military family: deployment. Suspenseful and surprisingly funny, McCarthy creates a world that’s eminently relatable to readers both inside and outside the military.

Propelled by a plot that accelerates with each book in the series, Since You Went Away portrays in intimate detail the effects of a distant war on the families and returning veterans at home. At once poignant and darkly funny, it is a fly-on-the-wall account of the innermost workings of a military family—their fears and hopes, their struggles and disappointments, their unexpected moments of joy and comfort and laughter.

This is Part Four of a novel released in four parts.

N O W   A V A I L A B L E  

 

Click on this link to order the paperback.

 

amazon logo.120x35 (small)Download_Chat_on_iBooks_Badge_US-UK_110x40_090513

small kobo logo cropped

Click one of these to order the ebook.

 

The Since You Went Away series is now available from bookstores, libraries, & other retailers via Ingram distribution. Ask for the book by name at your local bookseller or library.

nook logo.100x44(small)

Due to ongoing technical issues at Barnes & Noble, the nook version of Since You Went Away is not yet available.

 

 

about the author:

Nan McCarthy is the author of the Since You Went Away series, Chat, Connect, & Crash, Live ‘Til I Die, and Quark Design. The Chat, Connect & Crash series, originally self-published, was acquired by Simon & Schuster and published in trade paperback in 1998. Nan regained the rights to the series and released new editions in 2014. A former magazine editor & technology writer, Nan founded Rainwater Press in 1992 and began selling her books online in 1995. Nan and her husband, a veteran who served 29 years in the Marine Corps, are the proud parents of two adult sons. Nan wrote Since You Went Away after taking a ten-year break from full-time writing to care for the family during her husband’s frequent military travels.

Cover design & illustration by David J. High, highdzn.com
Interior design by Kevin Callahan, BNGObooks.com + David J. High
Cover art from Shutterstock illustrations by rudall30, Radiocat, Lana_Samcorp, & Kevin Sanderson

 

 

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0 Buy: Since You Went Away (Part Four: Fall)

  • November 13, 2020
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Books · fiction · Shop · Since You Went Away (Part Four: Fall)


Since You Went Away, Part Four: Fall by Nan McCarthy (Rainwater Press, 2020) is now available from these booksellers:

 

 

 

Click on this link to order the paperback.

 

amazon logo.120x35 (small)Download_Chat_on_iBooks_Badge_US-UK_110x40_090513small kobo logo cropped

Click one of these to order the ebook.

 

New!The Since You Went Awayseries is now available from bookstores, libraries, & other retailers via Ingram distribution. Ask for the book by name at your local bookseller or library.

nook logo.100x44(small)

Due to ongoing technical issues at Barnes & Noble, the nook version of Since You Went Away is not yet available.

 

 

Follow this blog to be the first to receive updates about new books in the series.

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0 Looking for a way to honor veterans & celebrate the Marine Corps Birthday?

  • November 6, 2020
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Blog · Family · Military life

Since You Went Away: Part One now 25% off (print) & 50% off (ebook)

Honor our veterans and celebrate the Marine Corps Birthday this year by immersing yourself in the story of a modern-day military family. While most war stories focus on the drama on the battlefield, Since You Went Away shines a light on the battles being fought on the homefront. Suspenseful and surprisingly funny, Nan McCarthy creates a world that’s eminently relatable to readers both inside and outside the military.

From now until midnight November 11th, you can purchase Part One of the Since You Went Away series (print) for only $5.95 (normally $7.95 on Amazon & $14.95 in bookstores). Or download the ebook version on Amazon for only $1.99 (normally $3.99).

Set against the backdrop of the Iraq war in the year 2008, Since You Went Away lifts the curtain on the most challenging and emotional period in the life of a military family: deployment. Featuring jaw-dropping plot twists and a deeply human cast of characters, readers will find themselves immediately drawn into the realistic yet entertaining orbit of the Mahoney family, turning pages late into the night.

This offer is available exclusively on Amazon, through midnight November 11th only. Instead of thanking a veteran on Veterans Day, give yourself a chance to view the world through their eyes—and through the eyes of their families back home, who keep watch and wait.

Click here to order the paperback.

Click here to order the ebook.

about the author:

Nan McCarthy is the author of the Since You Went Away series, Chat, Connect, & Crash, Live ‘Til I Die, and Quark Design. A former magazine editor & tech journalist, Nan founded Rainwater Press in 1992 and began selling her books online in 1995. Nan and her husband, a veteran who served 29 years in the Marine Corps, are the proud parents of two adult sons. Nan wrote Since You Went Away after taking a ten-year break from full-time writing to care for the family during her husband’s frequent military travels.

Cover design by David High.
Cover art by Larry Jacobsen.

Since You Went Away, Part One: Winter
Nan McCarthy
(Rainwater Press, 2017) 172 pages
F I C T I O N
Part Two: Spring and Part Three: Summer now available. Part Four: Fall available later this month!

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3 You don’t have to believe the Atlantic article to know Trump doesn’t respect our military

  • September 4, 2020
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Blog · Military life · Politics

I’m the spouse of a vet who served 29 years in the Marine Corps. So when Donald Trump began publicly insulting service members and veterans early on in his presidential campaign, I took notice.

Nan McCarthy

A lot of people are saying that since Jeffrey Goldberg’s recent Atlantic article quotes anonymous sources (Trump: Americans who died in war are “losers” and “suckers,” Sept. 3, 2020), the entire article is “fake news.” I happen to disagree, but let’s pretend for a moment that Goldberg’s extremely credible piece of journalism is unverifiable. (Journalism 101: Just because an article quotes anonymous sources doesn’t mean the journalist doesn’t know who those sources are. In fact, quoting sources who wish to remain anonymous involves an even more exhaustive vetting process than if the sources had allowed themselves to be named.) 

So for the sake of argument, let’s consider only the things Trump has said publicly about the military — on the radio, on television, and on his own Twitter feed. Certainly you wouldn’t call the videotape of Trump saying John McCain “isn’t a war hero” because “he was captured” fake news, right? Just roll the tape from the 2015 Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa where Trump appeared when he was a presidential candidate. He also calls John McCain a “loser” earlier in that same tape, and a few days later (July 18, 2015 at 4:45 p.m.), Trump retweeted an article about the event with the headline “Donald Trump: John McCain is ‘A Loser.’” Whether or not you agree with John McCain’s politics, he served in the military 23 years and was a prisoner of war for six of those years. To say he is a “loser” and “not a war hero” shows a heartless disrespect for the thousands of surviving POWs still living among us, as well as the tens of thousands of American service members who remain unaccounted for.

I am the spouse of a veteran who served 29 years in the Marine Corps. So when Donald Trump began publicly insulting service members and veterans early on in his presidential campaign, I took notice. (It’s worth noting I’d been a registered Republican for 34 years until that point.) After Khizr and Ghazala Khan spoke at the Democratic National Convention on July 28, 2016, Trump belittled them in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, speculating that Mrs. Khan was not “allowed” to speak. (“If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say, she probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say, you tell me.”) Mr. and Mrs. Khan are Gold Star parents. Their 27-year old son, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, was killed in Baqubah, Iraq in 2004. In that same interview with Stephanopoulos, Trump likened the Khan’s sacrifice of losing a son in the war to his own experience running a business: “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I’ve worked very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs.” These are things Trump said on film. No anonymous sources. Words that undeniably came out of Trump’s mouth. By disrespecting one Gold Star family, he disrespected all Gold Star families, along with the memories of hundreds of thousands of service members who gave all.

In two separate radio interviews with Howard Stern in the 1990s, Trump compared his sexual exploits to serving in Vietnam. In 1993, while discussing the dating scene with Stern, Trump likened his efforts to avoid sexually transmitted diseases to being a soldier: “Dating is like being in Vietnam. You’re the equivalent of a soldier going over to Vietnam.” He did so again in 1997: “It is a dangerous world out there — it’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.” Listen to the audio. That is Trump talking. Comparing dating and having sex with serving in Vietnam. Then ask a Vietnam veteran if their time in Vietnam was like dating. Or better yet—ask the mother, father, brother, sister, child, or spouse of someone who died in Vietnam if they would say their loved one’s efforts to avoid getting blown to bits by not stepping on a land mine in the jungles of Vietnam is like trying to avoid getting an STD in the New York City dating scene.

Then there are the lies about Veterans Choice. The Veterans Choice Act, which allows veterans to seek care outside of the VA health system, was written by John McCain and Bernie Sanders and signed into law by President Obama in 2014. By some estimates, Trump has lied about and attempted to take credit for Veterans Choice more than a hundred times. During a rally appearance in June 2019, Trump is filmed saying “They’ve been trying to get that [Veterans Choice] passed for 44 years.” On August 8, 2020 Trump was filmed at his Bedminster, NJ golf club saying, “We passed Choice as you know, Veterans Choice. They’ve been trying to get that passed for decades and decades and decades and no president’s ever been able to do it. And we got it done. So veterans have choice.” At another filmed appearance Trump says, “The vets — the VA was in horrible shape. Now, they have choice. And nobody could get choice. John McCain couldn’t get it. Nobody could get it. They tried for years. They couldn’t get it. I got choice for the vets.” What’s interesting is that Trump could easily — and honestly — claim credit for extending and expanding Veterans Choice when he signed the Mission Act in 2018. But instead he chooses to continue insulting veterans and the people who care for them by blatantly lying about his role in Veterans Choice. Again, these are words Trump has been filmed saying in public, in front of an audience. No anonymous sources. Watch the tapes.

In a tweet dated October 12, 2019 referring to Green Beret Maj. Mathew Golsteyn who was charged with war crimes, Trump described service members as “killing machines”: “We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill.” This shows a complete lack of understanding of the American military, how it works, and what it stands for. (Trump also ended up pardoning two other convicted war criminals in addition to Golsteyn.) This lack of understanding on the part of the president, the Commander in Chief of our armed forces, further demonstrates a lack of respect for our service members by Trump’s failure to educate himself on something as basic as the Military Code of Conduct. No anonymous source here. The tweet is there for all to see in Trump’s Twitter feed.

There are so many other instances in which Trump has insulted our military on the record, in his own words, whether it be via television, radio, or tweet. That time he accused troops in Iraq of stealing money meant for Iraqis (“I want to know who were the soldiers that had that job, because I think they’re living very well right now, whoever they may be.”) Or that time he called Gen. James Mattis, a beloved Marine Corps general, “the world’s most overrated general.” Or that time he said “I don’t care what the military says” during a Fox News interview about renaming Army bases. Or how about when Trump said he “knows more about ISIS than the generals do.” Or when he described service members suffering from PTSD as “weak” and said “they can’t handle it.”

Go ahead, don’t believe Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic because, as you say, it quotes anonymous sources. But tell me, how do you discredit the audio recordings, the videotapes, the tweets coming directly from Donald Trump? If you didn’t already know before The Atlantic article came out that Trump doesn’t care about our military, you haven’t been paying attention.

 

 

Nan McCarthy is the author of the Since You Went Away series, the Chat, Connect, Crash series, and the memoir Live ’Til I Die. A former magazine editor and tech writer, Nan founded Rainwater Press in 1992 and began selling her books online in 1995. She started writing the Since You Went Away series in 2012, after taking a ten-year break from full-time writing to care for the family during her husband’s frequent military travels. Nan and her husband, a veteran who served 29 years in the Marine Corps, are the proud parents of two adult sons.

 

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0 New print editions celebrate the 25th anniversary of Chat

  • March 13, 2020
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Blog · Books · Chat: book one · Connect: book two · Crash: book three · fiction · Publishing · self-publishing · Writing
It’s been 25 years since I published the first edition of Chat in 1995. What better way to celebrate than by releasing print versions of the latest editions of Chat, Connect, & Crash?
Nan McCarthy

You might remember that, after I self-published Chat in 1995 and Connect in 1996, Simon & Schuster bought the rights to the trilogy and published it in trade paperback in 1998. (For a more detailed timeline of the series click here.) The books had a good run, and in 2012 I finally regained the rights to the series. In 2014 I released completely new editions of the books in ebook format, featuring the original, never-before-published ending to Crash.

Although I’d been publishing under the Rainwater Press imprint since the 1990s, things had changed a lot in the publishing industry when I decided to re-publish the trilogy in 2014. I was fairly well up to speed on print production but I’d never before published my own ebooks (which S&S had taken care of for me in 1999). The learning curve was high but if you know me you know how I love a challenge.

With the help of cover designer David High and ebook production wiz Kevin Callahan, the revamped editions of Chat, Connect, & Crash were released as ebooks in the spring of 2014. By that time I was two years into working on a new project (Since You Went Away) and eager to get back to it.

I told myself I’d worry about the print versions of Chat, Connect, & Crash later. Meanwhile I continued working on Since You Went Away, and what I thought was going to be one book turned out to be four (with Part Four coming out later this year). Having put my toe back in the publishing waters, in the last three years I’ve been able to simultaneously release each of the books in the Since You Went Away series in both ebook and print formats.

Now here we are, six years later, and I’ve finally had a chance to tear myself away from finishing Since You Went Away long enough to focus on releasing the print versions of Chat, Connect, & Crash (once again with the help of David and Kevin). Hard to believe it’s been 25 years since I first self-published that little black book called Chat. Sometimes—if you’re patient enough—things have a way of falling into place.

 

The 2014 editions of Chat, Connect, & Crash now available in print.

 

 Click here to purchase the print editions on Amazon: Chat, Connect, & Crash.

 

The Chat, Connect, Crash series is now available from bookstores, libraries, & other retailers via Ingram distribution. Ask for the book by name at your local bookseller or library.

 

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