Nan McCarthy

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

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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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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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2 I’m not a fan of surprise military reunion videos and here’s why

  • February 6, 2020
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Blog · Family · Military life
As the spouse of a vet who served 29 years in the Marine Corps, I’m not a fan of surprise deployment reunions, and I’m especially not a fan of surprise reunions that are filmed for public consumption.
Nan McCarthy

A lot of great conversations are happening on social media right now as a result of the surprise reunion at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address. Military spouses are speaking out on Facebook and Twitter and blog posts about their personal experiences with deployment reunions, which can be awkward and uncomfortable and stressful even when they’re not a surprise and / or being filmed on national TV. Just this morning The Washington Post published an article by Alex Horton on this very topic, quoting military spouse Rebekah Sanderlin, whose funny, sad, intimate, and powerful tweets on military reunions have so far received thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets.

As the spouse of a vet who served 29 years in the Marine Corps, and as a writer who’s been closely following issues related to military family life for more than a decade now, I’m happy to see this conversation taking place and gaining traction among the general public. And while I’m not a fan of surprise deployment reunions—and I’m especially not a fan of surprise reunions that are filmed for public consumption—I see only good things coming from the current conversation that’s happening as result of a nationally televised military reunion viewed by millions of Americans. It’s an excellent opportunity to draw the curtain and invite non-military families to learn more about what it’s like to love someone who happens to be in the military.

Surprise reunions are hard on military kids, especially younger ones. During a deployment, according to another Washington Post article by Tara Swords, military kids live in a constant state of heightened anxiety and experience a higher rate of emotional problems compared to their friends from non-military families. Explains child psychologist and retired Army general Stephen Xenakis (as quoted in the above WP article), even if their deployed parent is serving at a relatively safe forward operating base—in a non-combat-capacity—that distinction is difficult for younger kids to grasp. They do grasp that something terrible could happen to their deployed parent. Surprising already anxious kids in front of television cameras—even for a positive moment such as a reunion—only adds to their anxiety.

Surprise reunion videos sugarcoat and romanticize military life. They give the false impression that life magically returns to normal the moment the service member comes home. Yes, reunions are incredibly joyful, but they are also incredibly stressful, even for the adults.

While many veterans and military families adjust pretty well after a deployment, the reality for the military population at large is often darker and scarier than most people realize. Even I was caught off guard by the months-long struggles that ensued after my husband’s last deployment to Iraq in 2008, and he’d been in the military 26 years at that point.

Reunion videos gloss over the fact that once a deployed service member returns, in many cases their challenges are only just beginning. Deployments change people—both the service members and their families. Sometimes these changes are positive, but oftentimes they are not. Military families face higher divorce rates. Many veterans encounter unemployment, homelessness, and mental health issues including suicide (not to mention other serious health challenges as a result of physical injuries, including lost limbs and traumatic brain injury).

I don’t judge military families who like surprise reunions. I don’t judge people who like surprise reunion videos—they make me cry too. I would like to see more education and support for military families and veterans—not only during deployments & homecomings, but after the dust has settled, when service members and the people who love them are struggling to put their lives back together. If you’re interested in learning more about how to support veterans and military families, here are just a few of my favorite charitable organizations with military-related missions: Blue Star Families, Team Rubicon, Semper Fi Fund, Heart of America Stand-down.

On a final note, as Horton makes clear in his Washington Post article, let’s remember and honor the Gold Star Families who’d give anything to see their service member come home, no matter the circumstances.

 

(These photos were taken in 2008 at the end of my husband’s 2-week leave, midway through his 13-month deployment to Iraq. We were standing in front of our house at zero dark-thirty getting ready to make the dreaded trip back to the airport)

 

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1 Student Interview: Writing & the Writing Life

  • June 25, 2017
  • by Nan McCarthy
  • · Blog · Books · Interviews · Publishing · self-publishing · students/academic · Writing

Occasionally I receive inquiries from students who’ve been assigned the unfortunate task of writing a paper about one of my books and/or my life as a writer. I love chatting with students and I always make an attempt to answer student emails when time allows. Here’s an interview (updated & edited for length) with a college student who was tasked with writing a profile of someone in the arts & entertainment industry. She asked some great questions!

Nan McCarthy

Student: When was it, exactly, that you realized writing might be a career path you wanted to take, and why?

Nan: I learned to read when I was 4 and I loved the escape that books offered me. I was extremely introverted as a child and I also had a difficult family life due to my father’s alcoholism (he died of alcoholic cirrhosis when he was 39 and I was 9). I spent a lot of time alone in my room and writing was a natural extension of my love of reading. Being that I was shy, writing felt like a safe way to express myself and I enjoyed it a lot.

I attempted to write my first novel in 4th or 5th grade. It’s a futuristic story called “Forgotten,” about two friends who get left behind on Earth while everyone else on the planet has moved to Mars. (This was in the early ’70s, not long after Apollo 13, which no doubt ignited the imaginations of schoolkids everywhere.) It ended up being only a few pages, but I still have the handwritten story and the rough draft.

After that I started writing poetry and continued writing poetry through college. I still have all the poems I wrote. Most of them are very bad. (Though I did get a couple of poems published in The Daily Illini when I was in college, which is when I also received my first fan letter—which I also still have.)

In high school I was the editor of the yearbook and had a column in the school paper. I knew I wanted to be a writer but I was concerned about being independent and making enough money to live on my own (i.e., not with my mom & step-dad) after college. That’s why I chose to major in Advertising (at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). I felt Advertising was a solid career where I could use my creativity while also making enough money to be self-supporting. During my college summers I worked at Leo Burnett Advertising in Chicago (two summers) and at a smaller ad agency (also in Chicago) called G.M. Feldman & Co. (one summer).

Student: How did you get started?

Nan: My plan was to work at an ad agency in Chicago after graduation. Instead I got married three weeks after graduating (because love), and my husband (Pat, a lieutenant in the Marine Corps at the time) got orders to Okinawa, Japan for three years. It turned out to be a great experience for both of us, and I got my first job in publishing in Japan, where I was the editor of a weekly magazine called This Week on Okinawa.

After we returned from Japan I wrote my first novel, a fictionalized version of two Americans living in Okinawa called Knowing the Sky. This was in 1986-1987; I wrote it using an electric typewriter. The completed manuscript was a whopping 650 pages. Like my teenage poetry, my first attempt at a novel was also quite bad. (Resulting in a box full of rejection letters which currently reside in our basement.)

I went back to work in the magazine business where I was the managing editor of a computer magazine called Personal Publishing. This led to my freelance career as a tech journalist and eventually to my first published book, a four-color guide for graphic designers on how to use desktop publishing software (Quark Design: A Visual Guide to QuarkXPress). My career as a tech writer in the late ’80s and early ’90s turned out to be financially lucrative but it also had a high burnout rate. Even back then, the technology was developing so fast that the tech writers in the industry were expected to constantly churn out new stuff.

In 1995 I decided to take another stab at writing a novel, which is when I wrote the email epistolary novel Chat. (See my bio below for the rest of that story.)

Student: What would be a (short) self-written biography of yourself and your writing career?

Nan: Nan McCarthy is the author of Since You Went Away, Chat, Connect, & Crash, Live ‘Til I Die, and Quark Design. The originally self-published Chat, Connect & Crash series was released in trade paperback by Simon & Schuster in 1998 and widely translated. Nan later regained the rights to the series, publishing new, updated editions in 2014. A former magazine editor & tech 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.

That’s my professional bio. On a more personal level I guess I’d say I’m a mom, vet spouse, writer, sister, friend. I love my family and I’m still close with my three best friends from high school. I love reading, nature walks, our rescue dogs & cats, and classic movies.

Student: Can you describe your ideal working conditions?

Nan: A few years ago when I started working on Since You Went Away I moved my writing area from the basement office (which had no windows) to a little corner of our bedroom where there’s a big window. I discovered I need daylight to keep my spirits up while I’m working. My best writing time is during the day, what would be regular business hours for most people. I stick to a regular writing schedule—generally Monday through Friday, from about 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. or later. Depending on where I’m at in the writing process, I’ll write on Saturday and Sunday too if I can. If my husband is traveling out of town I’ll write later into the night. I write best when the house is empty and completely quiet.

Student: How would you describe your tone in writing?

Nan: I don’t set out to write with a certain tone in mind. I’m mostly concerned with telling the story. I work hard at making myself invisible to the reader so they can get lost in the story and experience what the characters are experiencing without being distracted by the writing itself. I appreciate beautiful writing in others but I like to get out of my own way. I’m a strong believer in using language as efficiently as possible. Whenever I can, I’ll choose the shorter, simpler, more precise word over a longer word. One thing I do concern myself with is rhythm. I read aloud everything I write and if I stumble over something, I keep rewriting until it sounds completely natural.

Working as a computer journalist has had a huge impact on my writing style. In tech writing, even the smallest detail such as a punctuation mark has to be precisely accurate. The way you structure a sentence has to be specifically engineered to help the reader understand and grasp incredibly complex concepts in the shortest amount of time. The language has to be straightforward and not the least bit confusing. I like to think of myself as a “word engineer.” People tend to think of writers as messy and haphazard individuals because we’re creative. But good writing involves logic, attention to detail, and problem-solving abilities, much more so than most people realize.

That said, I do love writing dialogue, which is why I love writing epistolary novels. Emails are a unique form of conversation, a hybrid of talking and writing. My latest novel (Since You Went Away) contains lots of dialogue in the form of recounted conversations within the emails themselves. In real life I love listening to people talk, paying close attention to the rhythm of people’s voices, the idiomatic expressions they use, and each person’s body language while having a conversation. I tend to be a boring dinner companion in restaurants because I often prefer eavesdropping on other diners’ conversations rather than talking to my husband (but he’s used to that by now).

Student: What has been your most successful publication and why?

Nan: Chat, Connect, and Crash are probably my most commercially successful books so far (not counting Since You Went Away which is currently being released in four parts). But I’d have to say, as far as my completed works, the book I’m most proud of is Live ’Til I Die: a memoir of my father’s life, which I self-published in 2002. It was a very personal project obviously, but I’m proud of the quality of the writing in that book as well as the research I did in interviewing my dad’s childhood friends, our remaining family members, and medical professionals who treat people with addictions. I feel good about the positive nature of the book, its sense of hopefulness in spite of the tragedy of a young man like my dad losing his battle with alcohol. Most addiction memoirs are success stories as told by the person who overcame their addiction, so Live ’Til I Die is unique in that way because my dad didn’t survive to tell his story. But even with its incredibly sad outcome, I was able to shine a light on the destruction of addiction while at the same time highlighting the positive aspects of my father’s character, showing his humanity and the lasting impact he left on the lives of the people who loved him. I also put a spotlight on the strength of my mom during those dark times and the positive actions she took in raising my sister and me so that neither of us ended up following our father’s path of addiction, even though we’re both genetically predisposed.

Student: What would you want prospective fans to know about your work?

Nan: My main goal is to give the reader a memorable and entertaining emotional experience. A secondary goal is to make it easy for the reader to keep turning the pages. I put a huge amount of effort into making my writing appear simple and breezy, but in reality there’s a lot going on under the surface. I want the reader to have fun reading my books. Even when the topic is serious—especially when the topic is serious—I like to inject humor in unexpected places. Plot is important too, of course, and I want the reader to feel propelled and compelled to find out what happens next. But even more important than plot (to me at least) is creating interesting characters the reader cares about. Three-dimensional, unique characters that make the reader lie awake at night wondering how things are going to turn out for them. Topically, I like to take on meaty subjects that are of current interest to people.

Student: What inspires you?

Nan: Other writers inspire me. I’m an avid reader and I read a wide variety of books, from narrative non-fiction to literary fiction and everything in between. I love marveling at an especially well-written passage, and I love hearing the success stories of other writers. I don’t believe another writer has to fail in order for me to succeed. In fact I believe the opposite—the more writers who succeed in stirring up excitement about books and reading, who are able to light a spark inside the reader, the better for all of us.

Movies inspire me. I love going to see new movies in the theatre and I love watching old movies on TV. I love old movies for the witty and intelligent dialogue. I go to the movie theatre regularly, either by myself or with friends or my husband. Movies are a chance for me to turn off my brain for a couple hours and escape the pressures of the outside world. I always come out of a movie inspired to write. For me writing a good story is a lot like writing a screenplay because you want the reader to be able to visualize what you’re seeing in your own head.

Music inspires me. I listen to certain songs when I’m getting ready to write a particular scene. (On my Pinterest page I have a board called “Music That Inspires Me to Write” where you can see some of the songs that inspire me. I also have Pinterest boards for some of my favorite movies and books.)

People inspire me. People I meet at parties, conversations between strangers I overhear in restaurants and other public places. I love people-watching.

I’m also inspired by current events. The novel I’m currently working on is about a military family during the Iraq war. The story involves issues such as PTSD among veterans and Islamaphobia. Those were big topics when I started writing the book in 2012 and they’re even more relevant today.

Student: Is all your work similar in nature, in general, or how does one novel differ from the next?

Nan: My current novel (Since You Went Away) is in the epistolary format which makes it similar to Chat, Connect, and Crash. The similarities end there however. Topically, I’d say my work is pretty varied. Quark Design is a computer how-to book. Chat, Connect, and Crash is a love story. Live ’Til I Die is an addiction memoir. My current project focuses on a military family during wartime.

There are similar themes that tend to pop up in all of my novels. One of them is alcohol addiction, obviously influenced by my childhood experiences. It’s not something I consciously set out to include in a novel, but it’s something I have intimate knowledge of and is part of the fabric of who I am. So the theme of alcoholism tends to weave itself naturally into the characters I create. In Chat, Connect, and Crash, the male protagonist (Max) is a borderline alcoholic. Live ’Til I Die is all about alcoholism. And in my current novel, one of the characters is a veteran suffering from PTSD who turns to alcohol as one of the ways he deals with the stress of transitioning from military life to civilian life.

Student: What has been the response to your work?

Nan: Largely positive. My favorite feedback is hearing from people who tell me Live ’Til I Die resonated with them, because so many people struggle with addiction or have a loved one who’s an addict. Although I’ve just recently released Part One of my new novel Since You Went Away, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the positive feedback so far. I’m working on Part Two now, and I hope I can keep that positive vibe going until I release all four parts. With Chat, Connect, and Crash, I was surprised and delighted to learn the books are required reading in some college communications courses. A few years ago I was contacted by a young woman in Italy who wrote her doctoral thesis on Chat. The Chat, Connect, Crash trilogy is a time-capsule of early Internet communication. Because the story takes place in the mid-1990s, it shows how email not only changed the way we communicate with one another but how it changed our relationships. I’m very proud of that. But there are also people who hated those books. And that’s OK. As a writer you have to learn to not take the negative feedback to heart. Worrying about that stuff will kill your creativity for sure. So that’s why I try to write the kind of books I myself would like to read. If the end result is something I’m proud of, that I know in my heart was the best work I could produce at that moment in time, I’m happy. The world would be a pretty boring place if everyone liked the same books.

Student: How do you think your personality is reflected in your work?

Nan: I like books with substance and humor that give people hope. I try to imbue those qualities in my own work. If other people think of me as a person who’s substantive, funny, and hopeful, that would make me happy.

Student: How do you think the industry has changed since you started?

Nan: Oh my gosh! That’s a story unto itself. I wrote my first novel on a typewriter. When I self-published Chat in 1995 and sold the printed books using an 800-number and an online order form on my first website, Amazon wasn’t even a household word yet. Now we have ebooks and ereaders and blogs and social media and self-publishing has become a huge thing for writers. Even traditionally published authors are expected to have a “platform” in which they promote their books via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. It’s nuts. And it’s great! I’m excited to be an independent writer and publisher with a lot of years of experience under my belt. When I started writing my latest novel, I didn’t even consider going the traditional route to get it published. I knew from the beginning it would be independently published. I love all aspects of that process—the sense of adventure, the creative freedom, and the risk-taking. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Neil Young: “You know, the future’s a huge, gigantic place. I have no idea what’s going on out there, I’m just going to walk into it and see what happens.”

(For a detailed timeline of the publishing history of Chat, Connect, & Crash, click here.)

Student: What do you hope to ultimately accomplish through being a writer?

Nan: I want to make people smile, entertain them, give them an escape from the stress of daily life, and give them hope.

I like the idea of leaving something of myself behind, of someone reading my words after I’m gone.

I want to keep growing, to be a better writer today than I was yesterday, a better writer tomorrow than I am today.

For me—like a lot of writers—writing is survival. It keeps me sane, makes me happy and joyful. Aside from spending time with my loved ones, the best feeling in the world is a day when I’ve written a lot of words.

Forgotten

copyright © 2017 Nan McCarthy

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