New Year. New SECTION 8.
Hi readers! Happy New Year!!!
It’s time for another short blog to start off 2017.
It is January which is always a boring month for me and Nancy. We stop drinking every January for the month. Sometimes if we’re really disciplined we go a couple or even three months of being boring.
Being Scotch-Irish, a writer and an old Marine this not drinking stuff is a terrible sacrifice. I knock it off for important stuff. I got boringly sober for my big test in Korea. I trained like I used to when I was training for the World Championships years ago. But then I barely got off the plane when my Kwanjangnim and a dozen Korean grandmasters started shoving half-gallon bottles of the best Scotch in the world at me. I discovered that it was a show of disrespect to not drink your entire large shot of straight booze when given to you by a Grandmaster. Which then left you with an empty glass. This immediately led to a lower belt rushing to my side, bowing and pouring another shot. And so it went until late each night. Of course, they weren’t testing or getting up at 0-400 each morning to train with a group of very fit younger Korean Masters who spoke no English. Great memories!!!
I quit for five months once and became so productive that I wrote an entire book. I was so afraid of being successful that I immediately had a shot of Tullamore-Dew to celebrate and the rest is history.
Speaking of writing it is time to report that I have just done a small rewrite of SECTION 8. I believe this book is some of my best writing and to tell you the truth I think that if it finds its audience SECTION 8 could become a hit. Writing humor isn’t easy and no matter how well it is written everyone has a different sense of humor. I for one hate bathroom humor but have friends who seem to love it.
Let me give you a small sample of the responses I’ve had to this book so far. I had a lady named Judy who loved this book so much that she told me she cried laughing so hard that she couldn’t read and made her husband read it to her each night as they lay in bed. My old neighbor, Mark told me he hated it and couldn’t finish it. Ray and Raymond Hinst, father and son who own and run Haslams Book Store, oldest and largest book store in the Southeast, both loved and praised the book. They said it is better than CATCH 22 and M.A.S.H. For me that is high praise. I know no one personally that reads or knows more books than these two guys. But my own family couldn’t get past the beginning!
So there it is. Most criticism was over the beginning. So I changed the beginning and put in a character chart. And the book now has a sophisticated map that was done by Cpl. Welcome George Many Numbers, tribal accountant. Oh, and SECTION 8 now has a new cover!
You can purchase the new edition of the book now on Kindle using the button above. The paperback edition will be available soon!
Well there it is readers. Please give the new SECTION 8 a read and see what you think. You will either laugh as hard as you’ve ever laughed at these wonderful characters or you’ll hate it in which case you should go see a Proctologist.
SEMPER FI