ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war. Weston likes to be called a chaotic good paladin and challenges anyone to disagree. After all, no one can really stand a goody two-shoes lawful good character. They can be so annoying. It's so much more fun to be chaotic, even when you're striving to save the world. You can argue with him about this and other things online at Living Dangerously or on Facebook at Badasswriter. All content of this blog is copywrited by Weston Ochse.

Friday, June 2, 2017

How The Publisher Almost Didn't Publish My Book

I have a new interview that's pretty thorough. I get more into detail about writing a sci fi trilogy, the craft of it, and why I chose PTSD as my subject matter.


But did you know that the books almost weren't published?


Both the publisher and I were worried about the amount of PTSD in the books. Something like this had never been done before. I mean we took it to the next level, describing suicides, how people wanted to hurt themselves, what it was that caused them to have PTSD in the first place. All of it. In technicolor.

We asked ourselves, were we doing something bad? Were we doing a disservice? Would readers appreciate it or would they think we were exploiting the issue? Moreover, would the reading public it? 

We felt a responsibility to not monetize other people's pain and asked ourselves, should we really publish Grunt Life and the follow on books?

Our decision didn't come lightly. As it turns out, we made the right decision.





To read more, check out the interview at My Life My Books My Escape.



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