DogSS of War is back in paperback! Here is the cover. One could even click on said cover to order said book, if one was so inclined…

I like the cover and the formatting of this new version. The formatting makes the POV changes more apparent when it switches between characters. Otherwise, it was interesting to go through the book again. At one time I had been through the book so many times I had it practically memorized. It is hard to edit when one has that level of familiarity with the material because the reading part of your brain is two steps ahead of your thinking brain. It gets to the point where you whisk through a sentence like “their going 2 the mall tooday” without noticing any of the problems. Okay, it’s not quite that bad, but it is pretty close.

At this point, I’m not sure what else to say about DogSS of War. It was basically me writing something I would like to read. I am trying to think of things that have never been brought up, little bits of useless trivia about the book. For example…

Some may notice that DogSS of War borrows heavily from iconic sources from time to time within its pages, like, say, the film Full Metal Jacket. That was 100-percent intentional, considering where the book ends up. I even got to make a vague reference to Raiders Of The Lost Ark, which was one of my favorite things to do in the book. So I knew what I was doing when DogSS of War did things like that. Can I remember exactly what my point was? No, but I remember having a point. (Cut me some slack. I wrote the first draft over 15 years ago now.)

What else do I remember?

I remember how writing chapter thirteen (I think it is still chapter thirteen in the new version) took forever. I think I must have spent about two weeks on the first draft of that chapter. It is an action scene that follows multiple groups through multiple locations. It almost broke my brain.

I remember grinding through history book after history book as I wrote, like The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Himmler biographies and the like. I remember I’d have a notebook beside me as I read those books. Whenever I found an interesting passage, which was a lot, I would write down the page number. Then when I finished the book, I would sit down at the computer, go to each of those pages and write down what I found interesting. These snippets served as notes throughout the writing process.

At first I thought the GIs would be going after diamonds, very much in the style of Kelly’s Heroes, but with a supernatural twist. Then I distinctly remember sitting on the lawnmower one day (I had to mow lawn for about four hours every week) and having the realization that it didn’t have to be diamonds. It could be something more. I think that was the lynch pin that DogSS of War swung upon. It went from being pure pulp to something that I hoped was more than pulp, the best kind of pulp — pulp with depth.

I remember getting the email that said DogSS of War was accepted. I told my family and a couple of other people, but that was all. I had to wait almost two years from acceptance for it to be published. I thought it would change my life up some, but it didn’t change it up much at all. I remember being confused with the process, working with a lawyer and marketing and the whole experience was a bit discombobulated, but it was a learning process (marketing is probably the most important part). At the end of the day nothing changed extrinsically, but some neat intrinsic things came out of DogSS of War due to the Internet. A guy read it who turned it into a screenplay and is trying to sell it in Hollywood. I ended up having some fun conversations with an amateur volleyball player who read it and made a comment about it online, which caused me to rethink my approach to violence in the book. Stuff like that, which I never saw coming.

At the end of the day, holding a book I wrote in my hands is maybe the most fulfillment I feel when it comes to endeavors of labor. I am happy to be able to hold DogSS of War in my hands again.