Act of Valor: Tribute or Recruitment Ad?

Act of Valor was released this past weekend to what was apparently a receptive public given its weekend gross of nearly $25M, beating out others starring considerably better known Hollywood celebrities. The only people I recognized from AoV were Roselyn Sanchez (Rush Hour 2) and Nestor Serrano (apparently in several movies but I couldn't name one of them... but I did, at least, recognize him).

AoV was an action movie but starred real heroes instead of Hollywood stereotypes. Active Duty Navy SEALS played the main roles in the movie, and the results were much as you'd expect. None will win awards for their portrayals, since they 'acted' just like normal people would given the situation. There was no 'high drama' or overly-strained dialogue. It was real people showing people what they do for a living.

And, that's the problem apparently. Had this been any other cookie-cutter Hollywood product starring Stallone or Damon or a squad of One Tree Hill alumni, critics would have simply given it 3 stars, commented on its lack of large-scale resolution, and moved on. But, the simple fact that these guys were actual soldiers turned AoV' into a political debate months prior to its release.

I've read comments disparaging the service. I've read articles discussing the fact that Hollywood is promoting a 'war agenda' and 'Republican ideologies.' I've read how people weren't going to see it, because it is a recruitment tool and nothing else.

I couldn't disagree more with that oversimplification. When has Hollywood ever promoted anything Republican? Put Jeremy Renner in the lead role, and no one even mentions anything. Then, it's simply an action movie.

In this day and age, anyone with a keyboard or a blog (coughcoughcough) feels they have the stage to spout hyperbole and hypocrisy. It's no more a recruitment ad for the Navy than The Expendables was for hired guns or S.W.A.T. was for LA policemen. Unfortunately, our society has reached the point that individuals throw their political agendas and leanings at every topic and assume the same of everyone else.

Don't get me wrong, I fully expect there are people on the other side of the political spectrum that support the movie solely because the other side hates it... or solely because active-duty service members are in it. These are just as faulty arguments in my eyes.

The movie has amazing action set pieces and serious moments regarding our soldiers and the trials they are made to endure. It makes you thankful for the members of our armed forces and gives you a glimpse of a small part of what they have to go through on a daily basis, often without any fanfare or media coverage.

There isn't a huge celebrity there to save the day. There isn't a huge, last-second save of a critical symbol of Americanism like the Statue of Liberty or White House. There are just guys, doing their jobs, and dealing with the aftermath.

If you politicize, marginalize, or assign some agenda to this movie, that's on YOU... not the movie, and you're doing yourself a disservice.

_

[Excerpt #5] The beginnings of the final battle...

It's been a while, so it must be time for another excerpt from my novel, Number 181. This is from the beginnings of the final, climactic fight in the Swiss countryside. Kidd's beginning to realize that his instincts are worth heeding and that he may have skills he never new about. Resolving these new discoveries with his need to get Alexis to safety, Shawn begins the book's the final act...

Kidd stood at the doorway listening for any sounds from the hallway. The initial barrage of gunfire rattled the walls for several minutes, but now the air was cut by infrequent coughs as whatever firefight going on outside the room settled into a relative calm. The rip of fully automatic weapons had assaulted their senses, but now the individual pops seemed explosive in comparison. Kidd’s anxiousness grew with each pop until his nerves forced him to action.

His ears rang, and his throat and eyes burned.

He couldn’t breathe.

Over his shoulder, he glanced at Alexis. “Stay here.”

“No.”

Kidd turned fully. “What?”

“I said no. I’m going with you.” She had laced her shoes and straightened her clothes. “You aren’t leaving me.”

Kidd started to speak but couldn’t come up with a reasonable argument. In fact, given what the Marines were tasked with, or more accurately what they weren’t, he didn’t want to leave her behind.

“Fine. But, stay behind me.”

He pulled the door open quickly, intending to get to a rear exit as fast as possible. But, he had assumed, or rather hoped, that the quiet indicated an empty hallway. Instead, a dark figure was striding down the hall, reaching the doorway just as Kidd opened it.

The unexpected apparition caused Kidd to flinch. The assailant had on blood red fatigues so dark that Kidd initially took them for black. Fancy night vision gear and a black cap covered enough of the face that Kidd couldn’t make out anything about his features, though it was definitely a ‘he.’ The guy was easily over 6 feet tall and built for power, the shirt cutting a large frame and pants defining thighs that were as thick as Kidd’s torso.

Kidd took all this in immediately and reacted. And, fortunately for him, his eyes were well acclimated to the darkness. The night vision equipment the stranger wore, while helpful in dark spaces, had limitations in tight spaces as it greatly hindered peripheral vision. Kidd’s fist flew toward the figure, the man sensing the door being opened but reacting too late.

His right hand connected with the man’s jaw as he turned and pain exploded down Kidd’s arm. A loud crack virtually assured Kidd of a broken finger on the same hand that he had cut days earlier, but he didn’t have the luxury of worrying about it. The man reeled back a half step but stayed on his feet. His stumbling turn swung his weapon toward the doorway, and Kidd instinctively reached for it as the man’s hand opened slightly around the grip. Punching it upward and spinning it around the trigger finger, Kidd rotated the gun through vertical so that it ended – upside down – pointed at the man’s upturned chin. Kidd shoved his finger in with the soldier’s and pulled.

Sales Proceeds to the Green Beret Foundation

As many of you know, I've become pretty involved with GORUCK, a company with deep ties to our military community (in specific, our Green Berets). Through my time slogging through mud and muck with some of the best people I've met, I gained even more respect for returning soldiers and their families than I already had, significant given that I am from a military family myself.

My novel, Number 181 cough(GetItHere)cough, is influenced by the military community and history, so I made the decision to donate proceeds of the sales to the Green Beret Foundation.

The pot is up to about $400 to send in that direction, and it's nice to know that the kind words and reviews people are sending about the book itself are complemented by the goodwill of the donation.

Keep reading and keep enjoying, whether it's my book or another!

_

First Review of my novel, Number 181...

The first comments are coming in for my book, Number 181 (grab a copy here!), and I couldn't be more pleased.

I received a note from Air Force Captain Amber Smith, who really enjoyed the book, saying it made it "easy to picture the story as it's happening" with "some beautiful analogies... It's a novel, but it made me think a lot of real-life scenarios."

Anytime a writer puts thoughts down on paper, he has an image in his head of what he's trying to convey. I, for one, was curious to hear how others interpreted my words... what pictures would be painted on each of my readers' individual imaginations. Having such a strong military theme pervade the novel, I was especially sensitive to the thoughts of our military community once they had finished it. To hear such kind words eases some of those anxious thoughts.

And, then I read something from her that really struck a cord with me.

Early in the book, there is a scene that really seeks to personalize the attacks that are central to the story... a strong comment on how individual feelings are overshadowed by media and hype, sensationalism and posturing. "This phrase really made me put the book down and think about it," Amber says. "We've had several incidents in the Air Force this year that really stood out in light of this phrase. When the helo went down in Afghanistan with all the SEALS on it, everyone focused on them. We had 4 special operators on there as well, but they were barely mentioned in the small print on the news. We also lost 9 folks at the Kabul airport shooting in April."

"It just makes me wonder if that's how the NOK [next-of-kin] feels when their loved one is killed among others."

"I loved that part," she says. "Really made me think."

There are few kinder words for an author to hear than that your novel caused a measure of philosophical introspection or self-reflection. She felt strongly enough on the subject to offer up a contact in Afghanistan that expressed interest in the novel, as well. It'd be nice to get some copies over to ground forces in the Middle East or to the USO to share...

It's all about getting the word out. The more press there is, the more the books sells. More sales.... more money to the Green Beret Foundation. Let's keep it going!

Green Berets, GORUCK, and proceeds from the sales of my book

If you aren't already aware, I will be donating the proceeds from initial sales of Number 181 to the Green Beret Foundation (see the link on this page to buy the book). My ties to the military go way back, but I've become more involved with the GBF in recent months thanks to my experiences with the GORUCK Challenge. The GORUCK is a difficult thing to describe to others. It's part survival training and part obstacle course, part endurance race and part mental punishment.

Led by an active-duty Green Beret, the GORUCK is designed to build leadership skills and foster teamwork. I participated in the Savannah, GA challenge in October 2011.

26 members
20 miles
13 hours

We waded through the Savannah River. We waded through disgusting lakes. We carried each other, literally and figuratively, for 20 miles through the Savannah night, and it was one of the most challenging, most rewarding things I have ever done. I've run marathons and slogged through years at the gym, but the GORUCK is all about taking yourself to the limits and pushing through them with the help of friends, whether you knew them before that night or not.

Each class is different. Each cadre (the active duty Green Beret leading) is different. About 20 of my group were active-duty or retired military. All were good people.

Check it out. Sign up. And, grab a rucksack full of bricks. Oh, did I forget to mention you have to carry along all your equipment...?

We had to carry a telephone pole.

For 6 miles.

Seriously, it's fun! I swear!

www.goruckchallenge.com

We started at 1am in one of the nondescript squares in downtown Savannah. I met the 25 other poor decision-makers for the first time the night before at the RuckOff, an informal event designed to tempt the participants with alcohol mere hours before the event (fight the urge!). There was a group of about a dozen that had come together from a gym in Lakeland. Note: There is a definite benefit to knowing your classmates beforehand, but it's not necessary. It was here that we gained our coupons, the items we would have to carry in addition to our brick-filled rucks. Five 5-gallon fuel tanks of water. A 25-foot coil of rope. A case full of straps, 'biners, and sapper manuals. Six cases of beer. Two telephone poles.... hang on, we'll get there.

We started off toward the bar district for some "Good Livin'" down the riverfront in full view of drunk revelers (part one of the GORUCK requirement: Bar District). We spent hours here burning through lunges, squats, and push-ups. Three hours in, we had gone about a mile. After being routinely harried by Georgians (I think, they slurred so badly we couldn't tell), we headed into the Savannah countryside, jogging miles into the dark without the calming knowledge offered by a watch or GPS. Dan, our cadre, did his best to entertain us with periodic stops for brutal training: bear crawls, crab walks, crossfit squats.

Unexpected entertainment came in the form of two cordoned off intersections where local law enforcement had established crime scenes (two scenes for three homicides total... Who had three murders in the office pool?).

After a short stop to select the two telephone poles we would be forced to lug around a lake (part two of the GORUCK requirement: Carry a log), we carted the logs and our coupons on our shoulders around an unnamed lake for a mile. Once the loop was completed, we proceeded to do pyramids with the poles (10 presses/curls/push-ups/flutter kicks, 9 presses/curls/push-ups/flutter kicks, 8...).

After setting up a observation post and as the sun began to rise, we proceeded to numb our now-aching bodies with beers (finally, we could lighten the loads we carried). Twenty blessed minutes of bonding and drinking later, we picked up our coupons (log included) and plunged into the lake (part three of the GORUCK requirement: You're gonna get wet. Wading into the Savannah River at the riverfront doesn't count). Up to our necks in pond scum, we waded a hundred yards to the other side, squats and overhead presses along the way.

Once clear of the lake, our plan had us on a return trip to Savannah. Six miles. With the telephone pole. By now, the early morning joggers and dog-walkers were awake and offering looks that were part sympathy and part I'm-Calling-The-Police. After a six-mile trudge through suburban Georgia, with a freaking telephone pole, we were tasked with one last action: carrying each other a mile to an 'evac site.'

A 3-mile jog later, we neared our finish point. But first, Dan sat us down in a very crowded and 'curious onlooker'-filled park and explained to us the role the Green Berets play in the defense of our nation and the importance of teamwork and brotherhood (Note: We did have two kick-ass females in our group). Buddy carries back to the square we started at 13 hours prior, and we were done...

... minus a terrorist threat that was caused by the discarding of our bricks in a crowded downtown area and calls to local police and the FBI after we had left. But, that's a story for another post...
_

[Excerpt #4] A piece from further along...

I've gotta say, I'm a big fan of including excerpts from Number 181 in these posts. Since I know the context of each and its criticality to the story, it is that much more interesting to me. I think each one is a window into the story and the novel's style, but it only hints at everything going on in the scene. It's a lot of fun to pull out excerpts that inform and tease...

Kidd skidded around the corner and sped off east down the hallway. His initial frantic dash had been in order to outrun the gunfire, but now he sprinted toward the doorway to the study in the hopes of getting there before the three flankers hit the far corner. He angled hard toward it, twisting around a corner hall table, and reached for the handle of the door, throwing a shoulder at it at the same time. The door swung open, and he crashed into the room, diving to the ground and expecting bullets to chase him in as they hit the doorframe. No sounds reached him, though, and the door remained in one piece. Not knowing how much time he had before the bad guys turned down the corridor, he hurriedly jumped up and dragged his bag down off the bench.

He ripped the zipper open and tossed the arm and head across the room like they were packing material. Grabbing the pistol and knife, he returned them to the holster and sheath on his chest, already feeling more comfortable. As quickly as he could, he drew the G36 from the bag and made sure it was loaded and on its semiautomatic setting. A glance back at the open doorway showed he still had no visitors. That was odd.

Sighting down the optics, he leaned out and covered the distant, shadowy corner. He could hear the thunder from the firefight in the foyer, but in front of him, there was nothing. Warily, he began down the corridor, crouched and hugging the inner wall. A minute later, he had reached the corner without encountering any signs of the flankers. Around the corner, though, he could hear a soft, rustling sound.

Carefully, he slid his eye around the edge. The flash he caught as the attackers opened fire nearly blinded him. A hail of bullets peppered the wall to his right as they let loose with a determined barrage. Though he didn’t chance another look, they poured fire at the corner. In the split second that he had a view, he knew why. While two had covered the corner with their weapons, a third had affixed a stubby box to one side of the hallway three-quarters of the way down. He was inserting something into the bottom of it, and Kidd needed no training to know an explosive when he saw it.

[Excerpt #3] About halfway through Number 181...

Below is another excerpt, this one from about halfway through Number 181. Kidd's been through a lot by this point in the story, so portraying him as confused and dazed isn't difficult. Here, however, it's been taken to an entirely different level thanks to an... event... that he doesn't yet understand.

Screams reached Kidd’s ears, their high-pitched whine slowly dropping to an identifiable roar. The muted rumble sounded distant and unreal. He strained to identify the direction they were coming from as they bounced off each of the surrounding walls. It took several moments before he realized they were his own.

His ears rang, and his throat and eyes burned.

He couldn’t breathe.

His first few attempts to take in a breath forced debris down his throat, but whether the hard, dusty pieces were rock or glass, he couldn’t tell. He rolled over onto his stomach and forced himself to cough violently. Detritus scratched his throat like sandpaper, and his violent throes caused a cascade of dust to pour off his head. The ringing continued incessantly, only to be joined by the far off sound of pops and alarms. Carefully, he brushed the area around his eyes clear, but even that small effort caused grit to slice the skin across his brow and cheek. He finally felt he had removed enough to risk opening his eyes, and he found the floor cracked and covered in destruction. Orange lighting crossed his vision as emergency lighting flashed across the room from the corridor outside the door. The lights above him in the room were out.

Outside the door.

Kidd climbed to his knees. There was no more door. He saw pieces of it scattered around the room, but the doorway had been completely obliterated, the frame gone. Now, a gaping hole was all that remained of that entire side of the room.

Flashes down the corridor accompanied the distant pops, and he suspected he was hearing electrical explosions on the fringes of his mind. He tried to shake some sense back into it, but that brought only more pain, so he collapsed against the back wall of the room and watched shredded bits of papers and dust rain down around him. Some stuck to the dozens of small lacerations he saw on his arms. He figured the rest of him was no better off and looked up in time to see someone sprint past the gaping hole at the other side of the room, their steps muffled.

Kidd stirred. Lights flashed in and out as he brought himself to his feet. Time was passing slowly… or was it quickly? Flecks of debris flitted across his view as he struggled toward the nonexistent wall. Glancing down the hallway, he was blinded by the orange glow of emergency lighting advancing across the sea of glass. The rotating amber glow swept across the wall and floor in a wide arc, and the reflected light scattered down the hallway toward him. Using the wall to stabilize himself, Kidd found out why. Glass from the opposite windows had blown out with such force that it embedded in the dry wall. The light danced. It was horrifically beautiful.

[Excerpt #2] Flashback

The novel has few quiet moments, and the majority tend to be sadness-tinged, self-evaluations. However, here is an excerpt from a chapter about a quarter of the way through the book that offers a critical moment in the protagonist's past in order to better understand his current situation. I've never been to this bar, but it's the kind of place I can only imagine... seemingly between worlds. Is it due to the mysteries of the bar itself? Or, is it due to the company one keeps?

He was sitting across from Alexis in a dim, dive bar off 4^th street downtown. It was their first date, and Shawn had tried to impress with a fancy dinner at a classy Italian place. But, the place had been booked, and they spent nearly two hours waiting for a table to open up. Neither of them noticed, the appetizer and drinks they ordered at the bar all the dinner they’d need. At Alexis’ suggestion, they moved to a quiet place around the corner, one of her favorites, lost in their conversation.

The jazz club was set back in an alley off one of the dark parking lots, its door a rusted steel vault. The only indication it was anything other than an abandoned rental space was the slim, mousey man that asked to see an ID as they neared. No name hung above the door, and the vault opened to reveal a pulsing haze, dark and melodic.

Twenty feet wide and miles deep, the bar swayed with the rhythm of the quiet tones, the trio of musicians in the near corner melting into the patchwork brick walls. They sat clustered around a dark black table stained with years of history and which mirrored the other furniture tossed throughout the club. Their three beers joined countless empties on the table, and the entire scene appeared to be as much a part of the bar as the stools or dark paintings adorning the walls. The music coursing through the air was better than Shawn had heard short of the old LPs he remembered his father listening to on rainy evenings.

It gave the impression of a private party. People dotted the tables and stools along the rough oak bar on the opposite wall, each lost in their own conversations and worlds. At one table, a group of four laughed silently to some unheard story. At another, a lone gentleman sat staring toward the wall sipping a cocktail. At yet another, an elderly couple sat in silence, seemingly content in simply being there together. They each melted into the bar. Part of it. Shawn felt he stuck out, an interloper in the scene of players that fit in such a way that implied they never left.

Shawn loved it. He breathed in the atmosphere and knew he wanted to remember it, his first experience with it. Alexis grabbed his hand and broke the spell, leading him to one of the back tables as they melted into the club’s canvas.