Overthinking

About the future

About the present

About the risks and percentages, genes and psychology

About the economics, outlooks, and history

About everything that could go wrong

Overfeeling

About the words

About the tone

About the loss, the pain, and the scars

About the motivations, the cycles, and the stigmas

About all the things that went wrong

And now regardless

It's over

And all I think and feel

Is empty

Nah, don't bother.

It's too much for you.

Nah, don't ask.

There's nothing left to do.

Nah, it's fine.

I'll be good on my own.

Nah, you keep it.

This place ain't my home.

Nah, I'm good.

Just going through drills.

Nah, I'll sleep.

Doc's given me pills.

Nah, I got friends.

Scattered but there.

Nah, I can work.

I'll make it somewhere.

Nah, this pain's dull.

I've felt it before.

Nah, it's alright.

I won't cry anymore.

Nah, I'm done.

I'll pack this all up.

Nah, you don't care.

Don't pretend to make up.

Nah, it's over.

Gotta move on and live.

Nah, you didn't feel love.

You only feel what you give.

Explode on your own

Don't take others out

Fly as high as you can

To reduce that fallout

Explode on your own

People don't need that shit

You can just walk away

Sometimes it's alright to quit

Explode on your own

Anger hurts you the most

You'll be fine over time

Bombs don't turn into ghosts

Explode on your own

Because even if you're right

It takes more work to rebuild

And there are better ways to fight

Fifty years ago I left the Navy. Seems like a good time to reflect.

* * *

My first memory of Da Nang is walking into the squadron’s Administration office and seeing lemonade in the water cooler.

“This place might not be so bad,” I thought.

It was hot, and I was thirsty after the long flight from Japan. The air was thick, warm, and heavy. You didn’t walk through it. You wore it. Like a sweater.

The Admin office had a fan, but all it did was redistribute humid, suffocating air.

While my fellow sailors were checking in, I walked to the lemonade cooler to get a drink. Nearby were those cone-shaped paper cups that don’t hold much, just enough to wet your mouth. I filled up my cone, flicked my wrist toward my face, and waited for the cool, bittersweet drink to splash onto my lips.

But it wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t bitter. It wasn’t even cool. The mystery liquid tasted like warm, gritty water. I studied the cooler the way you look for fish in a murky aquarium. The water was yellow, all right, but not from lemons and sugar. Floating in the cooler was sand. Fat, beige sand.

“Welcome to Vietnam,” I thought. “Welcome to the War.”

I’d arrived in-country in the spring of 1970, after the Tet Offensive, but well before the Fall of Saigon.

At the time my wife, Bunny, was involved in the peace movement. She’d told me that I should refuse to go to Vietnam. Make a statement. Take a stand. Problem was: When I joined the Navy, I knew Vietnam was a possibility. How could I suddenly claim to be a conscientious objector?

According to Navy records, I spent 11 months in Vietnam. That means I received hazardous duty pay 11 times. But if you add up the days, you’ll find I only spent about seven months in-country.

This was no accident.

I was on rotation from my home base in Atsugi, Japan, sometimes ending up in Guam, sometimes the Philippines, sometimes Da Nang. (Atsugi, by the way, is where Lee Harvey Oswald was stationed in the early 1960s. It was a nest for spy planes, like the U-2. My squadron, VQ-1, a reconnaissance outfit, was based there. Big planes. Long flights. Secret missions.)

The duty rotation was devised in such a way that the squadron ferried us to Da Nang just before the end of the month, which meant we’d each get a month’s worth of hazardous duty pay ($55 as I recall) even if we were only in-country three or four days.

My suspicion is that someone in the Pentagon came up with this arrive-early approach for morale purposes. A low-budget perk. And it was a great incentive, at least it was for me: Fifty-five dollars goes a long way when you don’t have to pay for food and board, and cigarettes cost just 15 cents a pack. At those prices, I smoked three packs a day. Mostly Pall Malls, non-filtered. In the red package. I wasn’t worried about my health. I figured a Viet Cong rocket would take care of that, and I could just sit back and enjoy life.

Excerpted from "Orange Socks & Other Colorful Tales."

https://www.amazon.com/Orange-Socks-other-Colorful-Tales-ebook/dp/B00VH6XR38

There are days of laughter

Days of joy

Then there are days of screams

And days of tears

When there were days of you

And days of me

Those soon became days of us

We became one

Now we hope there’ll be days of a third

To join us two

Then the cycle will restore to days of us with laughter and joy

bubbling thoughts

rising steam

about to boil over

almost to the edge

but not quite~

a peaceful front

chaos in the background

possibilities are just

possible problems

unspooling a ticker tape of memories

that will soon be erased

You are gone

Pain now resides

Something is empty inside

Like my heart deflated

I know you are oblivious

I know you cant tell

But im dying over here

Yet through it all

I think of old memories

Faded days, golden days

When we sat together

Laughed, talked

I didnt care where or when

Or what you said or did

I just wanted to be with you

I loved being with you

I love your smile

Your laugh

How you make me happy

Just by being there

You live right there

Right next door

But the distance there

Is so hard to ignore

I know i made mistakes

Accidentally pushed you away

I said i was sorry

But the damage was made

I never see you anymore

In the same room, but strangers

Different friend groups

New lives

Separate lives

You understood me when no one did

You stayed with me when no one did

But you left me when i left

And nothing can make it right

OK I know the Challenge asked about KDP but I’m going to pitch these guys AND KDP and list reasons: https://www.draft2digital.com/

I learned about these guys from this lovely author’s YouTube which I will credit/link here for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz1YC6_EAC8

So why I liked D2D is because they simplify the whole process and they also kinda “stick it to the man” (the “man” being Amazon - let’s face it, bookworms, they shut down our sanctuaries! these people are evil!) / you can use them to publish both on Amazon as well as a bunch of other ebook platforms including Barnes & Noble (I didn’t realize they still lived), Apple, Kobo/Rakuten Kobo, and Tolino. They even distribute to LIBRARIES!!! WOOOHOOO!! And if anyone is a Hoopla/digital library fan (as I’ve had to be during this pandemic) you can boldly support your librarians here too!

**The BIG caveat you gotta remember here though is if you DO select this platform to publish you CANNOT sign up for Kindle Unlimited. The point of Kindle Unlimited is Amazon wants to lock authors in to accepting exclusivity with them as the only publisher - they’re essentially paying you pennies to keep their monopoly. Now, I understand for some folks this pays more and you need that revenue so if you do go for it, don’t let anybody judge -- it’s still the biggest book marketplace out there -- but if you ever feel little guilt twinges maybe try D2D instead, or put a few titles on D2D and see how it goes.

The other reasons I like D2D is they truly love little self publishers - they send out emails with actually insightful, helpful tips for getting started as a new author. They’re really focused on helping people succeed, and that’s something you don’t get with the Amazon folk who treat you like another cog in their writer machine.

As the YouTube I listed above also notes? It is WAAAAAY easier to format your ebook with D2D. First of all you DON’T have to upload an epub file -- you can just straight up use your Word or Google doc file and THEN this beautiful platform will format it FOR you! They even have really cute little style options you can use to make your book “pop” a bit more, and when I tried it the interface felt much more intuitive than Amazon’s ekindle previewer. Once you format your book there you can also download - for free - an epub or emobi file to distribute to ARC readers or - if you wanna fight the evil Amazon separately - directly to KDP publishing too. The YouTube link above talks about why you might want to manage your Amazon separately, since it does have different promotion tools and it’s a big marketplace -- just remember if you do this DON’T SIGN UP FOR KINDLE UNLIMITED.

Last but not least what the D2D guys give you are 1) a free ISBN number which you can then plug into Amazon 2) a Universal Book Link that you can easily copy/paste that will allow you a one-stop shop to plug your book. No more giant Amazon links or “here’s all the places you can get your book” links - just one simple router. It’s beautiful.

[Note: If you do publish on KDP separately then you’ll have to use two - the evil and the non evil links, mwahahaha]

I can’t plug these guys enough, honestly, I think they’ve really captured the pain of self publishing along with the desire to wiggle out from under the big publishers’ grip.

If anyone else has tried them out post a comment!