Sterling Mace
06-12-11, 04:32 PM
Hello Marines. It's been a while since I've been in here, but I thought you fellas might like to read a something from my book that didn't make the final cut. I liked this part, but in the end it didn't quite fit.
As for the book, itself, it was finished on December 31st, 2010 - but I guess the wheels of the publisher's world grinds slow. I think we have the title now, but who knows.
At any rate, here's a short excerpt that was KIA.
There is the world you know, and there’s the world you don’t know.
I’m at a bar in Jamaica, Queens, and the war is finally over. And I’m steadily beating the hell out of this guy on the barroom floor—just one fist right after the other, into this clown’s face.
The thing is, I never wanted to hurt this guy, or anybody else in the world. Yet, inexplicably, the world always ends up forcing your hand—changing the scenery between the world you know, and the one you don’t. Sometimes, you’re just having a nice quiet drink, by yourself, and some mook comes up and punches you right in the jaw. He thinks he has you dropped; but you surprise him by staying on your feet.
So, now this guy is taking a real licking, and he’s on Okinawa with me, though he can’t fathom how he got there, or why. He asked to be there by throwing that first punch. You asked to be there by opening the first chapter. Now, you have the opportunity to look around your life and ask yourself if everything you hold dear, is in the real world, or is it in the one we began building on a foundation of Japanese skulls and bloody dungarees.
Because, to tell you the truth, I don’t feel very good about polishing off this jerk, in the middle of some crappy bar. But if this is what it takes to wash off the last stink of Okinawa, then I’ll take you, me, this sh!thead, and everyone else who cares to come along, through the final days of a war without end, just so we can come out on the other side of freedom.
The funny thing about right now, though, is that you never knew you’d be fighting in a war that ended days ago…months ago…sixty-five years ago…
But, now that you’re here, you can bet your ass we won’t be staying long.
Sterling G. Mace
As for the book, itself, it was finished on December 31st, 2010 - but I guess the wheels of the publisher's world grinds slow. I think we have the title now, but who knows.
At any rate, here's a short excerpt that was KIA.
There is the world you know, and there’s the world you don’t know.
I’m at a bar in Jamaica, Queens, and the war is finally over. And I’m steadily beating the hell out of this guy on the barroom floor—just one fist right after the other, into this clown’s face.
The thing is, I never wanted to hurt this guy, or anybody else in the world. Yet, inexplicably, the world always ends up forcing your hand—changing the scenery between the world you know, and the one you don’t. Sometimes, you’re just having a nice quiet drink, by yourself, and some mook comes up and punches you right in the jaw. He thinks he has you dropped; but you surprise him by staying on your feet.
So, now this guy is taking a real licking, and he’s on Okinawa with me, though he can’t fathom how he got there, or why. He asked to be there by throwing that first punch. You asked to be there by opening the first chapter. Now, you have the opportunity to look around your life and ask yourself if everything you hold dear, is in the real world, or is it in the one we began building on a foundation of Japanese skulls and bloody dungarees.
Because, to tell you the truth, I don’t feel very good about polishing off this jerk, in the middle of some crappy bar. But if this is what it takes to wash off the last stink of Okinawa, then I’ll take you, me, this sh!thead, and everyone else who cares to come along, through the final days of a war without end, just so we can come out on the other side of freedom.
The funny thing about right now, though, is that you never knew you’d be fighting in a war that ended days ago…months ago…sixty-five years ago…
But, now that you’re here, you can bet your ass we won’t be staying long.
Sterling G. Mace