I think I'm still just as conflicted about the war as I always was. On the one hand, I was a soldier carrying out his duty, following his allegiance to his country and to the mission at hand. But yet, there was always this unease plaguing me. "What are we doing here?" "Are we really fixing this country or are we doing more harm than good?" And the most pressing question: "How do we pull ourselves out of this quicksand?" I think I'm still there in that white space you mentioned, trying to get clarity for myself on what this war did to us as a nation.

If Fobbit leaves a reader feeling stranded in some bland in-between territory, then I haven't done my job. But having said all that, I didn't consciously write the book with a particular moral intent. I took what I experienced and processed it through the sausage factory of fiction. It's up to readers to interpret what's on the page - as is the case with any novel.

It's disingenous for me to say that I wasn't trying to write a moral novel. By its very nature as a novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit steps into the political conversation. There's no way to avoid that. I can appreciate that readers are probably going to line up on one side of the novel or the other. I hope they go to those polar extremes, actually.

I think it's possible - perhaps even necessary - to find comedy in any war. I mean, look at the brilliant work which was done by Joseph Heller and Richard Hooker (M*A*S*H) and Jaroslav Hasek (The Good Soldier Svejk - which I haven't read, but have heard was funny).

I think I'm still just as conflicted about the war as I always was. On the one hand, I was a soldier carrying out his duty, following his allegiance to his country and to the mission at hand. But yet, there was always this unease plaguing me. "What are we doing here?" "Are we really fixing this country or are we doing more harm than good?" And the most pressing question: "How do we pull ourselves out of this quicksand?" I think I'm still there in that white space you mentioned, trying to get clarity for myself on what this war did to us as a nation.

With a profession such as investing, people see the 'doing' as the buying and selling. It is difficult to come home from work, and answer your spouse's question, 'what did you do today?' with 'well, I read a lot, and I talked a little.' If you're not buying or selling, you may feel you aren't doing anything.

I wasn't trying to write a corrective novel - that would just end up tasting like medicine, and I tried to stay away from polemics as best I could. I think that, if anything, Fobbit is my way of showing readers there's another side to war - the backstage of combat, if you will. If you play a word association game with Americans and say "war," what's the first thing that comes to mind? Soldiers running across a battlefield through a hail of bullets, right? Rambo, smoke, explosions. In Fobbit, I hope readers will see something a little different