It's not so much the question that offends me; it's that the people asking it don't seem to respect the moral seriousness of the question.

Part of the reason I'm writing it is to try to figure out what that is myself. It's not like I came back from Iraq and said, "We need to have a conversation, I know exactly what it is." It was just this sort of sense of something missing and then trying to write toward what that was, and to solicit from other people a sense of what that might be.

Fiction offered me tools that allowed me to approach a wider variety of issues than the events of my own life would.

Veteran art creates a meeting place between veterans and civilians, or simply between veterans with different experiences.

Writing fiction means putting a lot of what you believe about the world at risk, because you have to follow your characters.

Fiction is a place where people can meet, where they take the time to very seriously examine and think about the experiences of other people and about the sorts of moral decisions those characters are making.

There are two ways to tell the story. Funny or sad. Guys like it funny, with lots of gore and a grin on your face when you get to the end. Girls like it sad, with a thousand-yard stare out to the distance as you gaze upon the horrors of war they can't quite see. Either way, it's the same story.