Did I mention that I'm also an aspiring science fiction writer?

Due to the problems that the Military has been having with mil-blogs lately, my chain of command is forced to take a keen interest in Graham's Journal. My commander is going to check my blog to make sure that I haven't violated OPSEC. I'm pretty sure that I haven't posted anything I wasn't supposed to. But just to be sure, I'm not going to talk about Iraq today.

In case you haven't noticed the big-ass image link in the right column, I have another blogspot website that contains the entirety of my first science fiction book, The Seventh Day, an end-times novel. If you click over there, you can read my novel for free. The copyright is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

I've always wanted to be a writer, even when I was in elementary school. In late 2002, I decided that I was going to go for it and write an entire novel, no procrastination, no quitting. I finished it late 2004 and made a few half-assed attempts to get the interest of a publisher before I was shipped out to Kuwait in January 2005.

I was going to wait until I returned to the States to try to sell my book for professional publication. But I soon realized that waiting wasn't going to work for me because one, I'm impatient, and two, let's be honest, there's a small chance I won't make it back. So I decided to self publish. I published over the internet, and also through Cafe Press, which allows authors to sell copies of their book on the cafepress.com website. The books they make through POD (print on demand) technology are pretty high quality.

The Seventh Day is an exciting techno-thriller that takes place in the year 2030, in a future world that's quickly being changed by biotech, nanotech, and artificial intelligence technology. I've called my book, "an end-times novel" because it is also about The Apocalypse.

If this sounds interesting to you, then I hope you check it out. You can download the book as a .pdf or .rtf file.

Milblog fans may be disappointed. I conceived this book before I even joined the Army. So it has nothing to do with war. But I already have a lot of ideas rolling around my head for my next book. When I get home, I plan to start writing my second novel, which will be military science fiction!

Welcome Swiss and Germans

This is kind of old news, but a couple weeks ago, a reader e-mailed me to let me know that my Journal had appeared in a popular German Newspaper! It was an article on Greyhawk of the Mudville Gazette and his Milblogs ring. My milblog was one of the ones mentioned in the article found here.

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/,tt4m2/computer/artikel/630/58572/

I ran the article through Altavista Babel Fish. (It's in German.) Here's a quote.

So one must look for one while for really interesting entries and photos. But it gives. For example in "Graham's journal" of Graham wolf, which describes among other things, as it and the members of its unit with the death of three comrades become finished: "I do not believe yet that I am prepared for death."

So I know it's late, but if there are any more German readers still passing through, let me say Welcome!

Also, a reader wrote me and said that he found my blog in a newspaper in Zurich this past weekend. I haven't been able to find that article. But if there are any Swiss readers, I welcome you too. :-)

Hell

Baghdad is Hell. That's the only way I can think of describing a place where mini 9-11's happen every day. We have demons imported from Yemen and Saudi Arabia, following the commands of a Jordanian Devil. Today, Stars and Stripes posted a letter from a retired Master Gunnery Seargent suggesting that we utilize bullets dipped in pigs' blood. I'm begining to think it's not such a bad idea.

A few days ago, my platoon, third platoon was conducting a mission in Baghdad on the East side of the river. We got word that sixth platoon was receiving small arms fire at a traffic circle also on the East side, not too far from us. We went to help them.

We were locked, cocked, and ready to rock. We tore through the afternoon traffic across downtown Baghdad in record speed. It was kinda fun. I knew it was pointless, though. By the time we got there, it would all be over.

When we got to the traffic circle, it was silent. No small arms attack. Must have been a miscommunication. As I had suspected, sixth platoon was hit by by a VBIED, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, a truck bomb.

It was black. Debris was everywhere. The area was littered with the burned out husks of cars and minivans. We towed the damged vehicles in sixth platoon's convoy to a fall back point. After fixing an SUV and putting a severely damaged humvee onto a wrecker, we headed back to the Green Zone. On the way, we passed through the same traffic circle. I got a second look at the holocaust aftermath. I knew that many people had to have died here. I saw islands of color in the blackness, piles of pulverized fruit lying on the ground.

See, this traffic circle is used as a popular market area. Every time we pass through this circle, which is quite often, there are dozens and dozens of merchants selling poduce, clothes, trinkets, all kinds of stuff from storefronts, carts, or sometimes just a blanket laid on the ground. This place is always packed with people. Yes, many of them children. When I talked to my comrades later, they said that they had seen body parts strewn across the ground. I hadn't seen any. I talked to First Seargent. He showed me a picture of a destroyed minivan in which an entire family had perished inside. He said that he had seen child-sized hands and fingers on the ground. I don't know how I missed such a thing. Perhaps my brain subconsciously edited out such horribleness.

We got back to the FOB. It was only then that I learned that the sixth platoon's lead gunner didn't make it. We've lost another one of our brothers.

More on this later.