ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war. Weston likes to be called a chaotic good paladin and challenges anyone to disagree. After all, no one can really stand a goody two-shoes lawful good character. They can be so annoying. It's so much more fun to be chaotic, even when you're striving to save the world. You can argue with him about this and other things online at Living Dangerously or on Facebook at Badasswriter. All content of this blog is copywrited by Weston Ochse.

Monday, January 21, 2013

RIGHTEOUS, Story about PTSD, Makes Preliminary Bram Stoker Award Ballot


My short story RIGHTEOUS made the nomination list for the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction. Even though I've been through the process six times before, it's always kind of interesting that people care enough about my writing to read it and vote on it. Especially this story, which is one that was a catharsis for me as I wrote it. I can remember penning the final few pages in Sandy, Utah, in a hotel room. With all my time in the military it was difficult for me to write a story about a father who is stalking the man who recruited his son, the same son who never made it back from Iraq. RIGHTEOUS is a story about PTSD. It's a story about a thing called Secondary PTSD. It's also a story about guilt, both shared and individual, both human and that of our nation. It's a story about America's love of war. And of course it's a story about an insane father who talks to his dog. And of course, because it's a story written by me, the dog talks back.

Here's a very small sampling--

Five sentences changed my life forever.
Yes, I’ll marry you, is how Susan changed my life.
It’s a boy, is how a wide-hipped, chippy-eyed nurse changed my life.
Metastasized means that your wife’s breast cancer has spread to her lymph nodes is how the medical community gave up trying to save Susan and changed my life.
On behalf of a grateful nation, I present this flag as a token of our appreciation for the faithful and selfless service of your loved one for this country, is how a straight-faced Uncle Sam socked me in the heart.
Then one night I was three sheets to the wind with a bottle of Cutty Sark and Pulp Fiction blasting on television. When Samuel L. Jackson screamed the words from Ezekial 25:17, I sat up and was beset by a moment of clarity as he talked about the path of a righteous man. Then he said the words that started me on this path of the righteous man.
“Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”
And always, as Mutt is eager to point out my errors. Those are seven sentences, Dude.
“But they are seven good sentences,” I offer.
Mutt thinks for a moment, then nods. They are. Especially for an asshat.

Thanks to John Skipp for editing the Psychos anthology and for letting me be a part of it.

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