It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything for my Substack or blog. I’ve been busy reading and editing the various books I’ve written over the years and making corrections. That’s an advantage of print-on-demand publishing; it’s digital and can be revised. All of my books are available on Amazon both in print and Kindle. (I’ve not got around to putting any out in hardback yet. Maybe soon.) You can find them here – Amazon.com: Sam McGowan: books, biography, latest update.
Writing is my diversion I suppose. I got my start writing letters to the editor of newspapers where I lived over the years, mostly on political subjects. I made a lot of people mad but as many or more loved me. I started writing books and magazine articles way back in the 1980s when I suggested to the late aviation writer Bob Dorr that he write a book about C-130s. He said, “Why don’t you do it.” So, I did. I wrote a book and sold it to a publisher who put it out as The C-130 Hercules: Tactical Airlift Missions, 1956-1975: McGowan, Sam: 9780830683864: Amazon.com: Books, which was not my idea for a title. I wanted to call it simply Trash Haulers: McGowan, Sam: 9781979773249: Amazon.com: Books and put it out with that title after I got the rights back. (Don’t pay any attention to the stars, an earlier version was rated at 4 ½ out of 5.) I began submitting articles to magazines, mostly on military subjects. One of my articles was in the premier issue of VIETNAM magazine, and I was named a contributing editor. Then I tried my hand at a novel. I sent it to an agent but while he said it was a good story, the market for military adventure was dead. I happened to come across a story in TIME about POD publishing and decided to look into it. I had to fork out some money but I got it published. I’ve since put it out with Kindle – Amazon.com: The Cave (Toby Carter and The Cave) eBook : McGowan, Sam: Kindle Store. (It’s also out in paperback – The Cave (Toby Carter and The Cave): McGowan, Sam: 9781479367481: Amazon.com: Books.)
At one time I thought about trying to write a column but went in another direction instead, I learned about Create Space, a POD publisher that didn’t charge for their services (they’ve since been purchased by Kindle) and decided to focus on books and novels. I’m not certain how many books I’ve written and published on Kindle – I don’t keep count – but it’s somewhere in the twenties at least. (Kindle lists 38 titles but some of them are different editions of the same books.) Writing and rewriting keeps my mind sharp and gives me something to occupy my time.
Many writers, probably most, are in it to make money. I don’t care about money, and I don’t care if anyone reads my writing, or what they have to say about it. I suppose I write because it’s in my genes. A few years ago I learned that I’m descended from a famous Baptist preacher who pastored a church in London and who was known as a prolific – and caustic – writer and a dissenter against the established Anglican and Presbyterian churches. Many of his books are still in print. I’ve always had a bent for imagination. I’d invent elaborate stories in my head while in the cotton patch, which is one reason I wasn’t a very good cotton picker – I hardly ever picked a hundred pounds in a day. A hundred pounds was the magic number for a cotton picker when I was growing up.
Yet even though I suppose I had a bent for writing, that wasn’t what I wanted to do in my life. I wanted to fly airplanes. Oddly enough, I don’t write much about flying even though that’s what I know best. I’ve read Ernie Gann, Richard Bach and other aviation writers but the truth about aviation is that most of the stories are made up. Aviation was exciting – and could be deadly – in the twenties and thirties but the development of new engines and methods of construction around World War II made it safer than driving a car. The advent of the turbine engine practically did away with aviation accidents. Aviation accidents since the 1960s are the result of an improper action on the part of the pilot or someone else, not engine or structural failure or even weather. I flew over 16,000 hours as a pilot and, with certain exceptions, it was all routine – some might even say dull and boring.
I know why I write, not why others write. I have no pious intent of “making the world a better place,” an impossible task in a world that has been corrupt since Adam took a bite of fruit Eve got from the serpent. I write because I enjoy it, and I must admit I amaze myself as ideas take form in my mind. Much of my writing is based on experiences of my youth, meaning particularly my twenties, which I spent much of overseas followed by three years in sunny Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston was where I suppose my youth finally caught up with me after almost a decade in a practically woman-less society. From my high school graduation until I moved off base into an apartment complex at age 25 I had very little contact with young women. There weren’t that many on Air Force bases and I was away so much I didn’t have time to meet local girls. I finally had some contact with girls in the WAF squadron at Clark, but it wasn’t until I got to Charleston that I was exposed to young women my age and younger. Several of my novels are set in Charleston in that time frame, a time when I was forming friendships with people of the opposite sex. I built one set of four novels around my original novel, The Cave, with it being the second in the series of four based loosely on the seven years from my high school graduation and enlistment in the Air Force to my second overseas assignment at Clark Field, Philippines. They are novels, not a biography, but they are based loosely on some of my own experiences, which is what most novels are – a fictionalized version of the author’s own experience.
Reading through the books I’ve written over the years in order to edit and update them has been a pleasure. With the novels, I amazed myself that such thoughts came to my mind. Each novel was written as I thought of it. The Cave came about while I was musing as I drove through Arkansas on the way to Wichita, Kansas for a two-week Cessna Citation III school. The idea came to me based on a combination of my Vietnam experiences flying flare missions over North Vietnam and Laos and my then current experiences in Kentucky caves. I had my Smith-Corona word processor with me and as soon as I got to my hotel, I set it up and started writing. I wrote each afternoon and evening after class and by the time I went back to Kentucky, much of it was done. I was surprised at how the ideas and words flowed. It’s been the same with each novel I’ve written since. One novel is based on a missed opportunity. A friend of mine asked me to take her father out to look at a C-5 when her family came up for a visit. When she showed up at the squadron, another girl was with her. I’d seen her around the base. The novel The Norwegian Girl is what might have happened if I’d asked her out. I threw in some fantasy to make it interesting. Another is based on a missed opportunity to invite a young woman who had just joined my squadron to spend Christmas with me at my apartment. (I decided not to invite her on the basis that getting mixed up with her might not be a good idea.) Jack’s Steakhouse centers around a popular eatery in Naminoue, the entertainment district of Naha City, Okinawa where a number of bars catered to the young airmen from nearby Naha Air Base at the height of the Vietnam War. The nonfiction books are based on a desire to share history with the reader.
I don’t do magazine writing anymore, although it was the most financially successful of my writing endeavors. Some magazines accepted just about anything I wrote. It’s not so much that I lost interest but that that I became more interested in writing novels. Except for my C-130 book, I’ve made no attempt to sell anything to publishing houses. I learned from experience that their sole goal is making money and they’re run by their marketing departments. Publishers employ editors who basically rewrite much of what they publish. A good example is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which was a rewrite of her original novel, Go Set a Watchman. The editor she presented the original to didn’t like it but decided to have her rewrite it to appeal to a progressive audience during the Civil Rights Movement. My experience with TAB Books, the original publisher of my C-130 book, left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I used the titles The Green Garbage Can, a term those of us who flew them in Vietnam used, and Trash Haulers. TAB’s marketing department did a survey and decided “trash haulers” wasn’t easily recognizable (it is now) and came up with the outlandish title referenced above. Incidentally, that title kept the book out of many bookstores because retired Navy Captain M.E. Morris, who coincidentally was from the same neck of the woods as me, had written a book that came out at about the same time from another publisher called C-130, the Hercules. Some distributors decided not to carry my book because they considered the two books to be similar when they were really nothing alike. I was grateful to learn of print-on-demand because I can use any title I please for any book I want to write without dealing with editors and marketing departments.
I’ve reached a point where I’m not sure what I want to write about. I’m working on a Civil War novel about a teenager who becomes a guerrilla in my native West Tennessee. It’s based on a real person, who went on to become an outlaw after the war concluded and was finally lynched by a mob of former Unionists. My enthusiasm for the story is not that great though, and I’m sort a bogged down. No doubt it’ll come to me.
tennesseeflyboy 