Inspirations . . .

Around the time we started working on Puppet Master, I was doing a number of fund-raising events that brought me into contact with veterans who’d lost limbs in the Iraq war. It’s a cliché to say they’re an inspiration, even though that’s the truth.

Spending time with them you learn to look past the wounds and find the actual person. They’re all different, struggling with the new reality of who they are.

It’s very easy to pay lip service to their struggles, or to put them on an untouchable pedestal. Most don’t want that. Nor do they want to be defined by their injuries or even the battles they’ve fought, are still fighting, to recover.

I don’t pretend to know what’s it like to lose a limb, to lose might sight or hearing. I do know what it’s like to have friends who have. Like all my friends, they’ve added to my life in ways that I can’t really define.

One of the characters in Puppet master goes through some of that trauma and transitions. Hopefully the writing captures a tiny bit of what it’s really like.