Monday’s Author Interview with Rachel Brune Part One 5/13/13

Welcome to Author Interview Monday. I had the immense pleasure of getting to know Rachel Brune for this interview. The following interview was so in depth that it needed to be split into two parts. So the first part will be released today with the follow up to be released next Monday. In this first part of the interview, we delve into Rachel’s background and how it plays into her being a writer.

Thank you, Rachel, for coming on The Musings of a Manic Blond: A Place to Read About Writing.

Rachel gave me this bio from her site:

Rachel A. Brune writes short fiction, long fiction, songs, screenplays, poetry and operations orders. A former Army journalist, she lives in North Carolina with her husband, sister, two dogs and three cats. She blogs her adventures, writing and otherwise, at http://www.infamous-scribbler.com.

MOMB: Hold up, hold up. A COMBAT journalist? As the daughter of one of the first female drill Sargents at Fort Jackson, we have to spend some time on this. Tell the readers about that. How did that come about?

RACHEL: I graduated from NYU in 2000, and started working in NYC. I’m a true Jersey girl, born and raised, but I love “The City,” and expected to spend the rest of my life in the Northeast, working in NYC, hopefully making my way into the film and television world. Then along came September 11. My dad and I were working in midtown – he at an advertising firm on the east side, me at a media venture capital firm on Park Avenue. You never forget where you were, or the events of life-defining days like those.

I had always wanted to join the Army, and had even talked about it when I was applying to college, but my dad had discouraged me. He really wanted me to go to college, get a degree, work in a creative field. After 9/11, I knew that I wanted to do something with my life other than earn money for rich people, that I wanted to find meaning in what I was doing. I had friends who were working as teachers, working for nonprofits, doing important work, and I wanted to do the same thing. And so, I went looking on the various services’ Web sites. I didn’t seriously consider the Marines, I’m not that bad-ass. I checked out the Air Force (my dad had served in Vietnam), but everything I could find was either about flying or fixing planes, which wasn’t my thing. The Navy wanted to put you on a heavy metal object in the middle of the ocean – also not my thing. So, I called up the Army recruiter. I kind of aced the ASVAB, so had my choice of MOS (military occupational specialty). The recruiter knew of a Reserve unit that had a slot for a 46Q – military journalist and public affairs specialist, and about three weeks later, I signed on the dotted line.

MOMB: What sort of things did you write about as a combat journalist? And do you plan on ever publishing that book of essays?

RACHEL: My job was, broadly, to tell the Army story, which meant telling Soldiers’ stories. My first assignment as a Reservist, however, was working funeral detail. I went on active duty for about four months, and my team drove around the five boroughs of NYC, rendering honors at veterans’ funerals. It was an amazing experience, to give respect to our comrades who went before us.

After that, I volunteered to deploy with a military police brigade to OIF in 2003. I spent a year writing about different missions and Soldiers – event-focused pieces, as well as personality features, photo essays, etc. I also served as a media liaison, and assisted with media tours and interviews. I was also the editor of the Brigade newspaper, which gave me a unique perspective on soliciting articles and photographs, editing both, doing layout, scheduling stories, etc. I was the junior member of the team, but was still entrusted with a great deal of responsibility. My stories were published in a variety of military publications, and some even made it to civilian publications.

On my second tour, after joining active duty, I had been working freelance for a civilian paper when I was working on my active duty packet. Knowing that I was about to deploy again, my editor asked if I would be willing to write a weekly column for the paper (it was actually a weekly paper, so that meant I had a column in each issue.) I wrote about pretty much anything you could think of, and it was a great experience being what you could consider an “Op-Ed” contributor. It’s been amazing – I’ve seen Babylon (twice), stood before the Temple at Ur, walked and drove up and down Iraq from the port at Umm Qasr to the northern Habur Gate.

Since then, I attended ROTC, where I was commissioned as a military police officer, been deployed again, and am now stationed in Kuwait. I have often thought of putting together some essays and photos from the time – and to a certain extent, some of those things can be found in Echoes and Premonitions – but for now that remains a future project for a future time. My collection of photographs is up at my old Smugmug page (http://rachelbrune.smugmug.com/) – been meaning to get around to organizing/archiving them, but haven’t yet…

MOMB: Do you find your mood to write different things depends on if you’re deployed or not?

RACHEL: I don’t know if it’s necessarily my mood as the fact that there are so many things competing for my time. I may want to write, but all I’ve got brain cells left for are the blog posts and pictures of my Basset hound. On the other hand, when I get home from deployment, I will usually start an unusually prolific period. It’s almost like my brain starts to unwind and then suddenly I’ve got all these ideas pouring out and not only that, I sit down at the keyboard and am almost immediately in the flow state. I came out here during 2012 NaNoWriMo with a novel well on its way to being completed, and it just dried up on me. Of course, I was also going through some intense personal stuff, and when life gets too intense, writing is not my creative outlet of choice. I’m more likely to play music or workout or read and try to surf through the waves of emotion. Then, when I’ve had time to start processing, suddenly all the energy to write and create will be there.

MOMB: Being that you’re a woman in the military, do you find yourself being more critical of the military roles women play in the movies and on television (Army Wives, G.I. Jane)?

RACHEL: OH YES. I most certainly do. This question opens such a can of worms, and I could totally write essays, pamphlets, and broadsides on the topic. In fact, the main impetus behind my nonfiction project, “Taking Command: Women in Company Command” came about because it is hard for me to find recognizable female Soldiers in the predominant narratives and paradigms of both news and entertainment media. I think that the predominant narrative of the military woman in news media is the narrative of “female Soldier as victim.” This is conflicting to me, because I want to stand and support my fellow sisters – and brothers – in arms who have faced sexual assault. But the current paradigm is this portrait of the female Soldier as sexualized victim who was too dumb to know that the Army/Air Force/Navy was this big bad place full of hyper-sexual guys just waiting to take advantage. I rarely see women in uniform portrayed – either in news or entertainment – as anything but sexual objects. Now, this of course fits into a greater cultural stereotype – but would it be so hard to show SOME women in uniform as well-adjusted go-getters? I think being in the military police corps, and surrounded by such great Soldiers – male and female – makes this dissonance even more jarring. Like I said, it’s one of the reasons I started the Taking Command project, which is where the Conversation on my blog with CPT Van Heusden came from.

And I love GI Jane, but even there, the idea was that she could be a SEAL if she survived sexual assault by being “one of the guys” and adopting the male sexual gaze. Which doesn’t quite ruin my enjoyment of the movie, but seriously, I’d rather watch Terminator 2 than GI Jane.

Crappy portrayals of women in modern media is one of the reasons I belong to the Facebook group, The Sarah Connor Charm School.

MOMB: It’s time to switch gears a little bit. How long have you been writing? What exactly inspired you to be a writer?

RACHEL: A couple of years ago, my mom showed me a story she kept that I had written in kindergarten. It was about Santa Claus and it involved throwing around pies. I guess I was early into the slapstick oeuvre. I don’t know what, exactly, inspired me to be a writer. I learned how to read at an early age, and have read voraciously all my life. Eventually, I started putting words on the page. After doing that for twenty some odd years, I turned out to have some talent for it. Growing up, I wanted to be either an astronaut or a reporter. My eyes were too bad for me to get a job flying the space shuttle (which is what I really wanted to do…), but being a reporter was something I could start doing, even in the fourth grade, which is when I started a school newspaper. It’s kind of been a theme throughout my life. I’ve written news stories, a couple of screenplays, novels, short stories and songs. I can’t not write. (A really long answer to a short question, I know. 😀 )

MOMB: Who are your biggest influences?

RACHEL: One of my earliest influences, at least when it comes to reading someone over and over and subconsciously emulating – or hoping to emulate – their work, is definitely Ray Bradbury. I don’t think I could overstate how much I love his work, and how much I have always loved his short stories. Nowadays, I still read Bradbury, although I’ve now expanded to several mystery writers, such as Robert Crais, Michael Connelly and of course, Elmore Leonard. I also have a lot of love for Neil Gaiman and Bernard Cornwell. Stick me on a desert island with their collected works, and don’t worry about rescuing me! (Although a nice rum drop off every once in a while would be nice…)

MOMB: How much has your religion influenced your writing?

RACHEL: I don’t know if I can quantify it exactly. I do know that every once in a while I am surprised by something I write that directly reflects my Catholicism. I have never set out to write something overtly religious, but sometimes when I am writing, a character will have an aspect to him or her that is generated from my experience. I am a practicing Catholic, and I think that has reflected in the respect that I subconsciously afford religion in my stories.

One example, I am currently editing a novel about a werewolf who was a secret agent in WWII, and is now being brought back in from the cold. There are many aspects of the character that deal with religion, both with ancient paganism, as well as Catholicism and the Reformation. He has a cultural memory of Paganism, and is not a regular churchgoer, but one of the few possessions he hangs on to is a medal of St. Jude. For those who are familiar with the saints, they’ll recognize St. Jude as the patron saint of lost causes, which is my little in-joke throughout the book.

MOMB: What type of books do you read?

RACHEL: Very tough question. I read about 60 percent fiction and 40 percent nonfiction. Within those categories, I find that for nonfiction I love reading history, media studies, criminal justice and physical science, as well as additional books in fields that I think I might want to write about. For instance, I’m working on a science fiction/steampunk/detective piece set in a pseudo-Roman universe. The idea popped up during a writing exercise on opening paragraphs, and was fleshed out as I read a biography of Cicero. I’m currently reading “Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies” by James Gannon, one of two history of espionage nonfiction books that I’m reading as “research” and using to procrastinate from actually writing the thing…

As for fiction … you could probably describe my tastes charitably as eclectic, catholic, or possibly random. I love spy fiction, detective fiction, paranormal, young adult, speculative, satire, science fiction, fantasy, literary, classics, graphic novels … I probably read anywhere from 250-300 fiction books in a year.

MOMB: Do you find that being an avid reader helps your writing? How? 

RACHEL: ABSOLUTELY! I can’t stress enough how my reading has helped me. First, the good writing gives you something to strive for. The not-so-good writing helps you recognize the flaws in the mechanics. Reading across a wide variety of genres expands your perspective. Reading nonfiction helps your research. I especially love to read biographies about women in history – especially women whose contributions are not so well-known. One of my favorite books I read this year was a history of women correspondents in World War II. These ladies were smart, courageous, fierce, and human. One of the books I’m looking forward to reading when I start my sequel to Cold Run, is a collection of short biographies of women who served in WWII in a variety of roles, both in the American forces as well in foreign armies – British spies and Russian snipers, to name two other categories. In my own branch of the military police corps, I know that women have long served in uniform outside the stereotype of the Nurses Corps. Most of the women characters in my books, especially the military types are based not only on women of my acquaintance, but also on reading history.

One of the dangers, especially for writers, is only reading within one’s chosen genre. For instance, one day a year or so ago, someone writing scifi/fantasy posted in the NaNoWriMo group asking about how a covert/latent revolution might talk/communicate with each other. Many people – actually 99% of the responses – recommended reading various works of fiction – scifi, fantasy, etc. This was at a time when the Arab Spring was in its earliest stages (the optimistic stage), the protest movement in Russia was at its height, Twitter-organized riots were occurring in Britain, flash mobs were catching on – there were literally hundreds of real-world examples of “spontaneous” uprisings/organizations happening across the world. Additionally, ad hoc terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda were proving – and have proved – their ability to organize across space/time/borders. It would take only the barest nudge of imagination to embed real-life into a system of magic, and voila – communication system. While looking at other examples of the genre is a worthwhile undertaking, there are going to be limitations in that you are going to be mining what others have done. Expanding one’s perspective increases the chance that you are going to come up with something that is going to be new to your readers, while still remaining true to genre conventions.

Also, I just like to read. It keeps my brain active and creative, even when I don’t have the time to sit down and dedicate some serious time to putting words on paper.

Stay tuned next week to read more about Rachel’s books and her process.