We can probably all agree that 2020 was one of, if not the worst year in recent memory. And so it was with grateful relief that I embraced the few good news that dropped in my mailbox just before year's end, news that I'm excited to share with you now. First of, Best Indie Book Award … [Read more...]
Stories — In Spoken Word
Hurrah!! After an (unexplainable) 3-month holdup at ACX-Amazon, the audiobook for my new collection of short stories, In the Shadow of Green Bamboos, has finally been released to retail on the Amazon and Audible websites. The principal narrator of In the Shadow of Green Bamboos is Leyna Nguyen, … [Read more...]
Headphones on? Sit back. Enjoy!
It's been a wild fun ride for the past four months, and after some long delays at Amazon-ACX / Audible due to the pandemic, the audiobook for Once upon a Mulberry Field is finally here! Yes. For real. And it sounds like a million bucks, well worth the wait---thanks to Treg Monty, my narrator and … [Read more...]
The Book is Out: In the Shadow of Green Bamboos
B'gosh, the Big Day is here! At long last. As promised, my new book, In the Shadow of Green Bamboos, is being released into bookstores today. Not without a little hiccup, mind you, but then again this whole year 2020 has been one giant hiccup itself, so I'm just elated to have crossed the … [Read more...]
Why I (Continue to) Write
It's said that we've all got a book in us. I was fortunate enough, living in the age of self-publishing, to find that out for myself. In my case, it took me six years of hard labor---labor of love, as it's called---to research, write, and publish my first book, Once upon a Mulberry Field, a … [Read more...]
Veterans Day 2015
This year, in the weeks leading up to Veterans Day, I've had the privilege and pleasure of being involved in several meaningful and fun events. In early October I was invited by the Incline Village/Crystal Bay Veterans Club to attend its 2015 Community Ball, which was to pay tribute to Vietnam … [Read more...]
A Special Trip
Last week I had the honor of attending the 2015 Community Ball hosted by the Incline Village/Crystal Bay Veterans Club in North Lake Tahoe to pay tribute to the Vietnam War veterans. My gracious host, Colonel Steve Price, USAF Retired, had been present at the Cathedral City Rotary Club during my … [Read more...]
A look back
Many thanks to John Wilkens at the San Diego Union-Tribune for his recent article on my book Once upon a Mulberry Field on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The picture in the article was taken by SDUT photographer Howard Lipin at my April 18 book discussion at the Poway … [Read more...]
40 Years After
Forty years ago, on the last day of April 1975, as the free world stood by and watched in disbelief, Saigon succumbed to the communist North Vietnamese, marking the end of the Vietnam War. Every year since, when April comes around, millions of people who had lived through those tumultuous … [Read more...]
Old Saigon in the movies
At some point in our lives, no matter how far we have wandered, most of us have probably felt the desire to look back at those long ago places where we grew up---where it had all begun for us. In my case, that special place is Saigon, Vietnam, just before and during the war, back in the late … [Read more...]