Okay...so it's self-promoting...I get that. But have you read any of these?
Have you passed these on to friends or others who like reading, I mean--it doesn't hurt you, right?
Until the Goodnight Smile --Ever wonder what life is like as a teacher? This is pretty much a 'day in the life' of one. I was prompted to start writing by a former student, Dallas Schumacher, and one of the lessons I remembered from grad school was--write what you know about. So I did. The funny thing is that once I started, I realized the influence for how I structured the book: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a story of the Russian gulag (prison) system. Funny, because there were days school feels like a prison (to students AND teachers). Is it intentional that the secondary education system in the US grinds kids down and wears them out? If not, why do we persist?
The Five Days of Osan --This is an e-book (so self-published...which means if you check it out...I'll actually make money). I wrote it because I realized how little fiction has been written about 'The Forgotten War'. So, I started doing some research--of the wars of the past 200 years, it was one I knew the least about--and found that the US was criminally incompetent in its initial actions, sending Task Force Smith in without any preparation to face the Communists. TF Smith gets smeared, and I thought that would make the basis for a good story. So 'The Five Days of Osan' is a modern retelling of the classic tale of the Spartans at Thermopylae.
The Last Post -- This is a nice review: "If you like THE KEEP by F. Paul Wilson, weird war stories, or really, horror novels in general, you will thoroughly enjoy THE LAST POST by Jim Dietz. It's clear Dietz has done his research -- every detail rings true -- and that makes this darkly brilliant historical novel of the macabre even more entertaining." It starts off making you think, 'Yeah, yeah, Saving Private Ryan'...and then 'Yeah, yeah, Dirty Dozen, I get it'...and then it goes off the tracks. I wrote most of it while Julie was watching Agatha Christie, including 'Ten Little Indians' and that may have affected how this goes. The funny thing is, Dallas Schumacher--who caused the first book--actually wanted me to be writing this one. His comment (way back in '01) was "Hey, I bet you would write an awesome Lovecraft-type story. Do it, Dietz." Here it is.
The Human Side of Coaching -- I'm still frustrated as a coach/writer/teacher. If you go looking for coaching books--regardless of sport, you're going to find books that guarantee success through 'magic drills' and formations and stuff. Often they are written by coaches out of touch with their sport at other levels. THSoC was written because a college volleyball coach talked about how wonderful his system was with short players--6', 6'1....completely missing that the coaches in his audience considered 6' giant and that short kids in hs are 5'2, 5'3. So I wrote this--it doesn't have drills; it's about the relationships formed between people while coaching, it's about how you can take education strategies and apply them to coaching and sports. It's about how to help kids balance multiple sports. Everyone who has read it has loved it--I just wish more coaches would read it.
Road to Kandahar (no link yet...coming soon!) --The whole legacy of the US in Afghanistan is going to be confusion. Afghanistan has been the Graveyard of Empires for more than 3,000 years, so why would the US fare any differently. Kandahar is the story of an intelligence officer called back to duty to investigate the seeming assassination attempt on the President by an American army officer gone rogue and what happens when that officer is found. Is the officer crazy? Is he brilliant? Is he both? And does he have a plan for bringing peace to Afghanistan and the tribal territories of Pakistan that can work? If it sounds like it was inspired by Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", you'd be correct.
So help a brother out--check these out...pass them on to someone who would be interested!
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