10 Quotes by Matt Gallagher

What was it like? Hell if I know. But next time someone asks.... I'll answer crooked, and I'll answer long. And when they get confused or angry, I'll smile. Finally, I'll think. Someone who understands.

There is a lot of evidence to back up the assertion that war fiction takes time. Many all-time classics of the genre, from Erich Maria Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front' to Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22' to Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried,' took over a decade to pen.

On a bigger level, 9/11 was a crystallizing moment for my generation... the bubble popped. We were like, 'Whoa, this is what the real world is like; it's not all fun and games.'

'Shortly Thereafter' chronicles all the aspects of an Afghanistan deployment, from the terrors of the unknown that await before leaving, to the perverse thrills and adrenaline rushes found in combat, to the return home to a land and a people now more foreign than the war itself was.

The American war-writing tradition is a proud one and booming in this era of the Global War on Terror - at least in the nonfiction realm. Hundreds of memoirs and press accounts from Iraq and Afghanistan have been published since 9/11.

Though the publishing industry swears the market is oversaturated, books written by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and by embedded journalists keep on coming.

Warrior Writer workshops have sprung up across the country, and of the ones I've attended and participated in, most contain at least one or two star writers.

I wanted to be a writer, but I kind of wanted to be a fiction writer someday, like 20 - 25 years down the line. I never thought I'd write a nonfiction memoir about Iraq.

What was it like? Hell if I know. But next time someone asks... I’ll answer crooked, and I’ll answer long. And when they get confused or angry, I’ll smile. Finally, I’ll think. Someone who understands.