I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.'

By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths.

A true war story is never moral.

Large effects might come from small causes.

I’m young and happy. I’ll never die.

Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead.

If inner peace is the true objective, would I win it in exile?

Red and green and silver flares, all colors, and the rain came down in Technicolor.

I hope so. Except I’m afraid to look at myself. Literally. I can’t even look at my own eyes in the mirror, not for long. I’m afraid I won’t be there.

You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference – a powerful, implacable beauty – and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly. To.