Created from a short story I wrote in 1973, Michael In Hell has a long history. I sent the story to Issac Asimov, and I was shocked when he actually wrote back to tell me he liked it and I should turn it into a novel. I did twenty years later. In 1995, I signed on with AEI a new agency in Los Angeles, along with author Steve Alten (MEG). Michael made it to a final marketing meeting at Bantam, where it was rejected (they had one opening slot) in favor of a famous writer because I was an unknown. Close but no cigar. Other majors rejected it because it was too bizarre and brutal during one of the periodic violence in media purges. The Vietnam combat in the novel is in part from my experience. Several incidents are based on events that happened during Operation Shelbyville and Operation Ballistic Charge during late 1967 in Quang Nam Province. Of the 14,000 Marines killed in Vietnam, 10,000 died in Quang Nam Province. It would have made Dante's Hell seem like Disneyland. The novel s
My fiction, life in general, and war, with some pics from my Marine days in Vietnam.