Lloyd Lofthouse Interview – Writing, Characters, and Vietnam

How much of Running with the Enemy is fiction?  How much of it really happened?  How completely does he develop his characters before writing?  When did he first have a desire to write?  What advice does he have for writers who are striving to be published?

You are a Vietnam veteran, and this book started as a memoir.  So, how much of what happened in this book really happened? How much of it is fiction?
There are scenes in the novel that were lifted from real incidents that happened when I served in Vietnam, but those real-life events were taken out of context to fit the plot.

For instance, the skinning incident that takes place in Cambodia in the novel was borrowed from an actual event that took place during a field operation in Vietnam near Chu Lai where my battalion fought alongside South Korean troops that were our allies. During the operation, the South Koreans captured two Vietcong snipers and motivated one to cooperate after skinning the other one by hanging him from a tree limb as described in “Running with the Enemy”.

Another plot thread I borrowed from actual events was the one where a U.S. Marine was selling weapons to the Vietcong. The armorer for Charlie Company, one of my tank battalion’s gun companies, was caught selling weapons to the Vietcong, who attempted ambushing a Marine patrol. The Vietcong were killed and the weapons were traced back to that Marine in Charlie company. He was sentenced to twenty years to life in a federal prison.

The Marine cook who joined Ethan on the run across Southeast Asia is modeled after a cook from my Battalion who paid a local teenage peasant girl for sex and when the girl’s father caught them in the rice paddy, that real-life Marine cook killed the father with his Ka-Bar, and then fled back to camp. The girl went to a Marine officer who worked with the locals, and the cook was picked out of a line-up. He was also court-martialed and sent to a federal prison for twenty years to life. To be fair, the girl’s father did try to split the cook’s head with a machete.

These weren’t the only scenes in the novel that were adapted from real incidents that took place during my combat tour in Vietnam. My idea for the love affair between Card and Tuyen came from two Marines I knew who fell in love with local girls and I know of at least one Marine who deserted to be with the girl he fell in love with but he was caught; busted from a sergeant down to private and spent time in the brig back in the states before being shipped back to Vietnam for another combat tour.

Are there any experiences you had in Vietnam that you would like to share with us?
I wrote a short story about one real-life incident I’d like to share with your readers. This short story was called “A Night at the Well of Purity” and I’m still offering it free through my Blog but I’m thinking of taking it down and submitting it to Amazon as a Kindle short to sell for $.99.

The story is about a young Vietnamese girl, a child really, who was half Vietnamese and half American—she became an outcast and had to find a way to survive—and turned to prostitution servicing U.S. troops. Children like her were called Bui Doi, the dust of life, a topic touched on in a dramatic musical called “Miss Saigon”.

In the short story, I used fictional names for the Marines, but the night I write about did take place. I was there.

Here’s the link:
http://thesoulfulveteran.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/a-night-at-the-well-of-purity/

Which character was your favorite?  Why?
This may surprise you, but my favorite character was Kit, the Thai who was visiting his family Thailand while on a break from UC Berkeley where he was attending college on a student visa. I think he was my favorite character because after all the darkness going on, he added a light touch to the story.

Which character was your least favorite?  Why?
As much as I disliked Victor Ortega, the sadistic CIA agent, and Giap, Tuyen’s sexually abusive half-brother, I have to admit that my least favorite character was General LaBourne, because he was a disgusting, corrupt racist who cheated on his wife by having sex with two young Vietnamese prostitutes in a scene near the end of the story.

How many of the characters are based on people you knew or met while in Vietnam?  Can you say which ones?  I’m really curious to see if you knew anyone who actually sharpened their teeth to chew on people.  Yuck.
Actually, there was a Marine I served with who sharpened his teeth with a file but he was a nice guy who chewed the tops off beer cans to show off.  And his reason for sharpening his teeth was so he’d have one more weapon to use in case of hand to hand combat. After Vietnam, we were stationed together at Camp Pendleton and he freaked out civilians when we’d be on liberty and he’d chew off the top of a beer can. Back then, you could buy cans of beer that didn’t come with a pull tab. The real Marine who filed his teeth was nothing like the fictional Victor Ortega in the novel.

How completely do you develop your characters before beginning to write?
For me, developing characters is an ongoing process. I start a profile for each character as they are introduced in the story and add to the profiles while writing the rough draft. In addition, I refer back to these profiles to make sure each character’s reactions in the novel fit.

How long did it take you to complete this book?
Writing this novel was a long process. I started the first version in 1981 while earning my MFA in writing at Cal Poly, Pomona, but that one was a memoir. A few years later I attended a workshop out of UCLA’s extension writing program and the professor convinced me that the story would work better if I fictionalized it.  Then after a multitude of revisions Running with the Enemy was finished and the professor found an agent for the novel, who, near the end of the 1980s, sent out the manuscript to a number of traditional publishers. Every response was the same. The editors enjoyed the novel but they weren’t publishing books about the Vietnam War because the market was glutted and readers weren’t buying.

Do you plan out the entire book before writing it?  Or do you just sit down and write?
My work starts in my head first and I think about these stories off and on for sometimes years. Then one day, I sit down and start writing, but not from a plan or outline. To start, I have that basic concept that played like a film in my imagination.

What are your thoughts on self-publishing?
I think self-publishing is great but it wouldn’t be worth the effort without a company like Amazon offering the publishing platform they have through kdp. Without Amazon, we’d probably still be stuck in the dark ages where writers had to be accepted by the gate keepers first: agents, editors, accountants and publishers, who are all subject to their own individual tastes. But today, as writers, we can cut them out and go straight to readers who become the ultimate gate keeper. Instead of being at the mercy of a handful of people, authors now may pitch their work to millions.

How important do you believe having a good editor is for the success of your book?
I think having a good editor go over a manuscript before publishing is very important. The trick is to find an editor who’s good at what they do and hope they don’t cost too much. It’s a good idea to have another set of trained eyes to edit your work.

When did you first have a desire to write?  How did this desire manifest itself?
I don’t remember the exact date the desire to write burst into flame but it was in 1968 (after getting out of the Marines) when I attending community college on the GI Bill. Ray Bradbury was giving a lecture and I had time between classes so I went and listened to him. I walked away wanting to write a book.

The first manuscript I wrote was science fiction, and it almost landed a contract with a publisher. Anyone who’s been through the traditional process knows the drill. Your work has to please a reader first before it gets recommended to an editor. If the editor likes the story, then they’ll take it to an editorial board and pitch it. After everyone reads the manuscript, they discuss its chances in the marketplace. That’s how far my first manuscript got—to the editorial board where another book they were considering beat my story out for the one slot they had open.

I don’t remember what Bradbury said but it was inspiring.

Have you written any other books? If so, what are they and what are they about?
I’ve written about a dozen manuscripts but only published two so far. If time permits, I’d like to return to all those manuscripts; revise, edit and publish. My first published book was My Splendid Concubine and that one took more than a decade to research and write. Concubine is historical fiction based on the real life story of Sir Robert Hart who arrived in China in 1854 at the age of 19 and ended up buying a concubine. The novel covers his first decade in China with his concubine. He returned to England in 1908 as a Baron who’d been knighted by Queen Victoria. Along the way he also became Chinese royalty and was the only foreigner the Emperor of China trusted. In fact, after Hart left China in 1908, the Emperor commissioned a statute of him to be placed on the Bund in Shanghai where it stood until the Japanese knocked it down more than thirty years later; then melted it and turned it into bullets.

What are you working on now?
A memoir called Crazy is Normal, a classroom expose.

Back in the early 1990s when I was still teaching high school English and journalism, I decided to keep a daily journal for one full school year. Almost twenty years later, I took that journal off the shelf in the garage where it had gathered dust and used it as my source for the memoir. That year from September to June, when I got home every day, the first thing I did was sit down and write an entry while the memories were fresh. Often, I jotted notes while in class as reminders of what had happened and who was involved. I also had copies of referrals and memos to assist me in keeping the record straight. I taught in California’s public schools for thirty years 1975 – 2005.

Right now, Crazy is Normal is going through its second Beta reading (there were six Beta readers) and then it will be off to a professional freelance editor.  I’ve also commissioned an award winning book cover artist to do the cover.

What is your favorite genre in which to write?
I’m not sure I have a favorite genre. My first novel was historical fiction set in 19^th century  China; my second, Running with the Enemy, is a suspense thriller set in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war in the 1960s.  My third will be a memoir set in the first half of the 1990s in a Southern California high school. The fourth novel will be a mystery set in a queen among nightclubs that sits on a California beach overlooking the Pacific. I modeled the nightclub in that novel from the one I worked in as a maître d for a few years back in the early 1980s.

What kind of books do you like to read?
Gee, all kinds of books. I recently finished a fantasy novel—Alon Shalev’s Eric Hoffer Award winning At the Walls of Galbrieth.

How quickly I read a book reveals how much I enjoy it, and I started Alon’s young adult fantasy novel less than two weeks ago. If a book doesn’t hook me, it takes longer to read and sometimes I put those books aside and move on.  Sorry to say, I did that with another book I started before I bought a copy of At the Walls of Galbrieth. Now it looks like I’m going to have to read the rest of the series. There are three others and there may be more in the future.

At the same time I was reading Alon’s paperback at home, I was listening to an audio version of The Monuments Men in my car, and before that Janet Evanovich’s Takedown Twenty.

One of my favorite writers is James Lee Burke, and I’ve read most of Anne Rice’s work. My favorite novel is The Lord of the Rings.  I’ve read that one and watched the film three times each. I have no idea how many books I’ve read over the years, but I’m sure the number is in the thousands.

Right now I’m excited because this morning (Tuesday, February 18), I bought the third season for The Game of Thrones. I’m watching another series, Carnivale, but that one will be put aside for now. My wife and I are also watching the fourth season of Downtown Abbey, but that’s on hold waiting for her to return from her current book tour.

It sounds like I sit around watching DVDs all day.  No way. I don’t allow myself to turn on the TV until after 8:00 pm. Then I usually watch until 10:30, and before sleep, I read for a half hour or more. If a book hooks me, I’ll read until my eyes won’t stay open. Alon’s book did that to me.

How do you manage to balance your time between family, friends, and writing?
I get up early—usually between 6:00 and 6:30am and have been known to work off and on all day until 7:00 to 8:00pm. In those twelve to fourteen hours, I squeeze in an hour of exercise with weights and at least a one mile walk outside.

It also helps that our daughter is in her last year at Stanford living in the dorms there, and that my wife is an author who’s been working on a documentary film project that eats up a lot of her time. As I write this, she’s in Perth, Australia at the Perth International Arts Festival as part of the promotion for the paperback of her memoir, The Cooked Seed, the sequel to her first memoir, Red Azalea, that was published by Random House in 1992.  The paperback of The Cooked Seed is scheduled for release this March.

My wife’s website:
http://ancheemin.com/

Do you have any advice for writers who are striving to be published?
Develop discipline, persistence and a thick skin. You may need it thanks to Internet trolls who have a dark passion for writing snarky 1-star reviews.

But if you love writing, never give up. However, success—although not impossible—is tough to achieve. Writing the rough draft manuscript is the easy part. Then you have to revise and edit until you can’t stand your own work. About then, it’s time to hand the work over to a professional to go through the manuscript at least one more time.

The hard part is promotion and today that means building an author’s platform on the Internet.

Where can your fans find you on the Internet?
My author’s platform:
http://lloydlofthouse.org/

Twitter
https://twitter.com/lflwriter

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/lloyd.lofthouse

Amazon author page
http://www.amazon.com/Lloyd-Lofthouse/e/B002BM6VNU/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Blog about China
http://ilookchina.net/

Blog about teaching and parenting
http:/crazynormaltheclassroomexpose.com/

Blog about PTSD and combat
http://thesoulfulveteran.wordpress.com/

Authors Den where readers may discover my poetry, etc.
http://www.authorsden.com/lloydlofthouse

Recommended Articles: 
Running with the Enemy – a Review
Crazy is Normal – a Review
How Pubic Schools in the US Have Improved – Guest Post by Lloyd Lofthouse
The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova – a Review
Lloyd Lofthouse Interview – Teaching, Working in a Nightclub, and Life Experiences