This week, the New York Times announced the recent death of Major General Jeanne Holm. Major General Holm’s contributions on behalf of women in the U.S. Air Force as well as women in all our U.S. Armed Forces are well documented. Her biography has a permanent place on the Official U.S. Air Force website. She is also a member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame. I won’t attempt to offer you a biography or an obituary of General Holm because they have both been done. What I would like to offer you is how General Holm, though never a personal acquaintance of mine, had a significant impact on my life.

When I joined the U.S. Air Force in 1991, I had every intention of becoming a linguist. I had the ASVAB & DLAB scores and the written job guarantee to prove it. As so often happens, the needs of the Air Force superseded my desire to travel the world as a brilliant linguist and I was given a career that needed bodies. It had only been six years since women had been allowed into the U.S.A.F. Security Police. They had been doing Law Enforcement duties prior to that but the Security Police (now Security Forces) were the infantry of the Air Force. They needed bodies and it didn’t matter what sex they were so I found myself in the Security Police. A “tread” or a “droid” as our Law Enforcement brothers and sisters preferred to call us but they always called us when the job was too big and they needed backup.

General Holm raised the female numbers in the Air Force. She also made it possible for women to be more than nurses. Security Police was one of the few holdouts when it came to women joining because of the combat nature of the job. We were trained in what was politely called “Air Base Ground Defense”. Over the years, the fluff has been removed from the title of our training and it is now simply called “Ground Combat Skills”.

It was because of General Holm’s work that I was able to do the many things I did to distinguish myself in the Air Force. I was a dead-on shot with an M-60 and frighteningly accurate with the Mark-19 and M-203 grenade launchers. I was also handy as a Fire Team Leader and Security Controller. I worked every facet of nuclear security during my eight years in the U.S.A.F.

I hardly think General Holm even considered me when she joined the Army Air Corps but the fact is that my personal history would be far less interesting had she not gone before me to pave the way for women in the U.S. Air Force. She will always have my undying respect and gratitude.

General Holm, I salute you.

I’m in the process of editing my second novel with Sapphire Blue Publishing and I love the process. It isn’t as much fun as writing the first draft but it is exciting to see the rough edges smoothed and polished.

While I’m editing, I’m updating my Twitter, Facebook and Myspace status with the number of “Editor Love Notes” I have left.

My publisher and a few other writers got the joke and got quite a kick out of it.
Others just scratch their heads and say “Oh, that’s Lisa. She’s just crazy.”

Crazy like only an Air Force Cop can be but I digress.

I don’t like saying I have 300 edits to make to a manuscript because that implies errors and they aren’t. They’re opportunities to improve the story.

If there is one thing that trips my trigger, it is improving the story!

So I call them “Editor Love Notes”.

My hope is that my editor and I can love on this manuscript enough that readers will love the final draft that becomes “A Taste of Liberty”.

Until that time, feel free to follow my progress.

Lisa Thibault Pietsch | Create Your Badge

I know what it says at the beginning of the book. All the characters and events are purely fiction, blah, blah, blah.

As I was tweeting with an ex Navy friend the other day, we realized we both had the same problem:

Nobody believes the true stories and we have no choice but to fictionalize them!

Let me let you in on a little secret: I’ve met so many characters in my nineteen years (eight active duty and eleven as a military wife) that I just have to put some of them into books.

How can I not?

There was that corporal in the Royal Air Force, that Buck Sergeant from South Carolina, the good old boy from Virginia, the trust fund baby from Texas, the Fratalian from Maine, the farm boy from Kansas, the cowboy from South Dakota…and that’s just the first four years!

The fact is, we’ve met more characters than we can count – and likely had just as many adventures with those characters.

When we put the characters and adventures on the page with a plot, a few hooks and some tension, they make for great fiction but we can never share the truth.

My story “The Path to Freedom” was reviewed once by a reviewer who found only one aspect of the story completely unbelievable – the idea of a good looking woman getting a free drink from a Las Vegas bartender just to sit at the bar. The premise of the overweight cop being sent to a top secret CIA training camp in the Nevada desert wasn’t questionable at all. It was that free margarita that made the reviewer call “bulls***”.

They also had a bit of a problem with so many good looking guys in the story but I chalk that up to their never being posted on a fire team with three Air Force cops with good haircuts who run with forty plus pounds of gear and guns all day.

This is why I have to write fiction – nobody believes the truth.

Besides, who wouldn’t want to romance the characters I’ve met?

As veterans there is one thing in common we carry with us throughout our lives and that is our time in service. Whether it was just a few years or an entire career, it gives us a common language and a common bond. We were and always shall be brothers and sisters in arms.

Although our service rarely comes up in cocktail conversation I find it really is something I enjoy knowing about people.
I recently watched the much anticipated premiere of Human Target on Fox, starring Mark Valley. Being a major action/adventure fan (as well as an action/adventure writer) I was anxious to find out more about the series after thoroughly enjoying the pilot.

As it happens I saw an interview with Mark Valley and McG, the executive producer, that was quite enlightening. They were old Army buddies from Desert Storm. I liked that. I researched a little further and discovered that Mark Valley is a West Point graduate with a degree in mathematics.

I didn’t intend this to be a commercial for Fox or the show, Human Target. My point is, Mark Valley is one of us. I would like him even if he weren’t – his writers are writing great script, he’s easy on the eyes and he plays a great alpha hero. I hope that someday actors who are veterans will play the action heroes that I write but, until then, I hope we can help a brother out and keep Mark Valley working on a great show.

Check it out: http://fox.com/humantarget

Lisa Pietsch is a freelance writer and novelist. Her interests include terrorists and terrorism, the small arms trade, human trafficking and drug trafficking. All of these topics are represented in the Task Force 125 books which are stories of espionage and paramilitary operations centered around the character of Sarah Stevens who is recruited into the CIA’s Special Activities Division. You can find more information on Lisa’s service and her books at www.LisaPietsch.com.

In my debut novel, The Path to Freedom, and the stories that follow in the Task Force 125 series, my heroes are all men and women who served.  Sure, anybody can be a hero, but in my eight years in the U.S.A.F. Security Forces I’ve seen qualities that only those who have served share.

Sense of Duty

There is a shared sense of duty which makes failure unacceptable.  It is a binding quality that joins people of every race, sex and nationality.  It is the common language of military personnel the world over.

Teamwork

Military heroes have faults.  Sometimes they swear, drink or smoke too much.  Sometimes their relationships take a back seat to the mission.  Whatever their faults, they are only human.  What makes them extraordinary is the fact that they face fear and press on anyway because their brothers and sisters in arms depend on them.

Though the heroes in my books work for the CIA, the British Secret Service and private military companies, they all share a common past – their military service.

That’s the beauty of writing military heroes – we all share a common past that allows us to all be just a little heroic.

Jay Stanstead was a career man in the British Special Air Service (SAS). He spent twenty years jumping out of planes, cut more throats than he cared to count and drank more pints than he could remember. He’d invested his money well and had a comfortable retirement courtesy of the crown but his life was missing something he couldn’t live without – action.

On the suggestion of a mate, he met with an American named Brock Benjamin who ran a private military company that specialized in providing freelance work for guys with a certain type of military experience. Jay’s type of military experience.

Jay enjoyed the freelance work and made a good reputation for himself.

One day, Brock called him and two other men in for a look at a special job. Brock showed them a photo of a woman and explained that she was an international businesswoman who needed a personal security specialist, a bodyguard.

No woman, real or photographed, had ever made Jay’s heart stop until that day.

Jay wanted this client. He had to have this client.

The pay was excellent and the conditions guaranteed were first class.

All three men expressed an interest in the job.

Brock stood, smiled and announced he expected to see one man in his office in ten minutes after they’d worked it out amongst themselves who would take the job.

Jay broke the bones of good men that day to be a bodyguard, to be Sarah Stevens’ bodyguard.

Excerpt from The Lonely Road, Task Force 125 book #4, by Lisa Pietsch

Lisa Pietsch is an author, mother, military wife, RomVet and USAF veteran.  You can find her online at www.LisaPietsch.com and the first story in the Task Force 125 series, The Path to Freedom, at Sapphire Blue Publishing.