The Temple of the Exploding Head

If anybody had told me five years ago that I would have written a non-fiction book, I seriously would have laughed.

I mean really…

I don’t write non-fiction. I write about spaceships and Shadow tech and other oddities. Fiction is easy for me to write.  Non-fiction puts too much of a strain on my imagination.

And, if somebody would have additionally said the “non-fiction” book in question would have been about myself during my military years, I would have turned gray with fright.

A story about me? Who would want to read about me? Honestly, I couldn’t imagine a Hell more horrific than having to read page after dreary page of a book detailing the  insipid Wonder Bread doings of me.

But, here it is: 10 Weeks at Chanute, a daring but admittedly short detailing of my doings as a trainee Airman in the US Air Force. I had always thought that writing a tale about me would be hard, would be too much. Writing weird sci-fi is easy because it has nothing to do with me. But this–this is a glimpse into my soul.

I was sent to Chanute Air force Base is 1992 to learn how to perform maintenance on jet engines. Chanute, for all of its long history, had been a place of training. I was just one of many to go there. But, I would be one of the last.

Chanute was dead–chopped, shut down, and, about a year later, would close its gates forever.

In 2012, I felt an odd calling to return to Chanute. I’m not certain why. I took the long, somewhat uninteresting drive across Indiana to what was left of Chanute. Twenty years of being abandoned had left its mark.

I wasn’t quite prepared for what I saw that stormy afternoon.

So, when I got home, I started writing that non-fiction book I’d dreaded for so long. I had to write it, to get it off my chest. I wrote about me, and Chanute, how it had made me into a better person. I had no idea where I was going with it or what I was trying to say, I just wrote.

And then I lost it. I lost the Chanute manuscript. Even though I was only a few thousand words into it, losing those initial words would have been devastating. It’s difficult if not impossible to re-write something already written. I searched and searched for the manuscript. If I couldn’t find it, then that would be the end. My crazy urge to write a memoir would be over.

But then, there it was, hiding in the back of my drawer in an old jump drive I’d forgotten about.

Chanute was on again.

And I went on a tear. I wrote about my experiences and my state of being in 1992, how different things were back then. I wrote about Chanute, about its customs and heritage ninety years in the making. Those are things needed to be remembered and properly preserved.

I wrote about the funny things, the good times I had and the friends I made. I wrote about my sorrow twenty years later, seeing what had become of the old place.

Thirty thousand words later– just barely novella size–I was done. I said what I needed to say.

This tiny little book–I was amazed at what I had created. In just a few words, I told my story and Chanute’s story as well.

What more could I have asked for?

10 Weeks at Chanute is available in paperback and ebook at Amazon.com from Hydra Publications.

copyright 2017, Ren Garcia