Sitting down with author Jack Mull

 

 I have been writing all my life and published for ten years. I have written under several pseudonyms in many genres. I’ve written fiction and non-fiction, but mostly fiction from westerns to modern day murder mysteries. They all have two things in common—my experiences and sex. I have often wondered how any writer can write about anyone’s life and not include these two facts of life. You can read about someone else’s experiences, but unless you have experienced the same thing, how do you know how it actually feels. I had read Ernie Pyle about World War Two, but until I joined the army and served in Vietnam and other great places around the world I ready didn’t understand fully what I was reading when I read Pyle and others. 

So I write about my experiences because that is what I know and I write about sex simply because I enjoy it, as do most people. With that in mind, four years ago I embarked on an ambitious project about my life. I had never been able to write about myself before. I would start but after a few pages I would stop. I found it hard to write about the things I did, things I did for my country. However I found several years ago if I wrote as if it were fiction, using a fictional hero, I had no trouble. Using Jack ‘Hundo’ Lane as that hero, I sat down and outlined a six book series of which I have finished the last three and the first. I am now half way through the second book. They are: A Captain’s Story, Home Coming, Rescue, Occasional Warrior, Taken, and Murder On Marsh Point.

A Captain’s Story is the first book in the six-book series, Reality of War. It’s not just a story of war, but a story of the life of one of this nation’s warriors. The series follows the hero from high school in North Georgia to retirement on St. Simons Island on the coast of Georgia. Along the way, he fights as a soldier and as a CIA operative, meets women around the world, marries, and has a family. 

I have been asked why I wrote Reality of War, A Captain’s Story. The answer is simple—when I was a young soldier in Southeast Asia I did things I’m not proud of, things I am proud of, and a few things I am very proud of. This is a story of one of the things I am very proud of. 

I was a new captain and it was my first command. At the time we, Army Special Forces, were building observation camps along the Laotian/Vietnam border. I was as green as they come and personally naïve. I don’t think I would have survived without my team sergeant, who I considered an old man at the time. He was thirty- three. After our camp construction was finished, he decided it was our time to take R&R (rest and relaxation) in Bangkok, Thailand.

Sergeant Sheets made all the arrangements. Where we would stay, what we would do, and who we would see—including two Thai prostitutes. He said I needed to learn the ways of the world, expand my North Georgia knowledge of life. He was forever kidding me about being from North Georgia, although he was from western North Carolina—not a lot of difference. 

The two Thai women he arranged for us were young—one was older for me and the other younger for him. He felt I was badly in need of education and the woman he selected for me was the right one to teach me. She was considered old for a Thai prostitute, but still younger than my twenty years, and pretty. She was an exception for a Thai prostitute because most men who came to Thailand for sex wanted very young girls. Usually they didn’t live beyond their early twenties. I knew her as Carol, never knew her real name. The picture is of her on the Thai coast. The other Thai girl, Sergeant Sheets’ companion, was younger. I’m not sure how old she was, but I suspect she was no more than thirteen or fourteen—so there are no sex scenes with them. 

The next evening we set out to cover as many bars as possible in the wildest part of Bangkok. As we stood outside our hotel looking up and down the avenue, a young boy, maybe thirteen, came up holding the hand of a younger girl and asked for money. Feeling sorry for them, I finally gave him a five dollar bill. He grinned and ran off, leaving the very young girl behind. As it turned out, she was nine years old. I motioned for her to leave and said ‘no more money’. Waving my arm in a threating manner, I tried to send her away, but she just stood there. Sergeant Sheets began laughing. I looked at him and said ‘What?’. He informed me I had just bought the girl, to do with as I pleased. I was shocked, to say the least. Thus began my education of the world outside North Georgia. 

We soon learned that no one in Bangkok wanted anything to do with us or her. After a few hours, when she realized I wasn’t going to hurt her, she clung to me like a bad cold. I can still feel her thin arms clinging to my neck. I learned that what I’d fallen for was a common practice in that part of the world. Parents sell their unwanted daughters into slavery, including prostitution. Some are even used in snuff movies. I was shocked by the callous attitude at the Lancer’s Bar, where I had to force the bartender to give her a cola. People stared at us— everyone except me knew about the practice, the inhumane treatment of girls. 

For the next two days we looked for a safe place for her. At one point, I was told not to turn her over to the police because they would just sell her again—after they were done with her. I was determined to ensure that nothing bad would happen to her and, with the help of friend, I managed to save her. I won’t give away the story, but to this day I do not regret what I did.  

 

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When Jack Lane joined the Army right out of high school, he had no idea how his life was about to change. He completed basic training at the top of his class, was recommended for Officer Candidate School, and at graduation was commissioned a Second Lieutenant. Before his twenty-first birthday, he completed training in the Army’s legendary Special Forces and was promoted to Captain. This story begins with him standing alone, looking down into the infamous Ho Chi Men trail in Laos. How could he know what would unfold over the next few weeks and how one tiny girl would affect the rest of his life? 

E-book ISBN: 978-1-936653-15-7

Published by Secret Cravings Publishing

You may read more or buy  - here

A Captain’s Story is the first episode in the Reality of War series. The next story is A Captain’s Homecoming.

Blurb: A young Special Forces captain, Jack Lane, and his team sergeant, Carl Sheets, go to Bangkok on R&R after too long in the jungle. They expect to drink, eat, rest, and—especially—enjoy women in their brief respite from the South Vietnam front lines.

The captain quickly learns about a sordid, warped society where human lives, especially children, have no value. Inexperienced and naive, he is lucky he has his older and wiser sergeant to guide him through his first encounter with the depravity of that world—just as the experienced man has guided him through his exposure to the realities of war.

The first day, Captain Lane makes a mistake that could have tragic, even fatal, consequences—instead, he is able to turn it into an opportunity to save an innocent life.

Excerpt:

Horrors of war are not always on the battlefield where two armies clash—one, or both, far from home. Sometimes the clash of cultures is even more horrible.

Young Captain Jack Lane, who had never been out of the hills of North Georgia before joining the Army, stood on the ramparts of his fort-like camp. The sun was just disappearing over the horizon. Holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, he took a drag on the cigarette, looked down into a valley in Southeast Asia and smiled to himself—a smile of satisfaction. He and his team sergeant had picked this mountain top six months ago for their observation camp. It had three sides, with gun emplacements at each corner and along the walls. The camp housed and fed three companies of Rhade Montagnards, as well as their families. From his mountain top, he could observe ‘the tail’ in Laos.

The young captain had been in-country for almost a year, but it seemed like a lifetime. Taking a big pull on the beer, he thought about that year—the way he was at the beginning, and the way he was now. A leader of men—the Army said he was—who depended heavily on his thirty-four year old team sergeant for guidance and advice then and now. A sergeant who had dropped out of high school and joined the Army seventeen years earlier—who had been in the Army almost as long as the captain was old.

Adult Excerpt:

Climbing on the bed, she straddled the captain just below his butt, then worked her fingers into his muscles up and down his back until they relaxed. The captain felt his tense and knotted, hard body beginning to go soft.

“You feel better now? No more tense in your muscles, but in your body I think?”

“Yes, it feels great.”

Carol slid off his body to his side and rolled him over onto his back.

“Oh my, Jack man.” Smiling at his large erection standing straight up like a flag pole. She pulled his right arm under her, then laid her head on his broad shoulder. Kissing him on the neck she tried to wrap her right hand around his cock. “You have a very big ดิ๊ก.”

“What?”

“It is Thai for cock.”

“Oh.” The captain started to move up.

She pushed him back down. “You stay. I will do what is necessary.”

“Yes, ma‘am.” The captain laid his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

Carol kissed her way down his neck to his chest then sucked a nipple in her mouth. After a few minutes she pulled back giggling. “Your nipple is hard like a woman.”

“Really?” His face was red. “I’m like a woman?”

“Yes, really. Your nipple, that is, but I think nothing else about you is like a woman.” She ran her hand up and down his shaft. “Like this. No woman has such a thing. And some men do not. They would be envious, I think.” Carol kissed down to his navel running her wet tongue around the small cavity, licking down to his pubic area leaving a wet trail. She kissed his cockhead, then sucked the purple hood into her mouth.

“Carol…” the young captain grabbed her head, pushing down and forcing his cock in her mouth. She began to gag and cough. He let go. “Sorry.”

“Do not be. I am yours. I like you to be big. Do to me as you wish.”

“What?”

“I am yours to do with as you please.”

“Who says?”

“The hotel manager.”

“Well, you are no one‘s to do with as they wish.”

“No talking, you grow soft.” She leaned down, sucking him back into her mouth.