The Books

“I didn’t write this for veterans or for people my age. I wrote this for the younger generation where this is all ancient history. For those of that group that may read it, hopefully, they will have one person’s perspective of what war is really all about, and perhaps that will guide the thinking about how and when we as a society contemplate and send our sons and daughters to war.”

– J.D. Rafferty, author of Back to Brooklyn: A Vietnam Memoir, published by Blue Ear Books

The Community

On June 28, 2023, Blue Ear Books author Lisa Carrington Firmin spoke online about the experience of veterans, including military sexual trauma to the physicians, residents, and other medical providers of the Puget Sound Hospital of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). It was a wonderfully enriching experience for all concerned, and afterward Blue Ear Books received several extremely thoughtful thank-you letters. The one sent to Blue Ear Books publisher Ethan Casey can be read in full here and says in part:

[Col. Firmin’s] presentation was incredibly powerful and offered our providers a unique perspective on the experiences of women veterans. The stories and poetry she shared not only deepened our empathy but also inspired us to advocate for better support and care for those who have experienced similar traumas.

 

Your dedication to facilitating important conversations and raising awareness within the medical community is truly commendable. Thank you for your commitment to giving veterans a voice, and for your unwavering support of our medical community’s efforts to provide compassionate and comprehensive care to those who have served our country.

Join Us

Blue Ear Books has a strong interest in developing and publishing books by American military veterans. Our mission is to assist veterans in their journeys to becoming published authors. Through our Veterans’ Books Initiative, we strive to provide a platform for honest accounts of personal experience that we hope will help bridge the gap in understanding and empathy between veterans and the civilian public.

We work with veterans to help them:

• Develop ideas for how to structure and tell their stories.
• Create a book outline.
• Establish a timeline with deliverables to remain on track.
• Understand the basics of the writing and editing process.
• Provide guidance on how to interview and interact with subjects, participants, and contributors.
• Explore a variety of pathways to publication.
• Become familiar with costs and other business aspects of book publication.
• Learn the preliminaries of marketing and promotion.
• Understand what it means to be a Blue Ear Books author.

Previous veteran-related books published by Blue Ear Books include:

• What They Signed Up For (2017) by Jeb Wyman, featuring 18 firsthand accounts by combat veterans telling their own stories. Ethan Casey’s short foreword to What They Signed Up For is online, and a second edition of the book will be published soon.
• Consequences: An Intelligence Officer’s War (2020) by David Grantham. Consequences offers an excellent model of how a Blue Ear Books book can be conceived, developed, and brought to publication. David speaks eloquently about that process in this 14-minute video interview.

• Stories from the Front: Pain, Betrayal, and Resilience on the MST Battlefield (2022), in which Bronze Star-decorated combat commander Col. Lisa Carrington Firmin (USAF, ret.) outlines her own experiences with military sexual trauma (MST) and recounts the stories of 13 others: veterans as well as active duty women and men who are bravely sharing their stories of sexual assault and sexual harassment while serving in the United States military. Stories from the Front authentically captures experiences and carefully tells their stories of trauma and the resilience and empowerment they display in their lives.

Blue Ear Books is currently developing several manuscripts by veterans for publication.

The Blue Ear Books commissioning team working on veterans’ books is led by highly skilled and experienced editors and authors. Ethan Casey is a former international journalist, ghostwriter, author of several books, publisher of Blue Ear Books, and co-editor, with Maj. April E. Brown (USMCR, ret.), of Voices of America: Veterans and Military Families Tell Their Own Stories (TCU Press, 2020). Read this fine article about that book. Lisa Carrington Firmin is a retired USAF colonel, a highly decorated combat veteran, a poet, with several published book chapters and magazine writings – visit her professional website at www.lisacarringtonfirmin.com. She is also the author of Stories from the Front: Pain, Betrayal, and Resilience on the MST Battlefield. Both Ethan and Lisa understand how important it is to capture veteran’s lived experiences and to share their stories with others.

To discuss publishing your veterans-related book with Blue Ear Books, contact Ethan Casey.