Life During Wartime

THE BOOK: Life During Wartime

PUBLISHED IN: 2018

THE AUTHOR: Katie Rogin

THE PUBLISHER: Mastodon Publishing, an imprint of C&R Press. Mastodon is dedicated to making thoughts real, whether that means bringing a unique and important story to readers, or encouraging them to fight against injustices, conspiracies, or abuses of power.

SUMMARY: 21-year-old Nina Wicklow-Vargas, an Iraq combat veteran, has gone missing in Sierra Madre, CA.

Life During Wartime is an after-war story that takes on some of the nation’s most troubling public issues and harrowing personal pains. It takes place in Southern California during the worst of the financial crisis in September 2008. Two traumatized survivors and unlikely allies—one a former army nurse in Iraq’s Green Zone and the other a former financial trader who lived through the World Trade Center attack on 9/11—come together to look for a combat veteran who has gone missing. In a place shaken by war, financial near-collapse and raging wild fires, they search for the soldier, a way to live during wartime, and a healing peace.

THE BACK STORY: I wrote this story because I came to see America as a nation at war with itself, filled with physically and emotionally traumatized veterans and civilians trying to live after surviving terrible things.

I wrote this material through the lens of my own personal PTSD which I still live with decades after being violently assaulted as a teenager. Leveraging my therapy and readings about post-traumatic stress, as well as my writer’s tools of imagination, research, language and creativity, I constructed a story that is at once individual and universal. My own quest for a renewed and healing life after trauma became a vibrant model for the same quest in the characters of Lise, Jim, Jen and Danny.

I placed the story’s events in September 2008 on the weekend that Lehman Brothers collapsed at the worst of the financial crisis, but it is clear that over a decade later we, as a nation, continue to be buffeted by the same crises—veteran suicide, financial instability, war, terrorism, natural disasters and so much loss.

WHY THIS TITLE?: Life During Wartime was the title almost from the beginning, from that first flicker of story in my mind. It felt right and sounded right, and kept being right, as I wrote more pages. I did a Google search and knew a few other people had used the title for their books, but I didn’t really care about differentiating in that way. As I recounted in my Life During Wartime playlist-essay for Largehearted Boy, the Talking Heads song of the same title just so perfectly captured the mood for me. When I was selecting the epigraphs, I did then have a few spasms of doubt about the title and thought maybe something from The Odyssey or Lucinda Williams’s song “World Without Tears” would be better, but, as you say, we can’t forget we’re still and always at war, and so the title stuck.

REVIEWS/COMMENTS:

“The novel is reflective and meditative, deliberate in its depiction of people displaced by loss and fear, people stuck in a world where they must continue moving forward in spite of the trauma they have experienced. Life During Wartime explores the results of all this isolation and running away with sensitivity and nuance, and it is a book that will stay with you long after you read the final page. — Jessica Mannion, The Literary Review

“A vividly written and intensely gripping read from first page to last, Life During Wartime by Katie Rogin aptly showcases an author with a genuine flair for originality and narrative driven storytelling. An inherently entertaining novel, Life During Wartime is unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists and community library Contemporary General Fiction collections.” — Midwest Book Review

“What Rogin does so well is to show how events of trauma unlatch themselves from their original places in time and hook their claws into individual and collective bodies and minds.” — Jerome Blanco, The Lit Pub

“Katie Rogin’s riveting debut, Life During Wartime, is a smoking, sun-drenched portrait of a nation at war with itself. Set during the 2008 financial crisis, Rogin’s story of the desperate search for a missing combat veteran explodes into a searing social commentary that resembles, in scope and ambition, Robert Stone’s Vietnam-era work. It’s a powerful, wrenching, thoroughly necessary book.” — Whitney Terrell, author of The Good Lieutenant.

AUTHOR PROFILE:

Katie Rogin grew up in New York amid a family of art dealers, fiction writers and journalists. Her writing spans old and new media.

She wrote for ABC’s One Life to Live for which she won a Writers Guild of America award. One Life to Live was created by Agnes Nixon and aired on ABC from July 15, 1968 to January 12, 2012.

Katie wrote, directed and produced the short film In A Blue Mood which screened at Urbanworld, the IFP Market and the Austin Film Festival. The soundtrack features Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Ben Webster, and Anita O’Day.

Katie also wrote the historical mystery game SPQR: The Empire’s Darkest Hour which was published by GT Interactive. SPQR is a Myst-like historical puzzle-adventure-mystery game that takes place in and around the ancient Roman forum in 205 AD. The player moves through a beautiful 3D recreation of the ancient Roman forum that was developed by architects from the Digital Design Lab at Columbia University’s School of Architecture.

Katie has published fiction, essays and criticism. Her work has appeared in VICE’s Tonic, PANK, Intellectual Refuge, Quartz, The Rumpus, The Chattahoochee Review, The Millions, The Brooklyn Rail, Streetlight, Terrain and Sports Illustrated.

Katie’s father Richard Rogin and uncle Gilbert Rogin were both journalists and fiction writers. Rich published short fiction in Harper’s Magazine while working for magazines, newspapers and ABC News. Gil published 33 short stories in The New Yorker, as well as a story collection and two novels with Random House. He had a long career at Time Inc., writing and editing for Sports Illustrated, People, Life, Fortune and Discover. He also helped launch the hip-hop magazine Vibe with Quincy Jones.

Katie’s mother Anne Adler Rogin is an art dealer and interior designer, as was her grandfather Abraham M. Adler, co-founder of Hirschl & Adler Galleries.

Katie has also worked as a creative director, digital strategist and strategic planner for various advertising agencies. Katie Rogin received an M.A. in Liberal Studies from The New School. She lives in Brooklyn.

SAMPLE CHAPTER:

An excerpt of Life During Wartime was published as “Bitter Nights and Days” in terrain.org and you can read it here: https://www.terrain.org/2018/fiction/bitter-nights-and-days/

LOCAL OUTLETS: Ask any bookstore to order from Mastodon Publishing.

WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: Mastodon Publishing: https://www.mastodonpublishing.com/ Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Life-During-Wartime-Katie-Rogin/dp/1936196867 Barnes& Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/life-during-wartime-katie-rogin/1128632252?ean=9781936196869 Indie Bound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781936196869

PRICE: $12 at Mastodon Publishing.

$10.26 at Amazon

$18 everywhere else

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:

KatieRoginWriter@gmail.com.

Instagram: @krogin

Twitter: @katierogin

Website: http://katierogin.com