Win a $25 GC: Playing Army by Nancy Stroer

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What is the sweetest thing someone has done for you?

My husband is such a honey – he does a million things for me, all the time. When he leaves for work in the morning he sets up a pot of coffee so it’s ready for me when I get up. He makes dinner for us every night, and brings me sandwiches if I’m locked away writing. He built me a truly magnificent doll house! And wired it for electricity!! He’s amazing.

How would you spend ten thousand bucks?

I’ve been hankering to go back to Japan, so – I’d buy tickets for my family for winter time and go skiing in northern Japan and shopping in Tokyo. Yeah! Where’s this money coming from? I want to go now!

Where do you get your best ideas?

My best ideas come while writing by hand. I have to get the pen moving first, and usually write a couple of pages of garbage, before the good ideas start to work themselves in. It’s something about the physical connections among my hand, my brain, and the paper. It’s something about the energy that goes along with just getting MOVING.

What comes first, the plot or characters?

Hmmm. Usually it’s the situation for me (two characters standing in a forest in Germany, for example), then who those characters are (modern-day Hansel and Gretel, but who, exactly, are they?), then hammering out the plot points that will make the story work. I have fictional plans for things that happened in places where I’ve lived. So I think it’s setting and situation for me, before even plot and characters.

What does your main character do that makes him/her special?

Ha! That’s a great question, when I was trying to make Minerva as ordinary a soldier as possible! But I did make her a PT Queen – she can knock out pushups and run with the best of them. Being able to do good physical training is hard currency in the Army. Always has been, always will be.

It’s 1995 and the Army units of Fort Stewart, Georgia are gearing up to deploy to Bosnia, but Lieutenant Minerva Mills has no intention of going to war-torn eastern Europe. Her father disappeared in Vietnam and, desperate for some kind of connection to him, she’s determined to go on a long-promised tour to Asia. But the Colonel will only release her on two conditions—that she reform the rag-tag Headquarters Company so they’re ready for the peacekeeping mission, and that she get her weight within Army regs, whichever comes second. Min only has one summer to kick everyone’s butts into shape but the harder she plays Army, the more the soldiers—and her body—rebel. If she can’t even get the other women on her side, much less lose those eight lousy pounds, she’ll never have another chance to stand where her father once stood in Vietnam, feeling what he felt. The Colonel may sweep her along to Bosnia or throw her out of the Army altogether. Can you fake it until you make it? Min is about to find out.

Enjoy an Excerpt

I sucked in my gut and forced the top button of my BDU trousers through the hole. Pounds never melted off me like they did in the diet pill commercials. As I wrestled with my body’s ill-fitting container the latrine door opened and two pairs of boots tromped in. Specialist Pettit’s voice floated over the sound of running water. “Not to be mean or anything, but female commanders are the worst. And Lieutenant Mills is the absolute worst. I worked for her for two years in Personnel and she ragged on me the whole time.”

Whoa, shit. Enemy inside the wire. I stopped breathing altogether and leaned so close to the stall door my eyes crossed.

“Hey, now.” That was Lieutenant Logan, my replacement at my old job. Female soldiers carved their hierarchies along different lines, never straight down the military ranks, and new alliances were being tested. Would Logan stick up for me, officer to officer? “It’s a short-term thing. She won’t be here long.” Instead of reproach, Logan’s voice was edged with mirth. “The colonel needs a body in that chair until a real commander comes in, and now that I’m here, Lieutenant Mills is over strength. She’s the body.”

My face grew hot. Real commander? Body? I clamped my lips shut against the urge to burst out of the stall, roaring. I imagined inhaling the entire room then blowing them away with the release of my torso, all tightly packed plastic explosives and buckshot. These two, Logan especially, had no freaking clue.

About the Author:

Nancy Stroer grew up in a very big family in a very small house in Athens, Georgia and served in the beer-soaked trenches of post-Cold War Germany. She holds degrees from Cornell and Boston University, and her work has appeared in the Stars and Stripes, Soldiers magazine, Hallaren Lit Mag, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and Things We Carry Still, an anthology of military writing from Middle West Press.

She’s a teacher and a trainer, and an adjunct faculty member of the Ellyn Satter Institute, a 503(c) not-for-profit that helps individuals and families develop a more joyful relationship to food and their bodies. Playing Army is her first novel.

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