Virtual Book Tour + #Giveaway: Playing Army by Nancy Stroer @Nancy_Stroer @GoddessFish

PLAYING ARMY

Nancy Stroer

GENRE: UpLit / Domestic War

BLURB:

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.

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.

 

 

Interview with Nancy Stroer

Have you ever had an imaginary friend?

Listen, I grew up in a tiny house with five siblings. I spent more of my time trying to get away from people that I did trying to invent new ones! I was such a little introvert. I spent a lot of time up a tree, and even up on the roof of the house, reading, and enjoying the characters other people invented.

 

Do you have any phobias?

Hmm. I think I have that misophonia thing, the one where chewing noises makes you homicidal. But mostly I’m the kind of person who walks towards risk rather than away from it. I’d be the dumb white person in the movie, going to investigate the noises in the basement.

 

Do you listen to music when you're writing?

Never while I’m writing – I need dead silence to write, and sometimes even use noise-cancelling headphones to quiet my own head chatter! I have a very busy mind but something about putting the same kind of headphones on that jackhammer operators use helps me get down to business. I do, however, make playlists and listen to music from when my stories are set to anchor me in times and places. I’m planning to teach spin classes to a playlist from Playing Army as a book launch activity! Why just listen to me read when you can immerse yourself in the experience!?

 

Do you ever read your stories out loud?

Lots of times – with my own voice and also the robot voice from Word. It helps so much to check tiny grammatical errors, but mostly with rhythm and flow.

 

Tell us about your main character and who inspired him/her.

I think it’s only natural that readers will assume Min is based on me, but she isn’t really. She’s a composite of many women I’ve known who come to military service with past trauma and do pretty well because they’ve become a little (or a lot) masochistic as a result of all the coping strategies they’ve had to develop. All the branches of service have appearance standards, and weight control programs, and they all do vast amounts of harm. The Army can take a relatively normal eater who’s just a little soft in the middle, say, and turn them into someone with really distorted eating patterns and poor body image (and sometimes much worse). I wanted to write about someone who came in with distorted feelings about food and her body already (as so many women do, from such a tragically young age) and to show what happens when that person is scrutinized for her weight. Not just what that does to her as a person, but also as someone who’s required to make important decisions. What does being hungry all the time do to a leader? Those of us who’ve been scrutinized, and have worked with military people under these impossible (unnecessary) requirements to lose weight, know that it’s a very damaging set of circumstances.

 

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

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.

Connect with Nancy Stroer

Twitter ~ Goodreads ~ Facebook ~ LinkedIn

 

 

Giveaway:

$25 Amazon/BN GC

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