Vaughn C. Hardacker

Vaughn Hardacker here. In my post last month, I gave in to SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder–aka the effects of another Northern Maine winter) and cabin fever. If you are not familiar with Cabin Fever, it’s that point where you and another person have been cooped up together for three or four months, and your companion is beginning to look like the number 1 item in the food chain. Then, in the middle of this month (March),  the temperature hit 50+ and harmony has returned. Well, almost. Skipper. our male Yorkie. is suffering from  CF, too. With the return of warmer temperatures, he has begun playing his favorite game. I call this game: Let Skipper Out; Let Skipper In; Let Skipper Out; Let Skipper In. My office is in front of our house, next to the front door. After an hour of the game, I get slightly irritated. Jane, my significant other, tells me to ignore him. Easily said, there is a plastic trash can beside my desk, and Skipper has learned that if he beats on it with his front paws, after ten minutes or so, I’ll give in and play some more. I’ve tried everything. I’ve gone so far as to sit him on my bed and have a father-son discussion —once I threatened to take him to the used Yorkie Lot and trade him in. He either didn’t

Skipper, it took months to train him to smoke outside.

understand what I said, or made up his mind to ignore the two-legged fool (he is a Yorkie after all). I looked up Yorkie in Roget’s Thesaurus; there were two entries: 1. Stubborn and 2. independent (Sometimes I wonder if he’s an undercover cat).

I called the vet and explained my problem. Her response: “It isn’t that Yorkies aren’t intelligent. They’re just hard-headed. For instance, they understand anything they consider important. The next time you are having one of your heart-to-heart talks, and you think he’s not paying attention, say: TREAT. Then watch his response.”

On a more serious note. As mentioned in last month’s post, one of my former publishers returned the rights to the two books that they had published.  (Truthfully, I’ve come to believe that I made a mistake when I signed on with them.) I thought about what I had to do to avoid going through the entire agent-and-find-a-publisher routine. I started thinking: why not avoid all that? Neither of the books was released as an ebook. I decided to try to put another book to the test. In 1989, I wrote a novel entitled THE WAR WITHIN, and have never been able to place it with a publisher. I entered the book in the International Literary Awards and was awarded 2nd place (and a $ 1,500 prize — they sent it to me, too!). I have had it looked at by a number of agents, all of whom said, “Not for me.”

A bit more regarding the book. I wrote it at a time when I was living in a very dark place (I was later diagnosed with PTSD), and bit by bit, I felt as if I was going crazy. Every facet of my life was turning into feces, and I felt like I was traveling 90 miles an hour down a dead-end street. My professional life and my personal life were a shambles. The only thing I found easy to do was drink. If you had invested in Jim Beam stock, you might have doubled your net worth. As I started the book, I began to feel changed. It was as if a great burden had been lifted from my back.

I’ve talked before about my dysfunctional past, and parts of the novel were semi-biographic. The plot was simple: a kid who grew up on the streets of South Boston, and hung out on the fringes of a local mob, learns that the mob boss plans to set him up to take the fall for a murder. He flees. He has no trade, can barely read or write, and quickly learns he has to do something to survive. He asks himself where he could go where the mob would never look for him. He comes to a conclusion: I’ll join the military. The Navy, Air Force, and Army turn him down. He realizes that he has one last chance. He knew a friend who had been arrested, and the court gave him a choice: join the Marines or go to prison. The Marines take him on. They were involved in the Vietnam War, and infantry troops were in demand. He enlists, goes to Vietnam, and wins the country’s highest award, the Medal of Honor. He believes that he’s got it made now… He had no idea how wrong he was.

I had several people read the first draft, and one woman gave it back to me within days. Her review, “It’s too angry and dark for me.” I realized that writing the book helped me purge a lot of demons, and all my writing was the most healing. It allowed me to realize that my problems all had a single thing in common… me. The greatest source of my constant anger, my parents’ alcoholism, was not my fault. What was my fault was the way I dealt with it and let it control me. As a result of her feedback, I wrote a major revision (which is still quite angry and dark).

To return to the subject of this. I have discovered a website, https://www.digital2draft, that publishes both ebooks and paperbacks. For an eBook, all they charge is 10% of whatever price you sell the book for. I have searched online and found quite a bit about them. The most detailed info came from reedsy.com. Their review was good enough for me to give them a try.  The eBook will be available on April 1, 2026. I’ll let you know how it works out.

I have scheduled the launch for April 1, 2026. So if you are interested in a book with an unlikeable protagonist and deals with veterans returning from Vietnam (still an unfavorable war — as much as people try to thank us, I can still sense an undercurrent of hostility and dislike).

BTW, for the first time in a couple of years, I am writing again.