Photo By 94th Airlift Wing | Second Lt. Brian Parker shakes the hand of his father, retired Master Sgt. Charles...... read more read more
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FORT HOOD, Texas - In a brick two-story home in Harker Heights, Texas, a man sits upstairs tapping at his computer keyboard. The house is quiet. The children are asleep. This is his time. The only time he has to make the contents of his imagination come alive.
During the day, Maj. Brian Parker serves as the 1st Cavalry Division G-3 Force Integration and Development officer-in-charge. He’s a husband and father, but at night, when everyone is asleep, he takes on another role.
“I’ve always been a writer,” Parker said.
Although he’s been actively writing for the past seven years, his journey to become an author began on the farm as a young boy.
His father retired from the Army and the family settled on a farm in Seymour, Mo., where Parker found himself living a mundane farm life with ample time for reading.
“There’s very little to do when you’re on the farm, and you’re the only kid around,” Parker said. “Both my brothers were quite a bit older than me, eight and 10 years older than me, so I was literally all alone, so you start reading and imagining things and exploring.”
The interest in reading naturally lead him to a love of writing. His love of writing flourished, that is, until he joined the Army.
Parker enlisted in the Army fresh out of high school and went through the Reserve Officer Training Corps under the Simultaneous Membership Program, which allowed him to attend ROTC and serve in the Reserves at the same time.
“Once I joined the Army, I kind of fell into the common misbelief that I don’t have enough time to write,” Parker said. “I took 12 years off from writing really. I continued to read, but I really didn’t write very much.”
But after reading a book by active duty Navy officer J.L. Bourne, Parker was inspired.
“I read his book, and I thought if that guy can do it, and he’s a pilot, then I can find time to write,” he said.
He said if he gets an idea while he’s at work, he’ll jot it down in his notebook, but keeps a very clear separation between his work and his home life.
Parker finds the time to write after his kids are asleep. He said he tries to write for an hour to an hour and a half each night.
“I’m a very lucky person,” Parker said. “I don’t need a lot of sleep. I think that’s one thing that’s really really helped me, because my bedtime is around midnight.”
After two and a half years of writing, Parker finished his first book, “GNASH,” and self-published it.
“I started writing it,” he said, “then I got orders to deploy to Iraq.”
Parker said he thought he would have all the time in the world to write while he was deployed but only ended up completing about 25 pages during the entire year.
Parker said his goal was to sell 50 books. That was enough, he said, to serve as validation that this had been a good project and that people were interested in the book. In its first 11 months, “GNASH” sold 1,200 copies.
After “GNASH” was published, Parker’s children wanted a book of their own, so he wrote his zombies into a children’s book.
The children’s book, “Zombie in the Basement,” which is also a coloring book, teaches tolerance and diversity with a strong anti-bullying message.
Even though he has delved into the world of children’s books, the genre he’s most loyal to is the science fiction/post-apocalyptic genre, complete with zombies.
“A lot of people have compared this (‘GNASH’) to a political suspense novel, with zombies, you know.” Parker said.
Parker said he uses his military knowledge and experience to inject realism into his writing.
“I don’t write about stuff that I have no knowledge of, but I write about Soldiers and how we interact and how we do things and the type of weaponry that we currently use,” Parker said. “I don’t pretend and make up all this stuff like a lot of people tend to do in science fiction books. And so it’s more realistic. The conversations that my characters have are realistic conversations, because it’s how I would normally talk to people in the military.”
One of his readers works just down the hall from him in the G-5 Plans office.
“I read his book, ‘GNASH,’” said Maj. Mark Balboni, the division strategic planner. “I found out that he wrote this, and I thought it’s interesting to read what your co-worker wrote. I thought it was really good. I was impressed. You can see his military background inside of it.”
Baldoni said he actually found “GNASH” to be a good strategic tool.
“It’s useful for me as a part of my work,” he said. “It makes you look at overall strategic concepts. If these events happened, how do we react?”
The same versatility Parker shows in morphing from Soldier to writer is evident during his daily duties. Not only is he in charge of G-3 FID, but he’s also the acting OIC of G-5, so he spends his days bouncing from one office to the other.
“He’s an outstanding officer,” said Baldoni. “He takes on multiple different functions. I see nothing but the most outstanding characteristics from him.”
No matter what function he’s serving, he focuses intently on that particular function. When he’s Soldiering, he’s fully immersed in it. When he slides in the role of Daddy and husband, he’s equally immersed in those roles. And when he is immersed in writing, he is fully immersed in that as well.
One reason Parker said he enjoys the science fiction genre is the freedom it allows him as a writer. He has complete control over everything in his writing, a 180-degree departure from the hierarchical structure of his everyday military life.
“And one of the great things about science fiction and even horror is the world is your oyster,” Parker said. “You can write whatever you want. I’ve actually had a couple of people, some purists of the zombie genre say, ‘Oh, your zombies can’t do this and that.’ I tell them why not. It’s all make-believe. I can make them do whatever I want.”
The genre he has chosen has worked out well for him, as he’s got a loyal fan base that follows him on Facebook and gives him candid feedback.
“I’ve got some really great fans of my page that will say, ‘Hey, that’s a really dumb idea,’ and give me some pointers,” he said.
Parker always has one guaranteed fan – his dad.
“He’s read every book I’ve produced,” Parker said. “He’s been very supportive.”
Even after self-publishing three books, Parker has only grazed the surface of his writing goals.
Recently, he signed a four-book contract with a national publishing company that is re-releasing “GNASH” under its label in the summer of 2015, so he’s pulled all of his self-published copies off the shelves.
After spending the day wearing the hats of Soldier, coworker, father, and husband, when everyone else is asleep, he can still be found clacking away at the keys on his laptop.
| Date Taken: | 05.14.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 05.19.2014 12:24 |
| Story ID: | 130294 |
| Location: | FORT HOOD, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 165 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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