The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. We can never free ourselves from habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones.

As powerful as is our soul's call, so potent are the forces of Resistance arrayed against it. We're not alone if we've been mowed down by Resistance; millions of good men and women have bitten the dust before us.

Most of us have two lives: the life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

If you want to send a manuscript, send it to an agent. And send a letter first, asking permission. Launch it into the real world of cold-blooded commercial response, not into the fantasyland of wishful thinking, cowardice and surrender to Resistance.

My grandpa was a World War II paratrooper, my uncle a Vietnam Purple Heart recipient, my cousins both Marine Corps officers. I have some very close Navy SEAL connections as well.

During the run up to the Iraq War, Mike Farrell and I did get on television kind of frequently, but then they saw that that didn't work. They really couldn't bait us into being stupid, so they stopped. You know the mainstream media, corporate media, avoids ever giving anyone who has anything to say a platform, if they can possibly help it.

Iraq is in a civil war. There is no road in that country that is safe.

I remember seeing war hero Jimmy Doolittle fly a Gee Bee racer there. He was my childhood hero. Many years later, I was lucky enough to go hunting with him.