At least it should be better than reality…TV that is.

Lately, there haven’t been too many TV shows to come about that I’ve been really been excited to check out. I don’t think I can handle another reality show and all of their unscripted drama by a bunch of people I care nothing about. I like escapism in my entertainment choices. Great fictional plot lines with characters I can care about is more my taste. Now, when I saw the preview for the new show “Last Resort” I, of course, was interested immediately because of the first shot in the commercial being of a submarine on. However, this does come with a mixed bag of emotions. I’m sure as anyone who works or had worked in any specialized field, it is sometimes hard to watch shows about that job which you have inside information on. Sometimes you can suspend reality enough to enjoy it, other times however, they miss the mark so much you can’t stomach it.

Will it pass the Bubblehead smell test?

I can’t wait to watch Last Resort and then talk to my buds from the Navy to see what their thoughts about the show are. I’m sure our opinions will be diverse but we will all be watching the show intently to see if they get the bubbleheads right. The technical stuff is never right, but as long as they try we will give them some leeway. However, if they get the crew wrong it will be tough to go back to it week after week. That is something we will have to wait and see with.

Sink or Submerge, time shall tell.

Lastly, I’m a little worried that the good submarine action will be reserved to the very first episode. After that, I’m thinking it will be more like the show Lost. But that’s just my speculation. In the world of submarines there are those who sink and those who submerge. While they may seem similar, one is far worse than the other. I am routing for this one, I hope it can surface above the competition.

~ T. Steven Sullivan

I had a reviewer dog my book because he didn’t understand the need to have a female reporter and her companion come aboard the submarine. I can’t give him too much grief about it. The fact is, I never thought the whole gimmick would be construed as hokey simply because it was rooted in fact. However, if I hadn’t been aboard the Key West when we sent Joan Lunden off with the Navy SEALs to do a simulated special op, I may have landed in the camp that perceived a book that had a female reporter on the submarine as being, well, dumb. I never did give it a second thought though, because the Navy loves press like that. It’s like the movie “Act of Valor” if the Navy has a chance to get some good press, they are all over it. As well they should be. Otherwise, the only thing that would be in the news about the Navy would be scandals about CO’s being dismissed. When a reporter, like Joan Lunden, is willing to come aboard and highlight the stressful conditions an entire crew will put themselves through, that is a good thing. I know for me, even though my screen time is only about .5 seconds, this was a great time for me and I was able to show my mom and dad a little of what life was like for me.

In the book, it works out nicely to have the female reporter. She provides a way to dig into the mind of the Captain without Captain Maddox having to monologue to no one in particular for an entire chapter. That would have been hokey. So, if Joan Lunden ever did read “Hot Run,” I hope it would make her smile to think back to her time aboard the submarine and with the Navy SEALs.  It was fun for us all. By her coming aboard the boat, it also saved me and a few of my pals from a whole heap of trouble. You see, we had been operating out of Roosevelt Roads naval base in Puerto Rico and the night before we were headed out to sea, a couple of my buddies and I went to San Juan for the evening. Well, on the way back from San Juan we got lost, got a flat tire, changed it, got another flat tire and ended up missing the boat when it went back out to sea. If the boat hadn’t been coming back in three days to pick up Joan Lunden and her crew, we would have had to meet the boat back in Norfolk. Then, we would have really been in trouble. So it’s a big thanks I have to give Joan Lunden for saving my butt!

Here is the episode of “Behind Closed Doors” where we sent Joan Lunden off with the Navy SEALs. My .5 seconds of fame is at 5:38. I am the NUB sleeping in the torpedo room.

I was dangerously close to falling into a rut, which may have become my grave. I graduated high school the year Bill Clinton was elected president and, as in any election cycle, the media had the country convinced we were in an economic decline that we would never be able to climb out of. Come on, this is America; we turned it into an economic boom in just a few years. However, as an eighteen year old with A.D.D., college was definitely off my radar. So, without college, the talking heads were telling me I would be lucky to get a job at a fast food joint. The media, I don’t think, has ever been accused of being optimistic.

So there I was at the end of summer, all my friends were going off to college and I was going to be filling out stock boy applications. I didn’t know it, but my ship was on the horizon. Of course, I couldn’t see it because it was a submarine. After spending the night at a friend’s house, watching him pack for school, I got in my car and headed towards the mall. Only, I didn’t go and fill out a job application, I stopped at the Navy recruiters’ office and changed the course of my life.

Three days later, he had me up at the MEPS station. The last thing my mom told me before I left was, “Don’t sign anything!” The next day, when I was followed into the driveway by the recruiter and I stepped out of the car with a smile from ear to ear, my mom looked at my dad and said, “He signed.”

It was one of the best decisions of my life!

That’s not to say it was without challenges. I told my dad I was never going to have to do homework again. Boy was my world turned upside down, when I got to the boat and found out how much mandatory studying there was to do to earn my “dolphins” the submarine warfare pin. My dad would just laugh and laugh when I would gripe about Dink study. Being a NUB (a non-qual, or more appropriately, a Non-Useful Body) on a submarine was neither easy, nor fun (at least it didn’t seem that way at the time.) but I couldn’t imagine anything being more of a character builder. I’m sure this is how it is across all branches of the military.

Although, I may have put my life in jeopardy a few times with my practical jokes. The chiefs weren’t too happy when I replaced their sour cream with ice cream on taco day. I also had a near death experience with the Captain, when I painted my name on the submarine. It may not have been a brush with my physical death, but it was a close call with the life expectancy of my rank.

I did get over my practical joking ways when the boat sent me to Dive school. Making it through dive school was one of the toughest challenges of my life, but no single experience in my life required me to be as intensely focused as Dive School. It was a joint services Dive School that I had gone through, so I had the privilege of sharing the class with Air Force Pararescue (PJ’s), Forward Air Combat Controllers,  and Marine Corps Combat Swimmers (Oorah brothers!) We even had a few instructors who were Army Divers.

I credit my time I spent earning my Silver Dolphins (Submarine Warfare Pin) and my graduation from dive school as the foundation for the intense drive I have used throughout my professional life after the Navy.

But it all comes down to the friends…

While the drive and the experiences I had in the Navy are irreplaceable, nothing compares to the brotherhood that goes well beyond friendship, which was forged in the Navy. When you spend every waking minute with a group of 120 guys in the space equal to a three bedroom house and you don’t kill each other, that’s when you know you are true friends.  I love the times when I get a chance to visit with old Navy buddies. Even if it’s just for a dinner, we can always pick up the conversation as if we were still on deployment. My brothers from the Navy were my inspiration for writing Hot Run. While it is an action adventure story, at the heart of it, it is about the friendships you forge in the military service.

So if you are a parent, and your child is coming to you talking of joining the military; I’m sure it can be scary, but there are some experiences in this life money cannot buy. There are friendships that cannot be replaced and the military offers those.

Have a great day and while I support the Army wholeheartedly 364 days a year, today I have to say, “Go Navy, Beat Army!”

~T. Steven Sullivan

A big thank you goes out to all those who found my book on kindle and decided to give it a chance. August was my best month to date. I sold over 500 copies of HOT RUN on the kindle and with the way September is starting out, I should go well beyond that this month! At the time I am writing this, HOT RUN is listed as #10 on Amazon’s top 100 list for the Kindle War/Fiction category. This has been amazing! It has inspired me to think my dream of being a full-time author may be inching closer. However, I’ve got a lot more writing to do if I’m going to make it happen. Yet, with this little taste of success, there are many things I have learned. First…

I am no David Hasselhoff

Everybody knows, Germans love David Hasselhoff, but I have yet to sell a copy of HOT RUN on Amazon Germany. I have sold the majority of my copies on Amazon US, and about 15% of my sales have come from Amazon UK. Zero from Germany. This does not come as a surprise to me though, because I have done zero marketing targeted to a German audience. Also, there are no references to Germany in my book. So, while my hair may look a little like David Hasselhoff’s right now(I need a haircut), I have none of his magic German love. There are many countries in this world, most in fact, which have had no one buy my book, but Amazon keeps pointing this lack of German sales out to me in their sales reports. It makes me picture the Hoff himself sitting in a cubical in Amazon’s headquarters, looking over my numbers with a sneer, saying, “Sure, over five hundred sales by a nobody, but what has he sold in Germany!”

I may not have a talking car, but…

I did find myself above Tom Clancy’s latest book on Amazon’s War Fiction list. This was a pretty cool feeling. Especially since “The Hunt for Red October” was the only thing I knew about submarines when I was sitting in the DEP station (the enlistment center for the Navy) and they asked if I wanted to volunteer for submarine duty. The movie was cool, so I said, “Can I drive?” Little did I know, while underway I would be driving it six to twelve hours a day…everyday.

Needless to say…

I am very excited about how last month turned out, and how this month, just a few days in, is shaping up. I actually starting to get some real hope that one day, I will be writing for my full-time job. In fact, I’m already counting my chickens before they hatch. Which I am often guilty of, but what can I say, I am an eternal optimist.

Thank you to everyone for your support, I will keep you up to date as events unfold!

~ T. Steven Sullivan

So, I have stayed up the last few nights working on this trailer for my book. I’m always up for a challenge, and I had to learn a little bit of Adobe After Effects to do this. I learned just enough to make this work. Of course, I have to thank my good friend Jon Pinto (http://jonpinto.com), who did the cover art for my book. I was able to take that work and use it in my video.

~ T. Steven Sullivan

“I just finished the book the night before last, I stayed up way past my bedtime two nights in a row to finish it. What a great read! It really brought back a lot of memories of serving on the Key West. I have told several people that if they want to know what it is like to serve on a fast attack boat, they need to read this book. Keep up the great writing.

Remember the first time you got to dive to inspect the ship in Norfolk in the winter and you didn’t have your wet suit yet, so you wore the ships dry suit that was way too big for you? I remember pulling you down by the buddy rope and sticking you to the bottom of the ship because you couldn’t get enough air out of the suit to become neutrally buoyant, Good Times!” ~ Leonard G. Leslie

Thanks Lenny, I’m glad you enjoyed the book. And I remember that dive very well. That dry suit I was wearing was apparently made for an NFL lineman. The thing was so filled with air I was like Ralphie from the Christmas Story movie. What a sight! I was just like Ralphie lying in the snow unable to get up, except it was the bottom submarine and Lenny had placed against hull. I couldn’t move so he just dragged me along the bottom of the boat with our buddy rope. Once Lenny had finished his inspection, it was time to head to the surface. Lenny pulled me out from the bottom of the hull, but my boots came out first so all the air went to the boots and I headed to the top feet first. I pulled Lenny along with me like I was a giant helium balloon. We came up way too fast but we were okay.

Thanks for the memory Lenny, and thanks for spreading the word about my book!

~T. Steven Sullivan

]]> http://tstevensullivan.com/2011/03/05/my-first-official-dive/feed/ 0 http://tstevensullivan.com/2011/02/18/sully-paints-the-boat-part-duex/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sully-paints-the-boat-part-duex http://tstevensullivan.com/2011/02/18/sully-paints-the-boat-part-duex/#comments Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:57:40 +0000 T.S.S. http://www.hotrunthenovel.com/?p=179 France, rough start, but had a blast!

So yes, France started a little rough, but overall I had a blast. After a frustrating day of trying to break the rules to get a fifteen minute paint job done, I finished, and at the insistence of my LPO Mark Leahy, I painted over the one foot by two foot letters swirled into the paint job which spelled out the word Sully. Mark told me I needed to paint over it again because he could still see it. I insisted that was only because it was still wet and he knew it was there. Once it dried, I assured him, it wouldn’t be visible. I packed up my gear and headed out for some liberty.

Fun in France

Toulon, France was a blast. I hit the city on my Rollerblades and did what I liked to do best, explore, explore, explore. I skated through an open air art festival and it reminded me of the old film that we watched on the reel-to-reel in elementary school, “The Red Balloon” (Great movie, horrible book). I found a skate park right on the beach called “Half Pipes by the Bay” (Actually, I made that up. The sign was in Frenchese, so I couldn’t read it.) I went running with the COB (Jim Nemeth) and TM1 Kloetzke (Now LCDR, way to go Pete!). Now, I was a track runner in high school. Pretty fast at it too. I ran the mile and the two mile. My best mile time was 4:48 (now it’s like 14:48, but back then I could run). But the COB just ran, and ran, and ran. We left the boat that morning and, well let’s just say I volunteered to take someone’s duty the next day just so I’d have an excuse not to run with him again. A couple of us played paintball with the French Special Forces guys. My throat still hurts from the direct shot to the Adam’s apple. However, the best part of France was, no not the Louvre (didn’t make it there, I played paintball), it was the Smash Sandwich stand right outside the base. So, after a few days of fun, and about 15 smash sandwiches, we left France and I left any thoughts of my paint job on the fairwater planes behind.

Next stop, La Maddalena, Italy…Sully did what?

It started off as such a good morning. We surfaced early, and headed into port. I had done too much goofing around in France. Now that we were going to be in Italy, I was really going to go see the sights. That plan would change when Commodore of CTF-69 the Navy’s Mediterranean fast-attack submarine operations, came aboard to pilot the boat into La Maddelina. As we prepared to moor outboard of the USS Simon Lake, a submarine tender, I was stationed as a line handler topside. I remember how crowded the bridge looked with Captain Kuppers, the Officer of the Deck, the Commodore, the lookout (Petty Officer Jason Ross), and two of the boat’s friends from Key West who had tagged along for the short ride from Toulon, Mark Rossi and Ken Wells. Captain Kuppers was not known for his love of pulling in or out of anywhere and this morning seemed to be no exception. I heard him screaming up in the bridge and I even made the comment to one of my fellow line handlers that the Captain must be tearing into the Nav. What I didn’t realize at that moment, it was my name he was cursing.

Uh-Oh

Jason Ross, who as the lookout had a front row seat, recounted the events to me later that night. Here’s how it went down. As the Commodore was calling the shots in the bridge, he happened to glance down at the starboard fairwater plane. Then, looking straight ahead, he said, “Sully must like to paint.”

Captain Kuppers stumbled over his words as he seemed to wonder if he had heard the Commodore right. “Excuse me sir?”

Then the Commodore, with a stern face, looked him straight in the eye as he pointed back to the fairwater plane and said, “Sully. He must like to paint, his name’s right there.” And there it was, glistening in the Mediterranean sun, SULLY.

Kuppers exact quote, as Ross recalled it was, “I’m gonna have his ass! He’s gonna be chipping this paint with his teeth!” You know, for the Silent Service, word travels pretty fast. Before we even had the lines fastened to the cleats, I knew I was in for it. I milled about the deck by the stern line not wanting to go below and face the wrath I had brought on myself. Then I saw Captain Kuppers pop up out of the hatch. To my relief, he headed for the brow towards the Simon Lake. When he was about half way up, I had just begun to breathe a little easier, but then he stopped. He began to scan the deck. I wanted to look away, to pretend I hadn’t noticed him, but his knuckles were so white as they gripped the rail, I was like one of those deep water fish drawn in by the predators glowing antenna. He spotted me. I saw the blood return the color to his knuckle as he released the rail and pointed at me.

“You,” he said. “You don’t leave this boat until you are in front of me in my stateroom!”

Gulp.

In the Captain’s Stateroom

“You embarrassed me, you embarrassed the Navy, and you embarrassed yourself!

I had to stop myself from responding to that statement from the Captain with the phrase “Two outta three ain’t bad.” I did restrain myself though. I was lucky enough he hadn’t taken me directly to mast. He did, however, make me, under the supervision of Leahy, chip all the paint off the fairwater planes and put a fresh coat of paint on them. It didn’t stop there though; he made me paint the entire submarine, bow to stern, before I could leave the boat. It took me three days. When I finished, I walked to the end of the pier where the deli/laundry mat/casino/bar was and who happened to be in there having a sandwich with the new Engineering Officer? You guessed it. Captain Kuppers. He smiled and bought me a beer. I didn’t have the gumption to tell him I don’t like beer but I’ll take a Margarita.

The morning we pulled into Toulon, France during our Mediterranean deployment (Med Run ’95) I was stoked. We had been cooped up, the evaporator was on the fritz (as usual), and everyone was just getting downright irritable. I didn’t have duty that day so I was ready to strap on my Rollerblades and go see France. Then, Petty Officer Schaubhut, who was the Deck Division “Officer” hollered out, “Sully, where do you think you’re going? You can’t go anywhere until the fairwater planes are painted.”

Okay, side note here to any high schoolers out there thinking of joining the Navy, here’s how not to go about it. Upon graduation, don’t go mountain climbing, roller-blading and hitch-hiking across the country for two months and then walk into a recruiter’s office and say where do I sign? Do a little research first. Get an A-school. If you don’t know what that is, do your research. Because when the recruiter says, “How about being a Striker? Don’t you want to be a Striker?” It sounds cool, but it translates to – You don’t get training, you paint the boat for a year until we stick you in a job without training you. Should’a done my homework. Story of my life.

Anyway, my fun was spoiled. I had to paint the fairwater planes. For those of you who don’t know, a fairwater plane is the wing-like structure that sticks out of the sail on a submarine and is used for depth control when submerged.

It just keeps getting better…

So I gather my supplies, climb up to the top of the sail, jump down onto the fairwater plane and start to paint. Then, I hear the Duty Officer trying to get my attention from the deck. After I reluctantly acknowledge him, he informs me that I need a harness on when I am working on the fairwater planes. Of course I thought this was pretty lame, but if you read in my earlier post, I didn’t have the best record when it came to not falling overboard. I obliged him and put on the harness, which probably would have given me a sprained back if I would have fallen, rather than simply splashing into the drink. Once I got rolling again, he popped his head up out of the sail. “Seaman Sullivan, I checked the SSORM, you need to have someone tending your harness when you’re out on the fairwater plane.” What that meant was, I had to go find somebody to give up whatever they were working on, so that they could hold my harness’ lanyard, which was clipped onto the sail, while I painted.

After searching the boat, I found my Deck Div LPO, Mark Leahy, to tend my lanyard. He was cool and even tried to help me, but the Duty Officer came back and informed him that he could not help me. The only thing he was allowed to do, according to the regs, was hold the lanyard which attached my harness to the sail. Once I had jumped through all the hoops, I was rolling again. The most frustrating thing was, the fairwater planes aren’t that large, so it didn’t even take me that long to do the work. However, just as I was finishing up, I heard Petty Officer Schaubhut yell to me, “Hey Sully! You missed a spot!” Then, he cackled as he jumped into the Duty van and headed off to town.

I’ll Show Him…

Man I had had it! I was sick of all the interruptions. I was sick of being on the boat, and after a year of being a Striker, I was sick of painting the boat.  As Schaubhut shut the van door, I swirled the word “SULLY” into the fresh paint on the fairwater plane. I didn’t do it small either. The letters were about twelve inches tall and they stretched nearly two feet. As I started to climb back up to the top of the sail, Leahy said to me, “Sully, you’d better paint over that.” I shrugged him off, saying, “You won’t even be able to see it when the paint dries.” Famous last words.

~ T. Steven Sullivan

Nowadays…man I sound like a geezer when I start off a sentence like that. In this current digital era…okay that doesn’t sound much better either but I’m afraid I’m gonna have to face it, I’m getting older. I’ll just say, back in the day, watching movies on the boat was always a big deal. That is, they were before everyone had laptops or phones that could play movies. You see, most things in the Navy were not decided by a democratic process, except for movie night. While we were out to sea, if our duty section was off watch during the evening or mid-watch, we could watch a movie on the mess decks after the evening cleanup. We would vote on one of the two hundred or so movies we carried on board. Throw in a couple of bags of popcorn and it was a little get away that I looked forward to very much.

JJ Henson’s Vote…

JJ was in my duty section. Now JJ is a good friend of mine, and he helped me with remembering some technical aspects for my book; details that I had either forgotten or never learned in the first place. He truly is a human Google search, when it comes to retrieving Naval facts. Another way to describe JJ is, rage against the machine. Now, he assures me that he has toned down his biting sarcasm these days, but I always likened him to Bruce Willis’ character John McClain from the movie Die Hard. You know the scene, when the scary-looking German terrorist comes in and smashes up the table and the ex-wife knows John McClain is still alive, because only he can make someone that upset. Well that was JJ. It was nothing for him to send someone into a crazy German terrorist rage, simply by pointing out how stupid something was over and over and over. Needless to say, this didn’t garner JJ any sway when it came to having a say in what movie we would watch. It also didn’t help that his vote was always for the movie The Truth about Cats and Dogs and we would always turn him down saying, “No way, that’s a chick flick!”

One night, when the vote didn’t go JJ’s way again, he yelled something degrading to us all as a group, and then he stormed off to his rack. We all realized that maybe we should give JJ’s movie a chance, so we decided to watch it. Then, about an hour and twenty minutes into the movie someone suggested that we should probably wake JJ up and let him know we were watching the movie. So we did. JJ expressed his displeasure very forcefully and we all got to see the crazy German terrorist rage that was usually caused by JJ, come out in JJ.

Fast Forward 10 Years…

I went to a screen writing conference in Nashville, where I was able to meet some great screen writers and directors. I happened to have lunch with a director named Michael Lehmann, who directed the movies, Heathers, Hudson Hawk, and you guessed it, The Truth about Cats and Dogs. I told him the story of JJ. He looks at me, dead serious, and says, “Why would he want to watch that? It’s a chick flick.” I literally fell out of my chair laughing.

Thanks for checking in, and be sure to check out the my book preview, Chapters 1 & 2.

~T. Steven Sullivan