Welcome back to the Drive On Podcast. I’ve got a special episode today. It’s a solo episode, which I haven’t done in a while. Plus, this is the very first time I’ve released two episodes in a week. You know, if I’m posting two episodes, it has to be for a pretty important reason. So pay attention, you don’t want to miss this.

Last week I released my first book, titled Surviving Son, on Amazon, and it very quickly rose to the #1 New Release in the Military Families category. I was completely beside myself. All of the support I received from listeners, social media followers, friends, and family was absolutely amazing. I couldn’t believe how many people bought a copy of the book. I still can’t believe it!

So, if you haven’t already heard of my book, Surviving Son, I’m going to give you a little overview of it.

I was going to read the short description of the book, but it’s weird talking about myself in the third person. “Scott takes the reader on a journey…” blah, blah, blah. Plus, you can read that for yourself on the book’s website SurvivingSonBook.com.

So, the book is about my time fighting in Afghanistan as a combat infantryman and the loss of my younger brother, who was killed in action just miles away from where I was in Afghanistan.

In the book, I try to provide you with an understanding of what life was like in Afghanistan for the soldiers who fought there. Of course, it is just from my perspective, but I feel like the perspective of one soldier is important to understanding the overall picture. Part of why I wrote the book is because I realize that there were plenty of stories that came out of the early wars of our nation that never got told. It was incredibly expensive to write a book back in the Civil War or even in World War One or Two days, so many stories from back then either never got told or were only told verbally. Once when the soldier who fought in those wars died, their story lived only in the memories of those he told it to.

I don’t want that to happen with the post 9/11 era. I think we have many lessons learned from the Global War On Terror, and it would be a shame if no one ever put the words down on paper or in another format that will someday outlive the author. So, not only did I write this book to tell my story, but I also wrote it to encourage other veterans to put their stories out there. It doesn’t have to be in a book format either. There are many other ways of telling a story, but writing a book makes sure that the message isn’t open to interpretation as it would be in a piece of artwork or something else. Plus, it’s referenceable. Even years after the stories are told, the words we wrote will outlive us so the story can continue to be told.

And it is incredibly easy to publish a book these days. Well, it might be intimidating. I know it was for me at first, but once when you figure out how to do it, there’s no reason not to publish a book. With print-on-demand tools like Amazon offers, you can literally write a book and publish it with almost no money out of pocket. Of course, if you’re interested in getting the book into as many hands as possible and want a wider distribution, you’ll probably have to spend a little money, but it is nowhere near what it would have cost 50 years ago.

Just a side note here, if there are any prospective authors out there who are interested in writing a book but were too intimidated by the overall process, feel free to reach out. I’d be happy to help share the tools I used and some of the...