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CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW & INTERVIEW PUBLISHED IN KINGS RIVER LIFE MAGAZINE! Buzz Kill By Kate Thornton | Kings River Life Magazine
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The remarkable women at NASTY WOMAN PRESS invited me to submit to their inaugural anthology.
The brain child of KELLI STANLEY and the work of the Creative Resistance, it includes my story, "The War Never Ends" which addresses Military Sexual Trauma (MST,) my usual themes of revenge, and the satisfactory balancing of the universe by women who refuse to be marginalized. Introduction to my story: When I first thought about submitting a story, I kept coming back to the topic of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) and how it can be both a devastating blow to a promising military experience and the cause of lifelong PTSD for the service member who survives it. I was a soldier in the US Army for 22+ years, but some things are just too difficult to write about . So I tried to make the protagonist in my story more accessible to all women. You don't have to be a soldier to be assaulted, but as a soldier you may have the kind of buddies who can help you through it. Unfortunately, there is often a culture which glorifies assault, denigrates the survivor, and allows perpetrators to continue without check. Every assault survivor I have spoken to wanted a sense of justice, but many of them also wanted to bury their honorable service and forget that they too were heroes. Even now I have a hard time finding female veterans self-identifying on Veterans Day. The assault and injustice destroys more than their confidence. It takes their pride of service, too. How can you get through it? Vengeance seems the most obvious. Revenge, though, is a tricky thing; it never really does what you want it to do. But I truly believe that friendship can help to overcome the most devastating experiences. My story is dedicated to the real Artie, now gone, and the real Joe, happily still with us - and to all of the brave survivors, true heroes, every one. SHATTERING GLASS A Nasty Woman Anthology is NOW AVAILABLE! Winner of the 2021 ANTHONY for best Anthology |
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