When this Blog was first posted on May 5, 2015, our Publishing Team at A Word With You Press, myself, and everyone involved was ecstatic at watching a manuscript become a book. A REAL BOOK with an ISBN number. WOW! I never took a writing class, composition, grammar,anything of that sort in my life. NOTHING! I had an AA degree in music taken just to support myself after the Nam. What I had was a story. One that in order to tell, would require me to revisit the most horrid, hellish places of my life. I felt that if I could help one person, I would go there.

It is well over a year and sales started slowing down. An order here from Hoyt, Kansas. One from Texas. How were these people hearing of my book?  Today I received an email from WordPress, the place that my website is parked. It told me that most people are finding out about Raw Man from face book and Veteran Websites. It warmed my heart. Thornton Sully my publisher has always said, “Fred, don’t worry about it. Your book has no shelf life.” I finally understood when yesterday we received our second order of books from the University of Idaho.  WordPress also pointed out that sometimes, if you re-post a blog that generated a large amount of interest, you will generate a large amount of more interest. ?

Here it goes.

Welcome to the hundreds of new followers of the Raw Man website.

When Billy Holder set up our site five months ago, I gave a message and made a promise to all who support my endeavor of carrying the message to all veterans suffering from PTSD . First the message: There is hope for all who suffer from this terrible condition for a life free of trauma and suffering. Secondly the promise; that I would donate all of my profits from the sale of tee-shirts to a worthy cause for the veteran still suffering.

Somewhere along the line, the term Veteran was replaced with Warrior. To quote a line from Raw Man, “This happened as everything else happened, without me even noticing it.”

One of the first organizations that I approached with the proposal of donating money was Wounded Warriors. It seems like they felt my donation would be too small and they not only scoffed at my idea but told me, “We don’t help Vietnam Veterans.” I guess we were not Warriors to them but as I say in my KPBS radio interview, “the Vietnam Veteran remains America’s bastard son.” They treated me with much the same disdain as the American public did when we returned  from the war. My friend David Gebhard was kind enough to send me the following link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/04/wounded-warrior-charity-unleashes-hell-on-other-veteran-groups.html   I hope that you take the time to read this article and see why I have decided to donate my money to Veteran’s Village Of San Diego. http://www.vvsd.net/   A cause that has welcomed the donation of Raw Man tee-shirts and where I suggest you consider reading more about them and maybe donating some of your time or money to this worthy cause. Leave no Veteran Behind

Raw Man