Every generation has a Pearl Harbor or 911 event .
For Lt . Col . Bill Riley ( Ret .), it was the annexation of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein . He was deployed by the U . S . Air Force and saw a mixture of atrocities and human kindnesses . Riley discovered that sharing his experience was cathartic , but he had to watch his words so he didn ’ t give details that could wreak havoc with national security . With the help of Brown Publishing Group , he transformed a collection of vignettes into the narrative of what he thought and who he became — the book “ Baghdaddy ” came into being .
Riley ’ s father was a veteran of the Viet Nam war and , like many others , came back with severe PTSD . He wanted to prepare his children for WWIII and was extremely strict . He abandoned Riley and his sister to a mother who was schizophrenic and abusive . For all that time , science fiction took him out of reality and became his life raft . Dyslexia slowed him down at first , but his buddy Sarah would sit with him behind the school and help him with reading until he got the gist of it .
One day in class , Riley told the teacher he wanted to be a poet . The class laughed . The teacher assigned them to write a poem , so he wrote about a waterfall . It was one of the first things he really worked at , and by the time he was done , a pile of waddedup paper had grown from all the failed attempts . He read it to the class , who loved it , but the teacher maintained that he couldn ’ t possibly have done it himself and gave him a failing grade . He learned how crushing it was to be called a cheater and told it wasn ’ t his own work . “ I was a stubborn kid , and I kept arguing that I had written it myself and not copied from anyone else ,” Riley said . He even brought in the crumpled-up papers from his many
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