The Interview - RobertLDecker

My experience as an Air Force pilot played a big role in creating the story of Not to Reason Why. As I started to develop what was initially just a short story into a novel, my knowledge of military flying became crucial in getting the story correct. Most of my instructors in the Air Force were combat veterans.

As I began writing Not to Reason Why, I enjoyed creating Zack, one of the main heroes. He was the fighter pilot. He had to be brave. But he also had to be realistic and not a caricature. I didn’t want a Hollywood version of a fighter pilot. So he had to make mistakes, especially as a young twenty-four-year-old thrown into combat. As the characters developed, though, I found creating the heroine, Ruth, to be the most enjoyable. She was the twenty-two-year-old wife left at home. Then, as the plot developed, she challenged me to imagine how she would cope with the uncertainty of what had happened to the love of her life.

I have been researching this story for over fifty years. Since deciding to become an Air Force pilot in junior high school, I’ve been reading flying books and stories. A cousin who was a fighter pilot and who was shot down over North Vietnam increased my interest in the air war over Southeast Asia. But I had to make sure that no elements of current everyday life, like cell phones, worked their way into narrative. As the initial short story evolved into the novel, I followed a mantra for authors that I had read often: write what you know.

My reading about the air war in Southeast Asia provided a rich field of research for the main elements of the story. The most challenging part was getting small details of the setting correct. The story occurs from 1967 to 1973. So, when Ruth makes coffee for breakfast, she can’t use a modern drip coffee machine. She had to use a percolator. When she wakes up with a severe headache, she can’t take an ibuprofen. Could she take acetaminophen? When did these become widely available as over-the-counter pain relievers? When she needs a phone number, she can’t look in her contacts on her cell phone. Finding the dates for specific details was challenging, even with the modern internet.

I found inspiration from many war-time novels. A few that helped lead the way for me included The Bridges at Toko-ri by James A. Michener, Flight of the Intruder by Stephen Coonts, and Herman Wouk’s World War II series, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.

One question friends now ask, “Are you writing another novel?” While I don’t know if it will pan out, I do have several chapters for a sequel drafted. It is set in Southeast Asia in 1974 to 1975. It corresponds to the period when I was there. A few of the characters from Not to Reason Why find themselves in Saigon along with a group of new people.