Best Selling Author Tom Glenn to be Featured on Close Up Radio

COLUMBIA, MARYLAND, UNITED STATES, June 24, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Unfortunately, most of us will experience one or more traumatic events throughout the course of our lives. The wonderful news, however, is that not only Is healing absolutely possible, but there are particularly exceptional people that find meaning from their trauma and go on to create positive change in the world, living fulfilling, wonderful, purpose-filled lives.

Tom Glenn is one. He’s a Vietnam vet who has had multiple careers including intelligence operative, musician, linguist in seven languages, cryptologist, caregiver for the dying, and leadership coach. He has a BA in Music, a masters in Government and a doctorate in Public Administration. A sought-after public speaker, he is the author of a series of novels and short story collections: Friendly Casualties, Last of the Annamese, The Trion Syndrome, No-Accounts, Secretocracy, Friendly Casualties, and Coming to Terms. More about his books later.

“I was born to write—it is my inner calling and mission,” says Tom. “Thirty years ago, I retired from government to write full time, and my books are the stories I was born to tell.”

From modest beginnings, Tom had a rough upbringing as the child of an alcoholic mother and a father in prison. To escape his troubling home life, young Tom got jobs as a paperboy, delivery boy, drug store clerk, restaurant bus boy, and waiter. He worked his way through college and spent his graduation day in the hospital suffering from exhaustion. Early in life, he learned the value of work and the need for self- reliance, a quality that served him well during his years in combat.

As a linguist comfortable in Vietnamese, Chinese, and French, the three languages of Vietnam, Tom was first assigned to Vietnam in 1962. For the next thirteen years, he spent more time in Vietnam than he did in the U.S. and escaped under fire when Saigon fell in April 1975. Meanwhile, he married and had four children who, along with his wife, spent two three-year tours in Vietnam with Tom.

After the fall of Saigon, Tom developed the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI): nightmares, irrational rages, flashbacks, and panic attacks. But because he held top secret codeword intelligence clearances, he was not allowed to seek help through psychotherapy. He had to learn to cope with the disorder on his own. He realized that he had two means to help himself manage his memories. One was to force himself to bring the unbearable remembrances into his conscious mind, face them, and learn to live with them. The most effective way to face his memories was to write them down. That led to his books about war.

The other means available to Tom was helping others. He learned that when his attention was focused on someone that needed his help, his memories faded into the background. So at the height of the AIDS epidemic, he volunteered to care for AIDS patients. Over five years, he helped seven gay men with AIDS die with dignity. As the medical community progressed in preventing AIDS deaths, he went on to work with other dying patients as a hospice volunteer. Over a period of seven more years, he worked with more than thirty patients. He finally had to quit when he got too old and feeble to lift and carry the patients.

As Tom’s life was changing with his emphasis on goodwill and humanitarian work, his writing reflected his growth. He became focused on describing the grisliness of war.

“The extreme violence of war is unspeakably ghastly, and the horror I witnessed as people died in front of me is almost indescribable,” says Tom. “I remind myself to tell people how unscrupulous and wrong it is to put young men and women through that and how it should never again happen.”

Tom’s books reflect his history and life view. The first half of his Friendly Casualties is short-stories; the second half is a novella set in Vietnam. Both tell of the unspeakable acts that occur during war.

His No-Accounts tells the story of two men, one gay dying of AIDS, the other a straight volunteer who is there to help him die. The book was inspired by Tom’s experience in working with dying AIDS patients. The author Juris Jurjevics described the book as follows: “Tom Glenn lived his novel seven times as a volunteer assisting HIV infected men to die. This is fiction taken from life written by a hero who accompanied the terminally ill as far as any mortal could, devoting himself body and soul to their comfort and helping them make their exit with dignity.”

Tom’s next book, Last of the Annamese, to date his bestselling book, is set during the fall of Saigon from which Tom escaped under fire after the North Vietnamese were already in the streets of the city.

His The Trion Syndrome tells of a man suffering from PTSI. He is plagued incessantly by nightmares and irrational rages before recalling that he killed a child in Vietnam.

Tom’s next book, Secretocracy, tells of President Donald Trump’s persecution of an intelligence budgeteer who refuses to fund an illegal operation being pushed by the president.

His last book to date is his collection of short stories called Coming to Terms. It tells the stories of men and women confronted with pain as a consequence of love and hate, goodness and evil. Each finds a way to go on living, however imperfectly. None is left unscathed.

Tom steadfastly encourages his readers to love others wholeheartedly and resolutely.

“After all horrifying things I experienced and lived through in combat, what has healed me is devoting myself to others.”

Don’t miss Tom Glenn In his two-part radio series. He will discuss his heartfelt books, his harrowing poignant stories, his love and devotion for helping others particularly the most vulnerable. You will be inspired, uplifted, and learn valuable lessons that will stay with you.

Close Up Radio will feature Tom Glenn in a two-part interview with Doug Llewelyn on June 28th at 1pm EST and on July 5th at 1pm EST.

Listen to the show on BlogTalkRadio.

If you have any questions for our guest, please call (347) 996-3389

Written By: Beatrice Maria Centeno

Lou Ceparano
Close Up Television & Radio
+1 631-850-3314
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