Writing

• You can find current essays, short stories of various genres, poetry, and more from Aaron Seaman at The Decline.

• If you love pulp military science fiction, Aaron has two 10,000-ish-word sci-fi stories published, #VAPORIZE and THE LAST (Bayonet Books, 2018).
  
• If upmarket/contemporary fiction hits your spot, you’ll soon be able to read excerpts from his debut novel, The Lonely Places, a story about the veteran suicide epidemic.
  
  For a description, see below.

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The Lonely Places

(Based on True Events)

With every breath, there is still hope.

James Cantway contemplates suicide every day. A decade after his time as the commander of a military funeral detail, memories of the dead still haunt him. Now, the PTSD he didn’t know he had has cost him another job, his latest marriage, and nearly his life—again.

Alone, out of options, and tortured by his past, he enters an intensive Veteran’s Administration recovery program in a last-ditch effort to halt his declining mental health and keep breathing. There, among other veterans with their own horrific stories, bonds begin to form—bonds that might just keep them all alive and functioning in a society that doesn’t seem to have a place for them anymore.

THE LONELY PLACES is an 95,000-word literary fiction novel set in contemporary Seattle that explores the veteran suicide epidemic by examining the consequences of war and military life on the individual veteran and those who love them. Through vivid descriptions of real tragedies and real stories based on actual veterans spanning four decades, it will appeal to readers who get lost in Khaled Hosseini’s timeless, intricate storytelling in books such as And the Mountains Echoed, as well as fans of Chuck Palahniuk’s fearless, direct prose in The Invention of Sound.