12 Questions for a Writer: Matt Gallagher

Matt Gallagher is a US Army veteran and the author of four books, including the novels Youngblood and now, Daybreak, based at least partly on his experiences as a volunteer and journalist in Ukraine.

1.    Who are you, what have you written, and why?

My name’s Matt Gallagher, author of four books to include the new novel Daybreak. I’m a US Army veteran who spent fifteen months in Iraq during the Surge way back in 2007 and 2008, and though I don’t always write about war, that time remains the formative experience of my life. It still informs much of how I think about the world.

Daybreak’s a novel about a pair of disillusioned American military veterans who travel to Ukraine in early 2022 to help out against the Russian invasion. I’ve spent time in Ukraine as both a volunteer and journalist, and was struck by how many Western vets I encountered who were there, be it as fighters or aid workers or even the occasional arms trafficker, who brought up their experiences in Afghanistan or Iraq as the reason why.

Supporting Ukraine as these men and women are strikes me as a noble, just thing. But they tended to hint at messy pasts, things back in America they weren’t necessarily proud of, flaws that lingered with them even in the midst of this new war they found themselves drawn to and participating in. That dissonance interested me as a writer and was the seed for what became Daybreak.

2.    What is it that draws you to writing?

The late Robert Stone once said, “The pen compels lucidity,” and that’s been my experience. It forces me to be more exact with my thinking, to put into story for readers my obsessions and interests. War, the pursuit of peace, America’s role in the modern world—I think these things matter, and matter a lot. Trying to get readers to engage with them, as well, is always the ambition.

3.    What is hardest about making a life as a writer? What is the best part?

The most difficult thing is writing’s always with you, whether you’re actively at work or not. One lives as a writer, goes through existence as one, and so you’re never “off.” It drives the normal people in my life crazy and I don’t blame them!

The best part, for me, is when a book publishes and I see it on a table at a bookstore, or when a piece publishes and there’s my name in the byline—just a skinny Irish kid from Reno, Nevada, sharing his work and thoughts with absolute strangers. I’ll admit that it’s quite a rush. Still is, and I’ve been doing this for over a decade now.

4.   What advice do you have for aspiring authors/editors?

Talent is great. Tenacity is better. The only way to get better is to fail better, over and over again. And read, read much, and read widely. It’s the only way I’ve found to become somewhat educated in literature and the literary tradition.

5.    Everyone hates this question, but I persist in asking it: what is your favorite book and why?

We hate it because it’s so difficult to choose only one! I’ll go with First Thought/Best Thought here: Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. It’s a story of a young man who goes out into the world, fails, and has to reckon with the aftermath and consequences of that failure. Then he goes out into the world again. In my mind, it’s the ideal blend of tremendous writing, keen insights into humanity, and sharp, engaging storytelling. It’s probably no coincidence that a line from Lord Jim is used as the epigraph to Daybreak:

“Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.”

Who hasn’t bent the past some to be able to better deal with today and tomorrow? I certainly have.

Honorable mention to Chimamana Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, which I read just before we deployed and prepared me for the realities of counterinsurgency in a way no training manual ever could.

6.   Tell us about the process you undertook to write/edit Daybreak. 

Much of the initial draft was completed at a writing residency at the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum in tiny Piggott, Arkansas. The family of Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, lived there, and Hemingway wrote a lot of A Farewell to Arms in the barn behind the house. It’s a museum now, and it was a great place to escape to for four weeks to focus on my own work. It was quiet, free of distractions, and just haunted enough to get me to work early in the morning, every morning.

Some dark humor here but I think your readers can handle it: friends in my fantasy baseball league dared me to shotgun a beer at Hemingway’s writing desk while there. I will neither confirm nor deny that such a juvenile act was undertaken.

7.    What did you learn in the process, both substantively and personally, and what surprised you?

Daybreak’s my fourth published book, third novel, but was the first one I completed that came out the way I mostly had it in my head when beginning it. Perhaps that’s because it’s a shorter book, a small story within a large, ruinous war, but I think it’s also because I’ve figured out some things about writing and storytelling that I blundered my way through in prior works with a lot of trial-and-error. Famous last words, I’m sure.

8.   What do you want people to take away from Daybreak?

More than anything, it's about regular, flawed people trapped by forces well beyond them who still decide to try and help others. It involves specific fictional Americans and specific fictional Ukrainians in an ongoing, real conflict, but what they choose to do within the book is, I think, a universal and timeless endeavor.

9.   I have always been drawn to the notion of the post-war veteran adrift. Daybreak’s Luke “Pax” Paxton thinks, “Boy goes to war to become a man and comes back someone he doesn’t know…to a country he doesn’t recognize. The biggest fucking cliché on the planet.” How much of yourself is in Pax? What can veterans and civilians alike do to bridge that divide? Is there an incumbent duty for both to try?

The slippery writer way out of this question is to say, “There’s parts of me in all my characters.” And that happens to be true for Daybreak—I’m a parent of young boys like Svitlana, and enjoy some mayhem, as Lee does. But I’ll admit that yes, Pax’s sense of aimlessness is something I know well myself, and went through for some years after leaving the military. Though I had a supportive family safety net that some veterans unfortunately do not. And I had writing to turn to, which provides a daily sense of purpose.

What can veterans and civilians do to bridge the divide? Listen, actually listen. Too many vets, I think, want to hold court for an audience and just shout. Too many civilians refuse to budge from their preconceived notions about war and soldiering and all the rest. But America’s still a republic, it still needs a military made up of brave young people as much as it needs an engaged citizenry that holds our politicians accountable for how they decide to utilize the military. The only way through any of this is trying to understand each other, even if we don’t agree. Probably especially then.

10.         Kirkus called Daybreak, “An absorbing character study of a man purging the ghosts of one war by attempting to fight in another.” I saw that immediately in the character of Lee, a guy who seems to be doing what we called “chasing the dragon” in the unit I served in for most of my career. Is that possible? Can you purge war by getting whatever it is you thought you wanted? Or do you end up either disappointed or an addict?

I don’t think anyone ever gets the war they believe they will. I know I didn’t, in both good ways and not … the wiser military veterans I’ve met in Ukraine already know that lesson themselves, and understand it, and still believe they have something pragmatic and real to offer the Ukrainian people and the defense of its democracy. Some don’t, and they’ve tended to be lost-soul types who end up getting in the way more than contributing to any substantive effort.

Can an individual purge the experiences of war? I don’t know. I personally wouldn’t want to. My service was pretty modest but shaped me into the human being and writer I am today. Learning to live with ourselves is something every person wrestles with, whether they’ve seen combat or not.

11. Why should anyone read Daybreak?

It’s a damn good book that I’m proud to have written. It’s a story set in war but about trying to overcome the past, about finding hope amidst darkness and ruin, about old love and lost dreams and the importance of trying again tomorrow. My sense is it has staying power, which of course is the hope of any writer. Insha’Allah.

12. What have I not asked that I should have?

Sometimes people ask if I ever would go back to Iraq, either as a journalist or just as a tourist or something. It took fifteen years but I think I’m finally willing to say, “Yeah, maybe.” Because I would be curious to see our little town there again, see what’s changed, see what’s the same. See how my memory squares with reality. I don’t know if that feeling’s universal but it’s a recent shift I noticed within myself. Maybe it’s a version of the midlife crisis, I did just turn 41.

And regarding the Hemingway desk, I plead the Fifth.

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You can, and should, get a copy of Daybreak here. If you don’t believe me, wait for the review coming in the next Lethal Minds Journal.