Welcome, Modern War listeners. I'm Captain Jake Moraldi.

Today on the podcast, we're talking to several writers, both of fiction and nonfiction,

to discuss military writing, the impact writing has on creative thought, and how to get started in writing yourself.

Our guest today are August Cole, the author of Ghost Fleet, Phil Colley, the author of redeployment,

Matthew Gallagher, the author of Youngbloods, and Major Nate Finney, the founder of the Strategy Bridge.

As always, the opinions expressed in this podcast are those of their respective participants,

and do not constitute the position of the United States government.

Thank you. and do not constitute the position of the United States government. So gentlemen, welcome.

Thank you for taking the time to come out and talk to me today.

We have four folks, which is the most that I've ever done a podcast

once. It's a cool new experience. What I want to lead off with, and each you can kind of

answer this in turn is talking about writing and storytelling, especially from a military perspective.

How did you start and what is it sort of done for you personally, your writing?

I'll lead off.

That's August Cole, author of Ghost Fleet.

You know, as the civilian in the room, my background was in daily journalism.

And so writing was a big part of what I did professionally.

And shifting from a very fact-based approach to fiction was really liberating

because it actually let me really think about the aspects of what it interested me in writing

about technology, writing about defense. I got to do it more on my own terms. Being a journalist

was a great, great phase of my life,

but I find that, you know, with a fiction approach, being able to really spend more time,

...