The Oct. 3, 2011, edition of The Sentinel-Record features an article about ASMSA teacher Cliff Happy discussing his new book "Friends from Damascus."
Below is the article by reporter Jenn Ballard.
By Jenn Ballard
The Sentinel-Record
“It’s an action-adventure thriller with a strong military flavor to it,” Happy said Friday. “It’s a book on a counter-terrorism plot, and the main character is a woman who is sent to try to stop the terrorists.”
Happy, who served in the U.S. Marines for 22 years, said the book, which became available electronically on Sept. 1, draws on some of his military experiences.
“I spent five years on an anti-terrorist team, and I had a lot of training I was interested in writing about. I had intelligence training in the Army and Special Forces and a lot of hostage rescue stuff. That’s all in the book,” he said.
“I spent a lot of time overseas and a lot of time on a ship, off the coast of some country that might be going bad. I’d spend months at a time on a ship, bored, so I just started writing then, for fun, to keep myself busy and therapeutic, perhaps.”
Happy said the book will be part of a series. The second book has already been written and is being edited.
“I’m writing a third book right now in the series as well,” he said, adding he plans to have eight to nine books altogether in the series.
“There’s a group of people (in the books), and I’m writing it from each one of their perspectives,” he said.
Happy said he hasn’t set a “benchmark” for what he plans to do as a writer, but “it’s just something I enjoy doing. If I were to sell a million books tomorrow, I wouldn’t stop working here (ASMSA) because I love this job.”
“It’s just about creating something and putting it out there for people to enjoy,” he said.
Happy said the book took him about three months to write because he had “already done the story and knew what I was going to do. I’d been writing for a long time on this particular genre, so when I decided to do it, it only took a few months.”
“I’ve always been either writing stories or telling stories, ever since I was a little kid,” he said. “Friends of mine had encouraged me for some time to get some stuff published, and that’s how it became more serious.”
Happy said that, once he began teaching at ASMSA six years ago, he was inspired by the other teachers to get something published.
“Coming here to this school, I’m surrounded by very creative people. ... Perhaps they inspired me a little bit to give it a try,” he said.
Happy said even though his book can’t necessarily be studied as part of his classes’ curriculum because it is a fictional story, he hopes it will inspire other young authors to be more proactive with their writing.
“Maybe there’s a kid in this school who dreams of being a writer one day,” he said. “Maybe in some small way, I might help them a little bit to get there.”
Happy said writing also helps him lead by example and “do what he teaches” in terms of his work ethic.
“To write, I have to expand intellectually. I have to work hard to focus myself as a writer and discipline myself as a writer,” he said. “That’s the exact kind of thing we want for students here is to become more disciplined and focused.”
Happy said what he teaches and researches for his classes tends to end up being a part of the stories in his books.
“Everything I teach seems to end up being correlated into the books,” he said. “In my research for my classes, I’m always stumbling across ‘this could be interesting’ because fact is stranger than fiction.”
“The more experience I get here – reading, writing, working – it helps me improve as a writer myself,” he said.
Happy said his advice to young authors is to never give up and be able to take criticism.
“You’re not going to get better at anything you do if you’re not willing to take constructive criticism,” he said.
Happy said his book and future books stand out against other books in the action-adventure genre because “I read a lot of action-adventure books, and I tend to find them unbelievable. I don’t think this book is, and that’s one of the things I like about it.”