Terry P Rizzuti

I have been a writer of literary fiction since 1984. Most of my novels and short stories involve war or veterans issues, but occasionally I've ventured into women's issues and even children's stories. My poetry, however, is all over the map.

One of my novels, The Second Tour, is a literary war novel based on personal experiences in Vietnam. Reviews and commentary can be found on my website. The Second Tour is/has been taught at five universities: The US Air Force Academy, The University of Kentucky, George Washington University, Big Bend Community College and Regis University. It has also been taught in a fiction book group at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute.

Another novel is called Show Time, formerly Suffering Seacil: For Better or For Worse. It's about toxic relationships. I call it antagonistic literature or fiction because the main character is the antagonist and because its purpose is to antagonize, to spur readers to action, to right an ill of society. Reviews are very encouraging.

A third novel, my latest, is titled The Triplets: As They Lay Dying. The Triplets is contemporary, experimental fiction, a collage of short stories, poems, miscellaneous thoughts and feelings woven into a short novel spanning several generations. The Triplets showcases the disparate lives and deaths of three siblings individually struggling to survive intersecting political and viral pandemics.

I also have a book called Dear Me: An Honorary Ph.D. in Letters. It's a collection of about 170 letters I wrote to my high school sweetheart between 1964 and April 1969. They tell a one-sided story from the perspective of a concussed, homesick Marine that can be grouped into five major parts: 1) one letter written in high school and a few in my first two semesters of college just before joining the Marine Corps; 2) several letters written from Marine Corps boot camp, as well as Infantry Training; 3) several letters written aboard the USNS Barrett, a Merchant Marine ship taking approximately 1,500 soldiers and 500 of us Marines to Vietnam; 4) numerous letters written from Vietnam; and 5) several letters written post-Vietnam. The letters mostly show an attempt by the writer to establish and maintain a lifeline with home, and thus normalcy. For the most part they are rather “typical” of chatty love letters, but every now and then there’s a jewel that reveals just how difficult things had become for the writer, but even more so just how juvenile, immature and sometimes downright inconsiderate I was. The letters in this book are provided warts and all, with political and other incorrectness, as well as misspellings and other language issues.

My short stories are published in an anthology under the title Heads or Tales. The thing about this collection that makes it interesting, I think, is that when read from beginning to end, the stories provide an overarching theme, a story above the stories, so to speak, although it's possible that story's only in the author's mind.

My poetry is available in book form under the title Crap Shoot. Enter at your own risk, however. It too can be called antagonistic fiction.