S4 EP176: Robert O'Connor, Author of Jeep Show: A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge

Hello Happy People,

Dianne cannot wait to share today's episode with all of you. Her guest, Robert O’Connor, brings history to life in his latest book, Jeep Show: A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge. His gripping new WWII novel has earned praise from Kirkus Reviews, Purple Heart Magazine, and Midwest Book Review, to name a few. 

Robert is a former Phi Beta Kappa at Kenyon College with a long successful career in marketing. Robert was a marketing executive at Procter & Gamble and co-owner of an advertising agency, but even successful men can have a "hard fall" sometimes. Robert drew on this experience to inspire others with his first book Gumptionade: The Booster For Your Self-Improvement Plan. 

Later, it would be the discovery of a circus sponsorship gone awry in 1967 that would plant the seed that would eventually grow into his first fiction novel, Jeep Show: A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge. This tale is based on the true story of Jim Hetzer, an Army Entertainment Specialist who toured forward combat zones alongside Private Mickey Rooney.

With meticulous research and wry humor, O’Connor transports you into the frozen Ardennes, where small Jeep-mounted variety shows risked everything to keep GI morale alive, and the mix of laughter and peril still resonates with many today.

Robert and his wife recently moved to Minneapolis. The couple has three grown sons and a grandson. Robert and his wife lost their beloved basset hound, Bassie, a few years ago and plan to adopt another basset hound when the time is right. 

Don't wait, join us now for an episode full of heart, history, and the unbreakable spirit that binds us all.

Charitable Contribution: For each book sold, Robert O'Connor will donate $1 to Shield & Stripes. 

Robert's website

Robert on Facebook

Robert on Instagram

Robert on Amazon

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Hello, my happy people. I hope you're having a wonderful day wherever you are. The heat has finally broken here for a little bit, so things are a little bit more comfortable here in Germany, even though we do have gray skies again. I'll take it as long as I'm not baking to death. But today is June 25th, 2025, and have we got a great show for you? I tell you, the timing of this book was just absolutely perfect for us because we're going to be discussing a book that has to do with the Battle of the Bulge. We live very close to the areas where this battle was fought. And I happened to get this book to read just as my husband were planning a trip to go tour the battlefields and the museums for the Battle of the Bulge. So it was just great to have that context when reading his book and then seeing the actual places where these events were was just an incredible combination and made for a moving and educational weekend. I I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's well written, the characters are easy to identify with, and the author is amazing. So let's not listen to me blather anymore about this book. Let's bring out the author himself so that he can tell you all about it in his own words. Please welcome to BookBanter with Diane Burkhart and Robert O'Connor. The way that I love to start all these episodes is just to have my guests tell everyone who you are and what you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Thank you, Diane. I'm Robert O'Connor. I write books. I also write marketing plans for small and mid-sized businesses. My first book, Gumptionade, a booster for your self-improvement plan, was nonfiction self-help. I wrote it because I needed the help. I became fascinated with the topic of morale, how we do the hard things, how we face the challenges we would rather avoid. I learned about a quote from a British 19th-century biologist, Thomas Huxley, that has really resonated with me, and maybe it will with your listeners. He wrote, Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the things you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. Obviously, you're an expert, Diane, on the topic of morale. As I you know thought more about it, I came across a quote from Napoleon related to morale in war. And Napoleon, this quote is, you know, engraved somewhere in the Pentagon, I'm sure. Um in war, morale is to the physical, as three is to one, i.e., if the troops, if the men, if the people have the right mental attitude, they will overcome physical material barriers. So I'm very interested in that topic. My second book, Jeep Show, A Trooper at the Battle of the Bulge, is historical fiction. Now, Dan, I don't know what led you to write your historical fiction series called Into the West Saga, but you know, I've always been interested in history. But in working on another project, I discovered the life of a man who had been an enlisted entertainer in the army in the European Theater of Operations in World War II. This is military occupation specialty 442. He mainly did Jeep shows. Jeep shows were three-man variety shows done for combat infantry at the front lines in places where the USO and the Red Cross could not go. This real man had Private Mickey Rooney as his squad leader on the Jeep shows. Fascinating. Nobody I have talked to many historians who specialize in World War II, and I've talked to many, many, many World War II buffs. I have not run across a person yet that knew about these enlisted entertainment soldiers. I knew I had to write about it. I decided to write fiction, partly because I just wanted the challenge and partly because I wanted to tell the story of the Battle of the Bulge and some of the things that happened uh later in the war, the liberation of a concentration camp, and then a soldier's life in occupied Germany. So I made it fiction so I can involve the protagonists not only in the Jeep shows with Mickey Rooney, but also with these other events. So that's what I do, Diane.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Well, and I want to back up just a little bit because even before you became a published author, you had an incredible career with Procter and Gamble.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Well, incredible, maybe in the sense of hard to believe this is appropriate. Um I talked my way into a job at Procter and Gamble brand management and found myself working with just the highest caliber people at a very, very good company. And and I probably, I hate to say it, but I probably got more out of Procter and Gamble than they got out of me. Um I learned a great deal. And of course, one of the things I learned, Procter and Gamble was, and I'm sure still is a written culture. If it wasn't written down, nobody would pay any attention to it. So um I was sent to uh I thought I was a pretty good writer, and I had written an undergraduate thesis in college, but within a few weeks at Procter and Gamble, they sent me to remedial memo writing school. Oh wow. And um fascinating, it ties into Jeep Show. It was taught by a man named Gib Carey, who had been the brand manager of the detergent Oxidol in 1968 when he was approached by a gentleman named Jim Hetzer. Jim Hetzer was a circus promoter. He is also the inspiration for the main character in Jeep Show. Jim Hetzer had been an enlisted entertainer in World War II. I ended up one at some background and called Jim Hetzer's daughter about it, and uh she told me about his background in the army as an enlisted entertainer. I was going to write a nonfiction about the Oxidol Circus, which was what uh Jim Hetzer had sold the Oxidol brand manager on, which was a traveling circus that turned out to be a disaster, humorous only in retrospect. But when I found out about the real life adventures of this gentleman, Jim Hetzer, the circus promoter, and his service in World War II, I just had to, I just had to write about it. So that's the genesis of Jeep Show. And that came out of my start at Procter and Gamble, the uh very large soap company in Cincinnati.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

So, how long did it take from whenever you got that idea to actually publishing the book? It seems like it would have been quite a while.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

I'm embarrassed to tell you, to tell your listeners. It probably took me six years from you know finding out about the existence of enlisted entertainers, deciding that I wanted to write fiction and doing the research to when the book was published. As you probably know, Diane, since you're a historical fiction author, research is fun and writing is hard. Yeah. I have a tendency, as probably many of us do, historical fiction authors do, of over-researching. It does have an advantage, which is you get a lot of details that you can, you know, you can pick just the best of all the details, you know. But I definitely over-researched, and again, some of your author listeners may understand, Jeep Show takes place basically in late 1944 and early 1945. At the end of each chapter, however, I alternated with a complete chapter, a complete flashback chapter, you know, 1927, a vaudeville show in 1927, a Billy Sunday Tent Revival in 1929, The World's Fair, New York World's Fair in 1939. And these were complete chapters, exhaustively researched and carefully written. My development editor took her first read-through and said, these flashback chapters have to go.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Oh, I love dual timelines like that.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Well, what we compromised on is 30-page chapters became one and a half page flashbacks. And that way I could take the absolute best of what I wanted to say about, you know, vaudeville shows or tent revivals or the 1939 World's Fair and just put the absolute best without having the reader think, wait a minute, I thought I'm supposed to be reading about an entertainment soldier caught up in the Battle of the Bulge. And having written a book before and had a very good development editor, I listened to my editors. So it took me a long time because I had all sorts of fun, you know, over-researching every possible angle of the book. Uh, but then, you know, I had the hard work of turning it into an entertaining story.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

I will admit, I am one of those people I love research. I can spend all day finding cool little tidbits about the old West and forget that I need to turn that into a book.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Right, right. Well, you have a it helps, you know, for us historical fiction writers, it helps to have a basic curiosity. And um, then you start researching it, your curiosity starts getting wetted. I, for example, there's a detail in the book that I had no idea about that when World War II buffs talk to me about reading Jeep Show, they say, wow, that was so accurate. The standard issue rifle in World War II for infantry was an M1 Grand. The M1 Grand was loaded with a nine-round clip. When the last round of the clip was fired, the clip would eject and the infantry man would jam another clip into his M1 Grand rifle. Well, when that clip ejected, the bolt would automatically go back. And when you put another clip in the rifle, the bolt would fire forward. And if you were inexperienced and left your thumb kind of trailing in the place where the bolt was, you would get a very nasty bruise on your thumb. And it was called M1 thumb, and very well known in World War II among American soldiers. And so, you know, among the 5,000 details that I had on my list, that was near the top. And I put in, I didn't mention, you know, M1 thumb. I just mentioned my character looked down at his bruised thumb and thought he did not love his rifle. And uh and I have had so much response from World War II buffs. So, you know, as you know from your experience, these little details of life in the West, you know, in the 19th century or life in the European Theater of Operations of World War II, if you pick just carefully picking the right details, not overdoing it, but carefully picking the right details and kind of laying it in there really helps to bring it alive because the reader knows he or she's reading a completely made-up story. And they kind of want to forget that. They kind of want to get engrossed in it. And so when you put in a very accurate detail of real life in 1944, you know, in Belgium, they're like, oh yes, you know, the it it grounds them in the story and makes everything that you made up seem more real.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Oh yeah. And Lord help you if you get it wrong. Because history buffs will not only tell you what you got wrong, they will cite sources to show you where you can get that information and correct yourself, which I I love them for that.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

It it keeps you honest, but yeah, you gotta be careful.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Uh yes. And again, it if you if you over-research like I do, you're in better shape to survive that.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

You know what? I was actually really surprised that I had never heard of these Jeep shows. Right. Because I was always really big on the USO shows. I mean, so I was always looking for that kind of stuff. And the fact that I had never heard of the Jeep shows amazing to me.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Even World War II historians have not heard of it. I don't know why it was a small group and they just got lost. And of course, the USO, which did brilliant work in World War II, both, you know, in the European theater and the Pacific, and Bob Hope, who was tireless uh, you know, in the USO, they probably got so much favorable and deserved favorable publicity that it just kind of eclipsed that. The other factor, Diane, is most soldiers in World War II, like my dad, did not talk about their service after the war. Every man aged 20 to 30 was in the war in World War II. So most of the men and the women who did serve did not talk about it, did not write about it. And then combat infantry, it makes up about seven or eight percent of the total force. So it was a very small group of soldiers who saw these Jeep shows, and of course, they were the ones that really needed it. And combat infantry were the least likely to talk about their experience when they got home, is my thought. So, yeah, nobody knows about it unless they read my book, they know all about it. But it is based, it is inspired by the true life of a soldier in World War II.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Since you did fictionalize these real events, whenever you were talking about your characters, and I know with like Mickey Rooney, it's really easy. He's a big personality, everybody knows who he is. But for your other characters, do you envision like friends or other actors? How do you put together your characters for this?

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Wow, what an interesting question. I've never been asked, and I've never thought about that. So um, so let me just uh let me just see if I can come up with an answer that's half as good as the question. Um I I visualized, well, for the main character who I named Jim Tanzer, I had many letters. Jim Tanzer wrote home as all soldiers, almost all soldiers did. Jim Hetzer wrote home from World War II. Uh his family saved those letters, and I was able to read them. So for Jim, I was inspired by this real person. For the supporting cast, I pretty much just kind of developed them as it went along. There's an American-born German soldier who is captured in the middle of the book and then, you know, figures in several scenes after that. And, you know, it was it was just based on I had heard that there were some Americans in the German army born in America whose families went back to Germany during the time of the Nazi government and thus were drafted in the German army. So I had that one little fact, and I just built the character of just thinking about what that would be like. So I think it was a combination of yes, you know, reading about real people in different circumstances, different sources, but also uh just kind of using my imagination to decide, you know, what they say and what they do. And, you know, Diane, as you probably know this, all fiction is somewhat autobiographical, you know. So even though I was writing about a soldier in World War II, some of what he and some of the others were doing were things that I thought I would do if I were put into the same circumstances.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

One of the things that I thought was really very interesting was the review that you got from Kirkus Reviews.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Ah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

I loved that one. It's it seems odd to call a World War II novel delightful, but that's exactly what you get with O'Connor's mix of history and fiction. I mean, that's one of those things that it's a great review, but it also made me laugh.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

I know. I don't know who at Kirkus, you know, they're unsigned reviewers at Kirkus, but yes, I must have caught him or her just right. Uh, you know, what I took away from that is I was able to deliver an interesting story. And, you know, that's what delights us in in fiction. That was a great uh moment for me where I, after I read that review, I thought, well, I I did it. I set out to tell an interesting story, and I did. So thank you for bringing that up.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

And well, you know, it's one of those things here. You're dealing with one of the heaviest topics that you can. You're talking about war. You're talking about a huge war that was very devastating for most of the world at that time.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

And you're making people laugh in part. It's like the things that you have Mickey Rooney doing and saying is fabulous. It seems like it would be so his personality, too, from just the things that I've always seen from his movies, because I'm a big fan of like the 1930s and 40s movies. Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

And right, golden, golden age.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Oh, yeah. And all those vaudeville stars who went on to be in movies and yeah, they knew how to do everything. They could sing, they could dance, they could tell jokes, right? They could juggle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yeah. Mickey Rooney was a genius. I mean, he could do everything from dramatic roles. He was brilliant in Puck and Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, a movie that was made with Jimmy Cagney and a few other big names. He was obviously very funny and he he was a professional-level drummer. And like all geniuses, you know, where there are great strengths, there are great weaknesses. And in his case, his private life was just one giant non-stop party. And uh he did not have to go and serve in Europe in a dangerous squad, you know, frontline entertainment. He could have served honorably at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood, as Lieutenant Ronald Reagan did, making films and doing appearances for soldiers. I suspect that some part of Mickey Rooney knew that if he continued to live in Hollywood and live the life that he was living, he would die in, you know, in a few years. It was just so out of control. And thus he decided, like a lot of young men did, he decided to get the hell out of Dodge and, you know, let the army send him to somewhere across the ocean. But uh, yeah, it was a golden age of uh entertainment. I also want to pick up on something you said, you know, Mickey Rooney in the book as he was in real life, is quite funny. And here you've got him, as he did in real life, doing small Jeep shows, you know, small, almost vaudeville-like variety shows for combat infantry at the front line. Being in combat infantry at the front line is about the least funny thing you can imagine because it is extremely uncomfortable. You know, if it's raining, if it's cold, if it's hot, you're extremely uncomfortable. You're sleeping outside, you're eating K rations, which is basically canned food day after day. And then there's the not insignificant chance that you'll be wounded or killed, you know, on any specific day. So he's they're doing these shows for these soldiers and they're making them laugh. And it it's a fundamental of human nature that every awful thing almost always has an underside that is absurd and ridiculous. And if we can laugh at it, we're further along in coping with it, or at least in understanding the absurd nature of the lives we're given. And you know, our lives aren't completely absurd, they just have a very absurd side. And I reflect on your story of. Your brain surgery, your craniotomy, and the title of your upcoming book, you know, which has something to do with, you know, free bad haircut with every craniotomy or something, you know, something like that, which again does the exact same thing. You're taking a very frightening and uncomfortable and scary experience and finding the absurd, funny side of it. And that's what I try to portray with these Jeep shows that these enlisted entertainers were doing at the front line with combat soldiers, many of whom uh were, you know, returned to America badly wounded or didn't return to America at all.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

I I have always been a fan of facing hardships with really bad humor. It's like that's that's always been my answer for everything. It's like the worse I feel, the more snarky and sarcastic I get that I have to find the humor in everything. And I think that that's a basic human trait, that that's just a natural coping mechanism. When things are darkest, you want to laugh about something.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Right, right. Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, again, I'm very interested in the topic of morale and how we maintain morale. And as you have shown, and as we're talking, and as these enlisted entertainers showed, humor can be a really important tool. And that's another thing, Diane. I I came to understand about morale by studying these Jeep Show soldiers, is the physical presence is also a big part of it.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

One thing that I think we definitely need to mention about this book is you're also giving a donation of one dollar from each copy of your book that is purchased through 2024 and 2025 to Shields and Stripes.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yes. Um, you know, as I wrote the book, I I got more and more respect for our World War II veterans and for all our veterans. Shields and Stripes does physical and mental health intensive care programs for veterans who are struggling. I learned about them, met them, uh, sat down with their founder, was really impressed with their mission. I um told them I would donate a dollar per copy sold. Now, I told them that, you know, I didn't mind donating all the profits from the sale of Jeep Show, but a dollar per copy would be way, way more. So nothing like trying to earn a living being a writer, I tell you. But yes, I I really appreciate and respect that organization and wanted to do something. You know, in the whole process involving myself with the ground level soldiers' experience of World War II, I came away with an understanding of the American Army in that conflict that's kind of lost in history, but the army was much larger than the Navy and the Marine Corps and the Army Air Force combined. So the Army had to rely almost completely on the draft. Because of that, the Army was the only service that represented America as a whole. I mean, it was really a cross-section of all of America. You know, the Army drafted PhDs, the Army drafted men who did not even speak English and had to be taught English so they could understand their orders. It drafted wealthy young men from New York, it drafted poor men from the South or the West. In fact, my father did tell me that when he was in his barracks at basic training, one of the young men that was in the barracks with him told him that the boots the army gave him was the first time he'd had his own pair of shoes.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

So the army represented that cross-section of young men of America as a whole. And these were citizen soldiers. They were citizens before they were soldiers. And that was very different than the other armies in World War II. And interestingly, though, even though they really didn't like being in the army, they remembered it as, in some ways, the greatest experience of their lives. And they would tell you, even though we were fighting for freedom and we were fighting against true human evil, but these soldiers would tell you they didn't fight for democracy or they didn't fight to free the world. They fought for their buddies. They fought for the guys in their squad. They fought to get the job done and get home. And that's my lasting and perhaps the greatest gift I got from writing the book was understanding how special the American Army was. And these ground level soldiers that, like my protagonists, were not heroes. You know, they were not medal winners. They just did the job that was put in front of them. Not always with a smile, you know, not always full of enthusiasm, but they did the job that was put in front of them and got home, most of them, not all of them. And that was a really lasting gift to me to understand, because of course my dad uh was one of those soldiers. And my his younger brother, my uncle George, was in the Navy and world. So it made me feel closer to my dad and my uncle.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

And I remember reading that bit about the soldier who that was the first time he had his own shoes in the beginning of your book.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Yeah. And and by the way, the army, I think, had by the time, you know, by 1944, the army had something like 40,000 dentists because many of the drafted soldiers had never seen a dentist.

unknown 27:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

And the army, most of the drafted soldiers would gain 10 to 15 pounds within the first six or eight weeks because remember, this was right at the end of the depression, horrible economic time, incredible poverty. Most of these young men, or many of these young men, were not getting three square meals a day until they got drafted. So, yeah, the army made a physical as well as mental transformation for 16 million young men. And of course, that influenced the America we live in. It completely changed America, the this experience that 16 million of our forefathers and foremothers, if that's a word, you know, had in World War II. And I did not understand that until I had written this book.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

This definitely sounds like it turned into quite a passion project for you.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Well, as you know, Diane, the the definition of passion is suffering. And and and I did some constructive suffering writing it. But yeah, and again, I think because my dad had been in World War II in the army, there was that passion, there was that interest. For example, there's a chapter, as you know in the book, it's one of my favorite chapters, where the protagonist and the rest of his entertainment soldier battalion are being shipped over to Europe. And of course, they were shipped on the Queen Mary, which was turned into a troop ship. The Queen Mary was the largest and fastest luxury liner in the 30s and carried 2,000 passengers in that role. They turned it into a troop ship and it carried 16,000 GIs at a time to Europe. My dad made his passage on the Queen Mary. So when I wrote that chapter and learned way too much about the Queen Mary, way too much. I could go on for an hour about just the engine room alone, which I of course had to cut. But again, it helped me understand and appreciate. And my dad was 19 years old. You know, my dad was 19 years old when he was on that. So yeah, it it was a passion project in terms of, you know, the suffering through the hard part, which is writing and editing and following your editor's instructions. But in the end, I'm really glad I did it.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

And speaking of suffering, we should talk about marketing.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Yeah. Well, you know, my trade is marketing. So I ought to do better than what I really do.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

You know, I have spoken to so many people who have long histories working in advertising for large corporations and doing all of this branding for other people. But when it comes to doing your own work, it's like people hit a wall still.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

How was it for you?

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Well, it has been painful, not because I hit a wall and haven't done anything, but because I did so many things that didn't work. What I have found, and my takeaway and my advice to other authors is you really have to play the long game when you're marketing a book. It's not so much what you do in the first week after your book launch, even though people have, including me, have unrealistic expectations. You just have to find what you think works for you and then be able to do it not 40 hours a week, but maybe three hours a week, but for a hundred weeks, you know, or 300 weeks. And uh you will find your audience. And once you find your audience, if the book is good, if the story is well told, your word of mouth will then take over and you won't have to do as much. But it's like when a rocket is fired at the moon, getting out of Earth's gravity is the hardest part. You know, the first one hundredth of the journey is the hardest part. That's what authors have to understand is getting word of mouth up to a certain level is the hardest part. And after that, you can kind of back off, but it may take months and months and months. And so you don't want to extravagantly spend your marketing energy, your marketing time, or your marketing budget in the first in the first few months, because it, and this is just my experience, but you really have to be in it, play the long game. And of course, if once in a while you get lucky and you're on book bant or podcast, of course you grab that with both hands, but but you can't count on them, you know. And of course, when you're out there trying it, may these these big things may happen, but you you can't count on them. You have to be plugging away at Facebook groups. You know, there's a lot of Facebook groups interested in World War II, and we're chipping away at delivering valuable messages to them. You know, it's easy to advertise on Amazon for your book, very easy, and it's a it's a good idea, but it's very easy to waste a lot of money on Amazon ads. You have to really study and test with Amazon advertising as to what to do. And again, I'm still in the testing mode and I've found out a lot of what doesn't work for Amazon advertising, but I've we're finally finding a few things that that do work. So that's my yes, the marketing is even though marketing is my trade, I have just as many barriers as other authors.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

And now it's time for our five quick questions that never turn out to be quick, but I'm just really nosy and I like doing it.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

Excellent. So are you ready? I'm game.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

Question one What is your favorite war movie?

unknown 33:55

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Um, you know, there's a few really good ones. I I think Saving Private Ryan would be my favorite, and and it's a good story well told, but it also very much shows how awful war is. And it's very important to me not to glorify war or battle. So saving Private Ryan, and there's many other good ones, but you know, is a good story well told. But why I really think it's valuable is it really gets across how awful war is and how how we should do anything we can do just about to avoid it.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

For me, it's Force Ten from Navarrone. Ah, thank you. I cannot even tell you how many times I've watched that movie. I'm gonna watch, I'm gonna watch it tonight.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Uh I haven't watched it in a long, long time.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

I actually have the DVD. I only brought a few movies with me from the US. That's one of the movies I brought. So, question two are you a pet person?

SPEAKER_01 35:04

We, my wife and I are dog people, although I'm fine with cats. We had a basset hound, uh Bessie, for she actually lived 16 years. Wow. Uh, which is an you know kind of a bonus three or four years. Uh, basset hounds are very, very particular dogs. So, yeah, we are dog lovers. We have not gotten a new dog because we just moved to Minneapolis from Tennessee and are not settled yet and are still doing some traveling back and forth. But uh we remember Bassie with great love.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

So, question three What is one bad habit you have a hard time giving up?

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Um I am a procrastinator, and what I have learned is that if I'm going to make progress on the important things, and and basically anything after lunch, my brain is dead. So, you know, so if I'm going to do important work on important things, it has to be the very first thing before email, before anything else, frankly, almost before turning on my computer. It I have to sit down and do that. And my bad habit is I will turn on my computer and start to look at my calendar and start to then, oh, well, let me just see if any important emails came, you know. And 45 minutes later, I'm like, I did it again. I did it again. But I have a lot of, I have more good days uh on that now, but that's it, that's really hard to kick, is that uh that bad habit of doing small stuff when I should be working on big stuff?

SPEAKER_02 36:51

Yeah, I can identify with that a lot like many people can.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

You know, you have to decide what you're gonna pay attention to because if you don't, the world will tell you what to pay attention to, and it won't be good for you.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Yeah. So now, question four.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

What is the first book you remember that had a real impact on you?

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Frank Baum, B-A-U-M, who wrote The Wizard of Oz, also wrote about 10 sequels to The Wizard of Oz following the Scarecrow and the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion in the Land of Oz and other various adventures. And I remember getting these books from the library. I was, you know, I don't know if I was nine or ten or or whatever, but I remember getting these books from the Woods Hole Library in Cape Cod and sitting on our front porch and just being completely engrossed in these stories, which were fabulous, you know, you know, magic and crazy stuff and all that. But that's the first time I remember being completely, completely engrossed in a story, you know, and I'd look up and an hour had passed that kind of thing. So it is the the sequels, which are probably not as good as The Wizard of Oz, you know, but the sequels that Frank Baum wrote to The Wizard of Oz, it were the first books I really remember being captivated by.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

I think for me it was a wrinkle in time by Madeline Lingle. And I got to meet her when I was in high school. And I have an autograph copy of her book. Oh, and nice that is like something I will never turn loose of.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

You know what's interesting, and it gets to the fact that we're we're so different. I've tried to read that book about four times. I'd get halfway through, and I'm like, what is going on here? It it just for whatever reason, and it's an incredibly good book. I get it, but I just can't get through it.

SPEAKER_02 39:00

You know what it was for me? It was the fact that the heroine was a young girl and she was not the genius in the family. She was like a normal, average little girl, but she's the one who saved the day.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Good point.

SPEAKER_02 39:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Good point.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

So here's your last question. I've been asking everybody the same thing because I'm creating a list for our year-in book buying guide of author recommendations. So whenever somebody asks you for a book that they should read, who is the first author that you suggest?

SPEAKER_01 39:31

Mark Twain would be the first, in that Huckleberry Finn is one of the best, you know, certainly one of the top two or three American novels ever written and one of the best novels ever written. And I've read it about 10 times, and each time it gets better. So I would recommend that as the first, you know, my first thing. I I had four or five books that I read over and over again while I was writing Jeep Show for instruction as much as entertainment. And Huck Finn was one of them. Another one that really stands out, and so I'll give you a second recommendation, even though you didn't ask for it, Diane.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Oh, trust me, nobody just gives me one. Okay, yeah, yeah. You've got books because you know, people that write are people that read.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Um John Lakare, uh a British author, wrote uh basically spy stories, and they're all very good. The one that that I have read over and over and really speaks to me is A Perfect Spy. And a perfect spy is about a British agent who I won't give away too much, but um does things behind the back of the British Secret Service that get him into trouble. And it's very biographical. Uh Lakari is able to tell through genius and artifice the story of this agent's young life and his crazy and criminal father, and it's absolutely brilliant. This book means so much to me because my relationship with my father, as almost everybody's relationship with their father, was complicated and had you know many aspects. And reading this brilliant exposition of this agent's younger years and his relationship with his father really, really spoke to me. It's also a brilliant story and brilliantly written. So those would be my top two. I could go on and on about others, but those would be my must-read.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

So, well, those are very good suggestions, though.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Thank you.

unknown 41:43

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

So, now what is next for you?

SPEAKER_01 41:47

What is that saying? You know, uh humans make plans and God laughs. Um, so let's just put that out there first. I plan to write a sequel, the Jeep Show, and I plan to cover the years 1947 to 1952 because there were two very important things going on in America. One was the GI Bill. You are probably familiar with the GI Bill. Basically, the government paid for all veterans to go to college or trade school after they got out of the army. Um, literally, millions of veterans went to college and millions of veterans took advantage of the trade school offering, and it completely changed the fabric of American social life. My father came from a working-class blue-collar background. He went to Yale on the GI Bill. Wow. Um, he was a little out of his element. But but he did graduate. And so I want to involve this, my main character, Jim Tanzer, who's going to be, you know, 32 or 33. Um, I want to send him to college on the GI Bill, and then I want to send him to occupied Japan and then possibly get him involved in the Korean War. So those are my big ideas. That's my current writing project.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

Well, when you get that finished, you'll have to come back and tell us about it.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Oh, I would love to. It'd be a real honor.

SPEAKER_02 43:22

So now tell everybody again who you are and where they can find your books.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Sure. I'm Robert O'Connor. I'm the author of Jeep Show, a trooper, spelled T-R-O-U-P-E-R, as in Traveling Entertainer. Jeep Show, a Trooper at the Battle of the Bulge. And it can be found at on Amazon. Just enter Jeep Show Book in the search bar or bookshop.org if you don't like Amazon. I have a website where there's extra material and you can learn about me called JeepshowBook.com. And I want to say to your listeners, There's a character in the book called the war correspondent. And the war correspondent exists in the book so he can explain the big picture happenings to the main character who's a you know private in the army and doesn't know what's going on. I had at the end of the book, I had the war correspondent write a column for his newspaper about Europe after the war. And he makes a moving tribute to the American army in World War II. We talked about that a little bit. It is available. My editor made me take it out of the book because she wanted it to end the way it ends with the main character, but it is on the website. And I I heartily recommend anyone who's kind of interested in what an experienced newspaper correspondent would write in 1946 of looking back on the war and the American Army in the war. It's called the War Co's Summary. It's on the website as well. So that's where to uh find the book on Amazon or bookshop.org and then to learn more about the book and me and to find that uh that unpublished column, uh Jeepshowbook.com.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

And I think people do need to go to the website to see your Jeep Show video preview. I love like the grainy film that you did. So it looks like a film from the 40s, the 30s, and 40s. It is so well done, and it gives a great overview of this book. Thank you very much. So this has been so much fun. You are just enjoyable to talk to.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

Well, you know, Diane, first of all, you're very good at your job. Second of all, I happen to be a subject expert on my books.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

That always helps.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

Right, right. Funny how that works out that way. So it's been uh it's really been a pleasure for me.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

So there you have it, folks. My incredibly fun interview with the wonderful author, Robert O'Connor. Be sure to go check out his book. You can find it at Jeepshowbook.com, and it is available at most of the major book retailing stores. And I can tell you, I've really been enjoying this book. You will not regret it. If you have any interest at all in World War II history, you're gonna love it. Now, next week we are beginning to kick off our summer reads suggestion authors. We've got a great mix of authors bringing to you books for young readers, for young adults, for adults. We've got romance, we've got thrillers, we've got fantasy, we've tried to put a really good mix of everything. We even have an instructor who wrote a book on how to write your own memoir, which will kick us off into our August and September episodes about memoirs and books based on real events. I try to do themes, have you noticed that? Anyway, next week we will have Mickey Bear, and she is a middle grade author who wrote a fantastic children's fantasy series based on the lives of fairies, and it is just such a fun read. If you have children who are interested in fantasy at all, they would really love these books. So be sure to come back next week when we cover all of the books in Mickey's series. Now, I don't know if you can tell that I've been feeling a little stressed lately. I have been working fast and furious to try to bring together some great projects that are going to help out not only myself, but all of the authors on my book Banter with Diane Burkhart Podcast. Now, since I am the only employee here, I have been taking advantage of a chat program. I've been having the program help me to organize and get all of my plans put together so I can actually implement some of these things on myself. I have found that the chat program, while not really great for many things, it really is great at organizing all of your information for you because I am terrible at that. So I give it all of my information and it tells me what should be done first to get everything done correctly, where I need to go to find the resources to get it done, and some of the things that we have been working on. It's things that I've thought about for years and just had no idea how to get started. And the chat program is helping me with this. So we're actually moving forward on some of these ideas now. One of them, a free-to-download app where readers can easily find all of the books from our podcast guests in one place and actually be able to click and go to buy them from our app, from the various vendors who sell them. Next, an author masterclass that is designed to help indie and traditionally published authors who are lost doing their own marketing to build their own professional marketing materials and help them to become confident in promoting themselves. We're also working, of course, on getting all of the book banter magazines available in print form. And of course, I am also looking to scout out the Frankfurter Bookmesa again and possibly put together a booth where any of the authors who have been on our podcast can buy into our booth and come in and have a day where they're there doing readings, meeting people, doing book signings, selling their books from our booth, and then doing live podcasts with these authors again, straight from the Frankfurter Bookmesa. And I think this would be such a great idea because it can be expensive, especially if you're coming from the United States or some other country to Germany for this. You have your flight expenses, you have hotel, if you rent a car, you have food expenses, you have to get all of your products here or buy your products here so that you don't have to ship them with you. So there's a lot of expense, and that doesn't even begin to cover how much it would cost to buy a booth at the Frankfurter Bookmesa. So if we come together and we do this as a team, it would greatly reduce the price for all of us. So I'm going to be going this year, doing a little scouting, start making a plan, seeing how we could work it out, and letting all of our authors know what the price would be to buy into a group project like this. So who knows? Maybe one day, if you're running around the Frankfurter Book Mesa, you might be able to meet many of the authors who you have listened to on this podcast. Keep your fingers crossed, people. I've got big plans for everything and I'm working hard. And I still have to get ready for vacation. So I'm gonna go now, finish the laundry, get ready to do another interview today with another fabulous author. And then, I don't know, maybe take a nap. But for all of you, it is time for you to go forth and be really happy that so many great things are coming in the future with Bookbancher Productions.