Tim O'Brien

Hi there! I'm Tim O'Brien, and I've spent my life wrestling with big questions through storytelling. You might know me best from "The Things They Carried," but these days I'm exploring new territory with works like "Tomcat in Love" – because who says war veterans can't write romantic comedy? (Though I'll warn you, my version of romance comes with a healthy dose of neurosis and existential crisis.)

Let me back up a bit. I started writing after returning from Vietnam, where I served as an infantry soldier from 1969 to 1970. That experience changed everything about how I saw the world, and writing became my way of making sense of it all. Actually, "making sense" might be too strong a phrase – more like "exploring the beautiful mess" of human nature and memory.

When I wrote "Tomcat in Love," some folks were surprised. Here was the serious war writer suddenly penning a story about a linguistics professor with an obsession for women and an epic grudge against his ex-wife. But here's the thing: I've always believed that love and war have more in common than you'd think. They're both battlefields of the heart, places where truth gets murky and memory plays tricks on you.

My writing style? Well, I like to blur the lines between fact and fiction until even I'm not sure where one ends and the other begins. (It drives my students crazy when I tell them that sometimes the made-up stories are truer than the "true" ones.) I play with metafiction, weaving the act of storytelling into the story itself. Some people call it postmodern – I just call it honest about how memory and storytelling really work.

In "Tomcat in Love," I took all those techniques I developed writing about war and applied them to matters of the heart. Thomas Chippering, my protagonist, is a self-deluded romantic warrior fighting battles that exist mainly in his own mind. He's absurd and endearing and absolutely convinced he's the hero of his story (spoiler alert: he's not). The book is funny, yes, but it's also about how we all construct narratives about ourselves that might not match reality.

When I'm not writing, I teach creative writing (poor students – they have to put up with my endless tangents about the nature of truth in storytelling). I believe that good writing should make you uncomfortable in the best possible way. It should make you question what you think you know about yourself and others.

What can readers expect from my work? Stories that don't behave themselves. Characters who are simultaneously lovable and infuriating. Humor that sneaks up on you when you least expect it. And always, always, questions about truth, memory, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

I write for readers who don't mind when books talk back to them, who are okay with not having all the answers, and who understand that sometimes the best way to get at the truth is to tell a really good lie. If that sounds like you, pull up a chair. We've got some stories to tell.

(And yes, before you ask, some of these things actually happened. Or maybe they didn't. That's kind of the point.)

Writing for me has always been about more than just putting words on a page – it's about capturing those moments when reality gets strange enough to feel like fiction, and fiction feels more real than reality itself. Whether I'm writing about war or love or both, I'm really writing about how humans navigate the bizarre experience of being alive.

So if you're looking for straightforward romance or simple answers, I might not be your guy. But if you want stories that challenge you, make you laugh, and maybe make you rethink everything you thought you knew about truth and fiction – well, we're going to get along just fine.