I’m very excited to be able to share my memoir with readers today and it has already been interesting to see how the book is connecting with different people in different ways.  Some readers like to read about the combat missions, some are more interested to read about getting smuggled across international borders as a journalist, while others found the last two chapters of the book to be the most telling.  As one early reader remarked to me, as soldiers we were told that certain things were supposed to happen in the war on terror but they never did.  This book puts on spotlight on that fact.

Murphy’s Law is pro-military, based on my own first hand experiences, however it is also deeply skeptical about American foreign policy and the Global War on Terror which seems to have stretched on out into forever at this point.  The book takes the reader inside Special Operations missions in two theaters of war, shows what went right, and what went horribly wrong.  It’s going to piss some people off but as I was told many times as a young soldier, it is what it is.

Specifically, here is a snap shot of what is in the book:

  • I detail a never before revealed friendly fire incident that I was involved in during the winter of 2004, in which a small recce team and I were deployed to recon the location of the terrorist who planned the Pat Tillman ambush.
  • I go in-depth writing about the Special Operations Task Force in Iraq, a industrial-grade counter-terrorism killing machine that I was a part of as a Ranger.  We executed well over a hundred High Value Target strikes in Mosul that summer alone.  This also covers the ambush I was present for when terrorists dropped hand grenades on top of us from a overpass, as well as numerous other firefights
  • My experiences in RASP, SFAS, Ranger School, and the Q-Course are covered in brief, highlighting some funny or interesting stories but mostly I focus on the hairy adventures overseas as others have written about SOF training.
  • My deployment with ODA 5414 to Tal Afar in 2009, training an Iraqi SWAT team and leading them on combat missions in Iraq.  At one point, the JSOC task force gets shut down for political reasons and my ODA becomes the go-to direct action element for all of northern Iraq.  And the time we crashed a wedding…
  • What it was like for me to get out of the Army and attend a Ivy League university in New York City.  The highs, the lows, the weird moments!
  • My experiences starting a news website and I give a lot of “behind the scenes” type information about important stories I’ve worked on, including articles I wrote about military sexual assault.
  • The entire story of my 2014 jaunt into Syria, how I was smuggled into the country by the PKK early on in the war and did boots on the ground reporting, before having to make an illegal border run to get out and then getting detained by the secret police…
  • Rolling into combat with the Peshmerga in 2015 during the Kirkuk offensive, almost getting blown up a few times, seeing villages waving white flags defecting from ISIS bad guy land and surrendering to the Pesh.
  • Going back to Syria, but this time under the auspices of the regime and interviewing President Assad.
  • Cruising around the Philippines and interviewing operators from their Special Operations units, chronicling their history and missions as they battle ISIS off-shoot organizations.

Over the next week I’ll be doing media appearances for the book and will try to keep everyone updated on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  There will also be a book signing at Books & Greetings in New Jersey from 7-9PM on April 25th.  If you are in the area please stop by to say hello.

In the meantime, the book can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever books are sold.  Of course, you can also get it as a ebook or as an audio book.  The audio book is narrated by me and includes a few updates as the audio was recorded well after the manuscript was finalized.  If you decide to give Murphy’s Law a chance, it would mean a lot to me if you leave a review on Amazon as it really helps the book gain some traction.