Lady Liberty Interviews Matthew Bracken

In 2003, author Matthew Bracken published Enemies Foreign and Domestic, the first novel of a planned trilogy. With its focus on a government set-up that resulted in draconian gun control measures, it gained good reviews and much appreciation from readers. As gun control advocates have continued in their efforts to disarm the law abiding, it also seemed to offer some chilling warnings.

This year, Bracken released the second novel in the trilogy. Domestic Enemies held onto the background established in the first novel, but added to it the probable result of continued unfettered illegal immigration into the country. Once again, the reality is striking even as the story holds the reader's interest.

After reading Domestic Enemies and finding myself genuinely fearful of some of the near future it outlines, I determined to speak with Matthew Bracken and discuss just how real his fiction might - unfortunately - prove to be. Mr. Bracken kindly agreed to answer some questions, and here is the result of our recent conversation.

Related Reading:

Lady Liberty's Review of Enemies Foreign and Domestic

Lady Liberty's Review of Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista

WarOnGuns Interview with Matthew Bracken

My GUNS Magazine review of Enemies Foreign and Domestic

My review of Domestic Enemies has been submitted to the magazine, and will be on the shelves in a few months--I'm told it's the issue they'll be promoting at the SHOT Show, so that ought to help with exposure.

[Thanks to Stieger]

Bracken’s ‘Castigo Cay’ offered as free Kindle download

As with all three books in Bracken’s “Enemies” trilogy, this correspondent gave this novel an enthusiastic review when it first came out in hard copy. It’s high adventure true to Bracken’s trademark “bleeding-edge dystopian thriller” tradition, full of memorable characters, excitement, and importantly, an unbending commitment to liberty. And as with his other books, the author’s real-world experience as a former SEAL, shipbuilder and sailor ensures the technical details in the fictional experience ring true. [More]

This evening’s Gun Rights Examiner report brings you an offer that you can refuse, although why you’d want to is beyond me.

Great Expectations

Really, David. I expected better from Bracken, and I certainly expected better from you.

Commentator Joel expresses disappointment with racial theme elements in the "Foreign Enemies" online sample.

Author Matthew Bracken responds:

I’m not sure what politically correct planet Joel hails from, or if he has some other axe to grind, but I’m confused by his comments. He begins by referring to “all those EEEVIL dirty brown people” in Domestic Enemies. Was he referring to the heroine, the Arab-American Ranya Bardiwell? Or perhaps to the hero, Alexandro Garabanda, a Cuban-American? Domestic Enemies is set in the future in New Mexico, during a period when the Southwest is fracturing away from the United States. Yes, plenty of bad guys in the novel are Hispanic. Plenty of the good guys are as well. Perhaps if I had set the novel in North Dakota, and invented an immigration invasion by Canadians leading to…never mind. You get my point. If I’m going to write reality-based fiction about the breakup of the USA, set in the Southwest, it’s going to be pretty hard to avoid some Hispanic bad guys. Sorry Joel, if that offends your PC sensibilities. (And don’t hold your breath waiting for my novel about North Dakota.)

As far as cannibalism occurring three weeks after the complete cutoff of Memphis from the outside world, following a Richter level eight earthquake—yes Joel, that would happen. Spend a little time researching such disasters. People don’t quietly starve, while calmly sitting at home. The young and the strong quickly revert to cannibalism in the face of the total cutoff of other sources of food. History shows this, over and over. In the posted excerpt, there is one case of cannibalism described, in a city of over a million inhabitants.

Considering that you found the internet posted sections of Domestic Enemies to be full of “all those EEEVIL dirty brown people,” (despite the ethnicity of the heroes and its Southwestern setting), I’m not surprised that you would compare the posted excerpt from Foreign Enemies to the infamous white racist screed, “The Turner Diaries.” Perhaps you stopped reading these excerpts, before you got to the story of Web Hardesty? He is a white racist villain of the first order, using the breakdown of law and order following the earthquake to engage in a vendetta against African-Americans and Hispanics in Western Tennessee. I’ll say it in your terms: Web Hardesty is an “EEEVIL dirty white person.”

In Foreign Enemies, a rough sort of race war is introduced as one of several background plot elements. Blacks and whites are portrayed in both heroic and evil roles. Perhaps you are simply offended that I would dare to suggest that a complete breakdown in the social order would lead to racial atrocities being committed on all sides? If so, I would suggest that you are a Pollyanna, inhabiting the lofty airs of politically correct thought, viewing the world through rose-colored glasses.

Forgive me if I don’t think that folks will be holding hands and singing Kumbaya, three weeks after an earthquake wrecks most of the bridges between Little Rock, Saint Louis and Nashville. In Memphis, after three weeks with no food, drinking water, electricity or gas, I believe that we would see many of the worst traits that humanity has demonstrated under similar circumstances down through the ages.

I don’t expect that Joel will be reading Foreign Enemies, after he saw “all those EEEVIL dirty brown people” in Domestic Enemies, (in spite of the fact that the heroes are themselves “brown people.”) But for anyone else who read and enjoyed my first two novels, I make this promise: Foreign Enemies ends with a positive resolution of most of the various crises described. This includes a racial reconciliation by several of the characters, who had come to distrust members of differing ethnicities.

And please don’t get the idea that Foreign Enemies is primarily about racial conflict. That is merely one of the plot elements, in a novel that is mainly about the total usurpation of the Constitution by a rogue President and Congress.

Matt Bracken

Florida

The Bracken Anthology

From "bleeding-edge dystopian thriller" author Matthew Bracken:

The Bracken Anthology of essays and short stories is now available on Kindle for just a buck.

Get it here.

And no, you don't need to buy a Kindle. You can download free reading apps for whatever computer/device you're looking at now.

Here.

UPDATE: WRSA includes an important addendum:

As always, hard copy is the only form that can’t be pulled from servers or e-readers.

They have to burn each hard copy, one by one.

Just like you.

"Domestic Enemies"--An Interview With Matthew Bracken

I want my biases out on the table before I start this: It's no secret I'm a big fan of Matthew Bracken's first book, Enemies Foreign and Domestic, and said as much in my review last year.

I haven't read Matt's sequel, Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista. I've just started it, but admit I'm caught up in what I've read so far. Also, Jeff John at GUNS Magazine just gave me the green light to write a review for the magazine.



As I've said in prior announcments, Matt is going to be checking in today from time to time and answering questions from WarOnGuns visitors as time permits. If you have a question you'd like to ask him, just post a comment at the end of the interview.

That's about all the introduction we need. Let's jump right into the interview.

---------------------------------

DC: Without giving any spoilers, set the story up for me. How does Reconquista tie in with EFAD, and where do you take it from there?

MB: Reconquista begins five years after the end of EFAD, with a leading character from the first book in a detention camp for suspected terrorists. That is the only character from the first book who is carried over. The five year time period allows the reader to experience a significant deterioration of the state of freedom in America. The plot takes that character on a journey across the Southwest, which is then in the opening stages of a low-intensity civil war.

DC: Your sequel speaks to a very specific kind of subversion by a very specific demographic. What do you say to people who are concerned about xenophobic or racial implications? Can a person of Mexican ancestry enjoy this book and agree with its sentiments? How about a person with a libertarian “open borders” philosophy?

MB: I dismiss any charges of xenophobia or other racial implications out of hand. You either believe in the Constitution and the sovereign borders of the USA, or you don't. Millions of illegal aliens who have invaded the USA believe that the Southwest was "stolen" from Mexico, and that they have the right to take it back. This is totally bogus "junk history" which I would be happy to detail at any level. There are also millions of Americans of Hispanic descent who are loyal citizens who hold the Constitution and our sovereign borders dear. Many of the positive protagonists in Reconquista fit that description. The racists in this debate belong to groups like "La Raza," which are racist organizations on their face. As far as "open borders libertarians," I hope and trust that they will hate this book like the devil hates holy water. I consider them traitors and Quislings, and I despise them. I am unashamedly an American who believes in the rule of law, the Constitution, and defending America's sovereign borders.

DC: Apathy seems to be rampant among gun owners, with only a small percentage involved in basic activism—out of 80 million estimated gun owners, something like 5% are even NRA members, and harder core groups, like GOA and JPFO attract significantly fewer members. Do you believe that Americans who won’t do the easy things—petitioning, rewarding and punishing candidates, lending financial support to myriad efforts toward peaceful redress of grievances—would take extreme risks, put their lives, fortunes and sacred honor on the line, and actually take up arms to reclaim their Republic? If so, why?

MB: Most Americans will not even sign an on-line petition, much less put their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on the line to save their Republic. Unfortunately they are too busy earning a living and paying their bills and their taxes to worry much about what will become of the nation they will hand over to their children. I believe that the USA is on the road to becoming a third world nation, and I feel great sorrow for our children. After 225 years we have finally managed to debase and squander our national legacy, and our children may well spit on our graves for our apathy and self-absorption.

DC: What has the response of gun owners been to this and your previous book? What kind of numbers do you need to get major publishing houses to set aside their prejudices and see the profit potential in introducing this book to the same mass audiences they appeal to with novelists like Tom Clancy?

MB: The 6,500 gun owners who have read EFAD love it and many of them tell me that it's the most important book they have read in many years. I hear that copies are passed from person to person and that is gratifying. It's extremely difficult for a no-name first-time-author to crack through the left-tilting PC-ridden world of mainstream New York publishing, which is why I opted to self-publish. The numbers I've sold via the internet, with no promotional budget, have finally gotten some national publishing attention. However, I don't hold out much hope for a serious publishing contract unless lightning strikes, the way it did for Tom Clancy.

A short anecdote: around 1980 or so, my father was a member of the Navy League in Baltimore, and Tom Clancy was an insurance salesman who had just written a book called The Hunt For Red October. Incidentally, Clancy graduated from the same high school in Maryland that I attended, ten years ahead of me. Clancy, who had no "real" publishing contract, was giving free lectures and selling his book off of tables. (Clancy had managed to obtain a small print run from the Naval Institute Press, which specializes in reprints of obscure naval histories.) At a Navy League function, my father bought a signed copy from the totally unknown author. Later, through a stroke of luck and some superb "guerrilla marketing," a copy of The Hunt For Red October was given to Ronald Reagan, who was photographed carrying it, and the rest is publishing history. (We still have our own signed first edition "Naval Institute Press" copy of Red October, but my dad had the habit of marking books up with underlining and marginalia, so it's probably worthless.)

However, in my case, I see no hope at all that our current President would be caught dead carrying Reconquista, which is a strong indictment against his open borders and pro-amnesty positions. In my case, I'll have to continue to grind out my own promotion via word of mouth, one reader at a time. The best promotion for my books are my books, but this type of promotion takes a long time.

DC: How about the “gun rights groups”? Did any support EFAD with reviews/recommendations, and have any shown an interest in promoting Reconquista? And same basic question—what kind of acknowledgment are you getting from talk radio programs, gun magazines, other media?

MB: Some small state-level gun rights groups have given me kudos, but the national groups such as the NRA have never indicated that they even received, much less read, the copies of EFAD that I sent to their officers with very nice letters. I'm not sure why this is, but that is their problem. I have a few theories.

A few gun magazines have carried reviews of EFAD for which I'm grateful, particularly GUNS magazine, which ran your review.

DC: Are you conducting your own publicity campaign? What about book-signing appearances at gun shows, talks at gun clubs, etc.?

MB: For Reconquista, I'm sending out books in clear poly mailers to a fairly large number of radio hosts and producers, mainly across the Southwest where the illegal alien invasion is a burning issue. I just moved from San Diego, and I can tell you that gun rights never rose above about "topic nineteen" on the list of talk radio subjects, but the alien invasion occupies more than half of every talk radio hour in the Southwest. Reconquista might get some traction on talk radio, even if I have to literally throw copies over the transom.

As far as gun shows, I've been fortunate to be invited to the SHOT Show the last few years by Kasey Beltz of Accu-Shot, who has been a big supporter ever since he read an early edition of EFAD. Just attending the SHOT Show has been a tremendous education. It is nice to be greeted at the SHOT Show by many gun-writers and shooters who are "names" in the industry. That has been very gratifying. I really haven't done book-signing appearances other than at the SHOT Show.

DC: I’ve read some comments that show you have a core of enthusiastic readers who obviously love your work. What can your fans do to help promote your book and get it before a wider audience?

MB: I have postcard-sized reproductions of the covers of both of my books, which folks can post on the bulletin boards of their local shooting clubs and so on. The cover cards are free for the asking through my website. It also wouldn't hurt if either of my books were mentioned on local talk radio, that's for sure. I've had maybe a dozen radio interviews from Tucson to Fairbanks discussing gun rights, and I'm told I'm a good guest. I think talk radio might lead to a breakout, especially concerning the topicality of Reconquista. But whether it does or not, I'm in this for the long haul. I'm a full-time writer now, and eventually I'll break through in a big way. I think my books convey important messages that need to be heard by millions of Americans, about the dangers facing our nation in the very near term.

DC: Is this a trilogy? Will we see Foreign Enemies in the next year or two?

MB: This is a trilogy, and the third book will be called Foreign Enemies. It will take place in an America that is shattered and experiencing a terrible economic depression and social disintegration. I would not put a time frame on when it will be finished. I just hope the national economy in two years is such that it will support endeavors like writing and selling novels.

Matt Bracken
Florida

---------------------------------

Please submit questions below by clicking on the "Comments" link. Mr. Bracken may not be able to get to all of them, but let's enjoy this opportunity as long as it presents itself. Also, if you haven't yet done so, please let your friends know about this interview so they can participate.

The New Scarlet Letter

A regressive propagandist is trying to tag Matthew Bracken with the "R-word." [Read]

We had this conversation here almost four years ago. Why this is being resurrected now is interesting, and I suppose we can expect to see that brush used to tar those of us who have enjoyed and endorsed Matt's work.

It's a curious double standard. For instance, in a prior award-nominated work of disaster fiction (one the "liberal press" deemed "wildly entertaining" and "a work in the grand tradition") the subject of cannibalism practiced by some of the characters did not result in such accusations. Gee, I wonder why.

Anyway, prepare yourself for some opportunistic feigned indignation and name-calling. As I told Matt when he called the pending article to my attention:

Looks to me like you're handling it just fine--the guy has an obvious agenda to tear you down in front of his progressive echo chamber--and I doubt it will sell any books--so your only incentive to play is to get your words in, which his fanboys will ignore. But if you do decide to do a Q&A, the one thing I would make loud and clear is that it would be cowardly and racist to avoid the issues you raise--kind of like when Hollywood changed Tom Clancy's Arab terrorists to neo-Nazis in "The Sum of All Fears"--political correctness is a form of tyranny, and is racist on its face--you won't play that game. If he thinks it is improbable for people of any race to devolve into unspeakably brutal practices when their daily survival is at stake, it's up to him to substantiate that loopy conclusion--and urban areas will be the ones where high demand competition for resources will quickly separate the sheep from the wolves--and a gang predator hierarchy already exists there, so guess who's going to dominate, and guess how important a role moral constraints will play in their conduct?

I'll say this much more: I've been communicating with Matthew Bracken for years, and in all that time he has never uttered a remotely racist sentiment--not a name, not an observation, not a joke...and I do not maintain relationships with anyone who does.  Everybody I know and like treats others based on what their actions as individuals merit.

It's not people like us trying to disarm and further restrict the rights of the minority community, or using that as an excuse to disarm everyone else.  It's the ones pointing their fingers.

Last book in ‘Enemies’ trilogy now offered for free download

The third book in author Matthew Bracken’s “Enemies Foreign and Domestic Trilogy” became available for free downloading this morning on Amazon.com. The Kindle version of “Foreign Enemies and Traitors” will be offered at no charge through October 31. [More]

Today’s Gun Rights Examiner report notes an offer you shouldn’t want to refuse. Fans and friends of Matt Bracken, please share the link far and wide.

Bracken: Tet, Take Two – Islam’s 2016 European Offensive

I believe that ... Europe is being prepared for a Muslim-jihad version of the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. A vast and concerted act of treason has been taking place across Europe since the creation of the European Union. Under the Schengen Agreement, Brussels promised to guard the outer frontiers of the EU, while abolishing internal border controls. The Eurocrat elites broke the first promise but kept the second, thus opening a wide path for the onrushing Muslim hijra immigration invasion. [More]

This reinforces my longstanding conviction that Matt Bracken's is one of the most important voices of our time. Stop what you're doing. Read this in full. Make the time. Then share.

Also: Free Kindle downloads of the "Enemies" trilogy Tuesday through Thursday.

Metastasized 'Progressivism'

The 4 Stages Of The Collapse Of Venezuela [More]

And the cancer is spreading.

[Via Bracken]

UPDATE: Might as well celebrate. Good thing there were no guns.

Say, didn't Bracken write something about a stampede once...?

[Via Jess]

A Failure of Civility

Matt Bracken says he's found an essential book. [Read]

I tend to give Matt Bracken a lot of credit for knowing what he's talking about.  Still, this includes some of the few things he's written where I feel compelled to publicly disagree with him: that part where he dismisses and diminishes the importance of his own work and that part where he apologizes for the quality of his review.

Alas, Brave New Babylon

WRSA has the latest from Matt Bracken. [More]

Comment critics notwithstanding, I really have nothing but superlatives for the way this man writes, and the knowledge and intelligence he draws from to do it. I've been in awe since the first "Enemies" book.  It figures establishment publishers won't touch him.

If I ever have the dough, and fat chance of that, there are several essential contemporary writers I would be honored to bestow grants on so they could do what they do worry-free.  Bracken would be at the top of my list.

Bracken: Piss Christ? Piss Koran!

Part One: Dark Till Dawn [More]

Must. Find. Time.

Bracken's has been one of my favorite voices since I was first introduced to his important work that uses fiction to force a hard look at reality.

[Via Florida Guy]   

Bracken books available for free download tomorrow and Thursday

“I'm going to put the Enemies Trilogy on a Kindle ‘free run’ on Wednesday, January 15th,” Bracken announced to followers on Facebook. “The next day I'll free run my other two books. Pass the word to avid readers who might be short of bucks currently." [More] 

Today’s Gun Rights Examiner column reports on an offer we’ve seen before. If you haven’t taken advantage of it, now’s the time to do so. If you have, now’s the time to “pay it forward” and make it known to others.

Author Bracken offers another free 'high-octane' e-book

“The Bracken Anthology” contains “recent essays, commentaries and short fiction from … 2010 to 2013,” including his latest short work, “Alas, Brave New Babylon,” the Amazon book description explains for what it terms “high-octane distillate.”

That’s an apt description for work by a writer who is known and appreciated for his “bleeding-edge dystopian thrillers.” [More]

This evening’s Gun Rights Examiner report presents yet another offer you can’t refuse – well, you can, but it will be your loss.

GUNS Magazine Review of Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista

Matthew Bracken'’s latest novel is a brave book.

It'’s brave because it'’s a sequel, and expectations from a readership that embraced his first book, “Enemies Foreign and Domestic, are high. It'’s brave because he believes in the grand purpose of the right to bear arms, and that runs against the mindset of mainstream publishers. And it'’s brave because Bracken makes a harsh prediction of where this country is headed should the unchecked flow of illegal immigration not be halted and reversed.

My review of Matt's outstanding new effort appears on page 88 of the February 2007 issue of GUNS Magazine, on sale now at friendly domestic newsstands throughout the Republic.

Matthew Bracken Radio Interview

Hear Matt Bracken's radio interview on the Peter Boyles morning show on Denver's KHOW 630AM, where he discusses "Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista".

Click on the post title link above, then scroll down to access the audio control and hear the show.

Reminder: Bracken Interview Tomorrow

Been gone for the long weekend and haven't posted to the site, but just wanted to remind WOG visitors that tomorrow is the Matthew Bracken interview.

I hope you can join us, and that you help spread the word.

Coming Tuesday, Sept.5

A WarOnGuns Exclusive

The Matthew Bracken Interview

Mark Your Calendars

Tell Your Friends

Prepare Your OWN Question

We will be discussing his new book, Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista.
Mr. Bracken will be checking posted comments that day and answering questions as time permits.

Black Sunday

Bracken: Is The NFL Ready For A Stadium Attack On A Las Vegas Scale? [More]

Don't worry though -- the kneelers and owners probably won't be in the path of the stampede.

You won't see any of the big boys in "conservative media" touch stuff like this.

Tangentially related: Matt Bracken Booted off Facebook Again.

Follow the Money

Matt Bracken: The Deep Pockets Behind the Migrant “Rescue” Industry [More]

Fortunately for us, the Donald Jr. non-story is more worthy of loud and indignant investigation.