Talk Back: Why I Wrote The Last Blue Mile

I’ve been writing about the military, and my experience as a woman in the military, for some time. I flew as an air weapons controller with the Air Force E-3 AWACS in the early nineties (during Desert Storm and Operation Provide Comfort), and wrote a novel based on my experience called The Art of Uncontrolled Flight (HarperCollins, 2005). People were fascinated by the stories—what was it like, they wanted to know. They asked: how does it feel to be a woman in the military?

I always felt like my answer was a little disappointing. It’s a hard life, I told them, not just for women, but for everybody. The last thing I ever wanted as a crew member was to be singled out as a woman. No, never—we were all one crew, right? No differences, right?

Then, in 2003, I was watching the rape scandal unfold at the Air Force Academy. It wasn’t going well for anybody — the women who suffered, the institution of the Academy, or the male cadets, who felt the disgust of an outraged public and, in some cases, passed that hostility onto the female cadets who had worked so hard to succeed in their world. And despite all the hubbub, I thought the press hadn’t got the story right. There were some inflammatory pieces, but they missed the nuances — the camaraderie, the small victories and defeats — that happen in training everyday. And yet, the people I spoke to were fascinated!

They wanted to know about the challenges women faced in military training. It was clear that they felt a real respect and awe, and they were mystified by the military culture. So I decided to write a novel based at the Air Force Academy. I did many, many interviews with the cadets and staff. I visited the Academy and got the opportunity to follow a few cadets around for a week. Because I hadn’t graduated from the Academy, I felt like I had to get the story right — the details of daily life and more importantly, the struggle we all face as part of the decision we make to become officers in the U.S. military. What a job!

I spent over two years writing the novel. I wrote it from the standpoint of Brook Searcy, a female smack, and Brigadier General John Waller, the Commandant of Cadets. They both have their challenges. But they come together in the end of the novel in a way that shows, I hope, a kind of transition between the old and new guards of the officer corps.

The Last Blue Mile is not about one issue, or even one cadet’s experience. I tried to encompass the whole world of academy life with an interweaving story that alternates between the cadet experience and that of the senior staff. In writing The Last Blue Mile, I hope I’ve done the graduates of these academies justice. It was a real pleasure to write the novel and to spend time with the Academy cadets. They had many, many different perspectives on the military, but they all seemed incredibly focused, articulate, and driven to accomplish their goals. I love serving as part of the growing corps of female military officers, and I’m pleased to have written a novel from that point of view. I hope I got the story right. And I hope you’ll tell me what you think.

Kim Ponders grew up near Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Syracuse University. She worked as a small-town reporter in northern California. In 1989, she attended Officer Training School and was commissioned into the Air Force as a second lieutenant. In 1991, she became qualified as an air weapons controller on the E-3 AWACS and went to Saudi Arabia with Desert Storm and Operation Provide Comfort. She spent the next five years flying missions out of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, providing air supplies to the Kurds in northern Iraq and monitoring the Iraqi no-fly zone. These experiences formed the basis of her first novel, The Art of Uncontrolled Flight.

In 1996, she lived in Korea, controlling the airspace south of the DMZ. There, she met her husband, Bill, also an Air Force officer. They moved to Geilenkirchen, Germany, where he flew with the NATO E-3s while Kim joined the Air Force Reserve and began working on her novel. She attended workshops in Prague, Czech Republic and St. Petersburg, Russia and later attended the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.

Now a major in the Air Force Reserve, Kim works part-time as a speech writer at the Pentagon. She holds an M.S. in international relations and an M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She writes about current events on Blogher.org, a women’s news and features site. She teaches at a conference run by A Room of Her Own, the largest women-only writer’s foundation in the country. Her first novel, THE ART OF UNCONTROLLED FLIGHT, was released with HarperCollins in 2005. Her second novel, THE LAST BLUE MILE, is on sale now.

Kim lives in southern New Hampshire with her husband, a member of the Air National Guard and passionate small plane pilot, and two beautiful boys who are passionate about dinosaurs.

For more information, visit Kim’s website at http://www.kimponders.com/index.html or contact Kim directly at kim@kimponders.com .

Picture by Barry Goldstein.