Precis Paperback – 30 July 2012

First i must divulge that i know the author. Bill and i met in college in, of all things, a screenwriting class. We graduated, lost track and then reconnected. Such that it is. Over the years he has written. Screenplays, plays, novels and books that would be considered academic (Peckinpah"s Women, Artists on the Art of Survival). All this while courting a woman, marrying a woman, having two smart, beautiful daughters, acquiring his first home AND working full time. This alone gets him an award. I wish i could report that he's a disconnected and distant father, husband, friend. Far from it. This, of course would mean nothing if he was a lousy writer. Even mediocre. There are times when you wish you could just dislike someone. Bill, his very nature, his character is stellar. A genuinely nice guy who is smart, funny and as it turns out, talented. Why is it these guys never seem to break big? All in all if one had to choose between making it (fame and $$$) huge and being respected for your decency i would choose .... the former probably. if i had a gun to my head. I have read and own everything he has written. As you can read i am not much of a scholar so i prefer the novels. The series he did starting with The Advocate is as good as it gets. Three novels with the same character all interesting all different in pacing and breadth. Perhaps he gained limited recognition but he still has to work a job. For the life of me i don't know why. Precis fails on some level. I am not well schooled and don't have sufficient expertise to be a critic. My guess is that a short story is a singular thing. It shows a piece of a life and it stands on it's own. A period should end the matter. Perhaps Bill has written to many full drafts of a variety of novels, plays, screenplays to be limited. At the end of each of the six short stories i find myself wanting more. At the end of two pages or twenty i am invested. I want to read "the rest". Alas there is no more. Then there is Diamond Red. Bill is a stickler for research and, though he hates it, he is thorough. And then some. I read a review on the back of Precis by one Steve Szilagyi that states "... one of the best war novels ever written". Seriously? I am used to friends and acquaintances overstating so as to help a pal but, really? Then i read it. There are war novels that use the medium to show one the complete hatred of the conflict. All conflicts. Others dwell on the magnificence and "higher law" of the battle. Of the war. Of all war. Red Diamond was unfolding to be the former but, as a devoted friend, i pressed on. There is a remarkable talent, a deft touch one is born with that can view an event from every conceivable angle and seamlessly pour out this view with all colors intact. This, at once desolate, helpless and inane event in Viet Nam is one that illuminates the heroic nature amidst the debri. And please, don't for a moment get me wrong, Bill can write. But to be able to put words together in a compelling fashion while doing an autopsy of a soul in a story that will have you gripping the seat with your buttocks so as to be far more beneficial than many hours of Kegel exercises is something that goes beyond mere talent. In short Steve Szilagyi is completely accurate. There are no events in war be they historical or deeply personal that are devoid of multiple, competing opinions. Rarely do you get to experience an open account of war both historical and personal that doesn't draw attention to itself while following every link in the disease. As a reader you can ask for no more than this. as a writer Bill Mesce delivers. Why he has stayed in touch with me i will never know. Perhaps he's just to nice to tell me to stop sending Christmas cards. That people don't register the importance of his name when i liberally drop it during a conversation is simply a shame. I like him because he is a wonderful man. I am beginning to despise him because he is that good a writer. Pick this up and you will want to read everything else he has written. Promise

I first discovered Bill as a writer of film for Sound on Sight. And after reading his fiction, I see that Bill can do it all. His voice is mature, reflective, his stories involving average people navigating, and keenly observing, their environments. Some of his stories appear to have, at times, a mysterious ambiguity. Bill's strength is in his imagery and perceptions. The Vietnam novella "Red Diamond" is timeless in its depiction of war. Its ending resonated with the closing shot of the film The Hurt Locker.