We Speak Authors

Army Veteran D.A. Etheridge Turns a Lifetime of Service Into a First Novel, “Muddy River Blues”

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2026

D.A. Etheridge. Photo submitted by D.A. Etheridge, via Hville Blast.

Every veteran comes home looking for a next mission. For Douglas “D.A.” Etheridge, that mission turned out to be a novel.

The Huntsville, Alabama author releases his first book, Muddy River Blues, on November 15, launching a planned series rooted in the Tennessee River Valley and in his own years in uniform. Etheridge is a retired Army Master Sergeant who now works as an Army TAC Administrator at Redstone Arsenal.

His hero, Carlisle Baxter, is a retired soldier carrying the physical and mental scars of Fallujah, who returned home to the Tennessee River Valley looking for peace and found a war instead. The novel begins with a missing husband and a quiet divorce: a young couple’s ordinary life shatters when $50,000 appears in their bank account and the husband vanishes into the river bottoms, pulling Baxter into decades of local corruption. Alongside a fierce attorney, Karyn Winston, he must navigate a system where the law is weaponized by the powerful.

Etheridge says the heart of the book comes straight from his own experience. “As a retired Army Master Sergeant with combat service in OEF, OIF and Operation Allied Force, I drew heavily on my own military background,” he said. “Transitioning back to civilian life is one of the hardest experiences for a service member. A core concept of this series is demonstrating that transition process and showing how veterans can successfully ‘find their next mission’ with the support of those around them.”

The novel explores justice, redemption, loyalty and the difficult road from military to civilian life. Etheridge will host a Facebook Live pre-book launch event on November 14 at 2 p.m. ahead of the November 15 release. Muddy River Blues will be available on Amazon and through his author website, daetheridge.com.

A first novel is a brave step at any age. Etheridge’s arrives carrying the weight, and the authority, of a life already lived in service.

We Speak Authors

Cathy Park Hong Crosses Into Fiction: Her Debut Novel “Furies” Sparks a Worldwide Deal

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2026

We Speak Media

Cathy Park Hong. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Cathy Park Hong rewrote the rules for the memoir with Minor Feelings. Now she is coming for the novel.

Publishers Marketplace reported on November 3 that Hong will make her fiction debut with Furies, in a deal that places the book with One World in North America and Hutchinson Heinemann in the United Kingdom, with further editions set for France (Phébus), Hungary (Agave Könyvek), Germany (DTV) and Italy (INN Editore), a worldwide launch for a first novel.

Furies follows a failed Korean American journalist who returns home to write about her mother. From that intimate starting point, the novel opens outward into a story of mothers and daughters that also sweeps in North Korean terrorists, abducted actresses, filmmakers and a film-obsessed dictator, exploring the borders between history, imagination, fact and memory.

Hong, a poet before she was anything else, published Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning in 2020 to enormous acclaim. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and it permanently changed the conversation about Asian American life in the United States with its blend of memoir, history and cultural criticism.

That track record is what makes Furies one of the most anticipated literary debuts on the horizon. Writers who can move between poetry, essay and now fiction with equal force are rare, and publishers on four continents have bet that Hong is one of them. The multi-country deal, struck before the book has even reached readers, signals the level of expectation building around it.

No publication date has been announced yet. When Furies arrives, it will carry the weight of a simple, exciting fact: one of the sharpest literary voices of her generation has a whole new form to work in.