Getting to Know Ross Ritchell
Ross Ritchell wrote what he knew. Not a self-conscious or stylized version of what he knew. Not a censored or sanitized version either. His debut novel about a special operations team at war in the Middle East, “The Knife” (Blue Rider, 2015), is as genuine a story about modern war – revolving door deployment ‘hops’ that meld home and war in the minds of troops; months spent killing time interrupted by explosive action; soldiers’ belief in the mission and ambivalence about its purpose – as any yet told.
Writing in what could have been a video game, “spec ops” milieu and easily filled with cartoonish renderings of real people, Mr. Ritchell’s experiences as a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment keeps the characters and their stories three-dimensional. The shadow soldiers of “The Knife” are palpably real. Characters such as narrator Dutch Shaw and medic Massey brace each other against the spiritual aftershock that follows from night combat raids on a visually ambiguous, morally confusing battlefield. They also share pictures of their kids, dream about leaving the military for a university education and never stop fastening clips, loading magazines, racking weapons and ripping their Velcro-d combat gear. The prose clips along with gritty authenticity, as the story’s “painfully drawn human characters linger in the mind,” says New York Times-bestselling author Michael Kortya.
Literary and military community reviewers both raved about the book. RealClearBooks spoke with Ross Ritchell about his debut novel, writing process, inspirations and his favorite book.
Q: What led you to start writing your first novel, "The Knife"?
That would be a two-part answer. In 2010 and 2011 I was finishing up my undergraduate education at Loyola University Chicago after my time in the military, and I decided I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to pursue in life. I’d finished up most of my business courses and just didn’t feel a pull in that direction. So my wife and I were talking one night about what I should pursue and she suggested that since I read so much—I always seemed to have a book in my backpack and read for hours every day on the train to class—I should give writing a shot. So I did. My wife gets all the credit for that one.
As far as deciding what to write about, I started writing a war novel longhand (probably because I thought longhand was badass, and though that’s debatable, what isn’t is that it certainly takes a lot longer than typing) on my commute and in the library at Loyola. I really only got through the beginning of the work, which turned out to be the roughest draft of “The Knife”, before I shelved that one and wrote a thriller instead. I think I wasn’t ready to write about the war at that point so I pursued a different subject matter first. When I got that first one out I realized I enjoyed writing very much, and I started letting myself think about the war more and I started in earnest during the fall of 2011. Writing about the war was complicated because it helped me deal with certain things in a positive way while at the same time opening up a whole closet’s worth of issues.
I’m sure that, like most veterans, I thought about the war every day, and felt I had something to say about it. I probably didn’t know what I had to say to be honest, I certainly didn’t outline or have any specific “map” for the novel, but I let myself get carried away and was willing to see where I might end up. It was heady. I used to put on my old combat boots, open the windows and write at night with chewing tobacco in my cheek for a while. That was good sensory overload for creativity. Anyway, I didn’t take the work very seriously because publishing always seemed like such a long shot, but I started in the fall of 2011 and had the manuscript sold in the early spring of 2014. But I certainly didn’t write full-time during that period; I’d go months without writing a word, not because I didn’t love it, but because it can be discouraging to try and write something of your own when you don’t know if it will ever show its face to the world. Self-doubt runs rampant, but I guess you can’t get lucky if you don’t sit down and play. We got lucky.
