A New Ipswich author has been honored by the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival competition for an excerpt of his new novel “Bikini Beach,” based in part on his own experience in Vietnam.

Walter “Butch” Maki, 75, who was born and raised in New Ipswich, and now splits his time between his hometown and his second home in New Mexico, had never written a novel before 2020, and in fact, recalls being a poor English student in school.

When the pandemic hit, Maki, who has asthma, decided to take a cautious approach and quarantine himself in his New Ipswich home. Before long, he became bored enough to decide to tackle a long-term project.

“There’s only so much daytime TV you can watch,” Maki said, wryly.

Originally, the manuscript that became “Bikini Beach” was intended to be a memoir, including memories and stories from Maki’s one-year tour of duty in Vietnam and the ending of his military career when he was shot in 1968 and was sent home.

On the advice of a writing mentor, Maki decided to leave the memoir genre behind and focus on a fiction narrative, though some of his experiences and those of friends are still the basis for some of the experiences of his protagonist, Sgt. Donald “Mack” Makinen, a Huey helicopter crew chief, and his team.

“Almost all of it is based on – let me emphasize based on – experience or things that happened in my unit,” Maki said.

The narrative includes some of the attitudes of the day, including soldiers entering Vietnam expecting to be hailed as liberators, and instead finding a people that were much more concerned with living day-to-day than who was in charge of the government, and coming home to an American public that was torn between appreciation and hostility.

“I was advised not to leave anything out – put in the highs, the lows, the love, the hate,” Maki said. “I didn’t try to make the characters in the story heroes – we weren’t heroes, we were just guys trying to do our job,” Maki said. “He comes back and finds a different country than when he left. He sees protests of the war, which he agrees with, and people saying bad things about the soldiers, which he vehemently disagrees with.”

The narrative extends beyond the war and into the protagonist’s post-war life, and his struggles to assimilate back into civilian life, including his struggles with post-traumatic stress. Maki said while he never had PTSD to the extent his character does, it is something he has experience with.

Maki worked on his manuscript for a year-and-a-half. With only technical writing experience under his belt, he took some writing courses online, and worked with a writing coach to put the book together.

Maki said he’s a long way from his high school self, who “couldn’t spell for beans,” and said he made it through his English classes by prodding his cousin, who sat next to him, to “write big and move [her] arm.”

“It’s very difficult,” Maki said, of learning the process of writing his own book for the first time. “You may change a word four or five times – thank God for synonyms. You may spend hours on a paragraph, and come back and do it again and again.”

In addition to his writing coach, Maki said he also relied on feedback from his wife to ensure that the military and technical aspects of the book were understandable to the lay reader.

Maki is currently working on a sequel novel, about the adventures of his main character after the war, when he becomes a United States Marshal.

After completing the book, and working with an editor and graphic designer to finalize it, Maki made the decision to self-publish. The book is available both in paperback and for Kindle.

Maki submitted an excerpted story from the chapter “From a Chicken to an Eagle” to the Short, Short Story creative writing category in the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival competition in St. Louis, which is sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the American Legion Auxiliary. The contest has categories for art, music, drama, dance and creative writing, and each year has thousands of applicants.

“As a first-time novelist I had no expectations of winning, and can’t even begin to explain the joy, amazement and true honor I feel for being the festival’s top short story writer,” Maki said.

In other accolades Maki has garnered for “Bikini Beach,” an excerpt from the chapter “From a Chicken to an Eagle” will also be included in the Military Writers Society’s 2023 edition of its annual anthology of short stories. The Albuquerque-based Southwest Writers will include a different chapter, “Bob’s Last Flight,” in its anthology, due out this summer.

“Bikini Beach” is available on Amazon. For more information, visit bikinibeach.info.

Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244, or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.