35 Days In The Air - A World War II Memoir NOW AVAILABLE

The new book 35 Days In The Air - A World War II Memoir by Michael R. Carestio and Timothy D. Minneci is now available for paperback and Kindle at Amazon.com. Here's the synopsis:

From July 8th, 1944 to December 6th, 1944, U.S. Army Air Force First Lieutenant Michael R. Carestio of the 713th Squadron, 448th Fighter-Bomber Group, served as a bombardier on a B-24 Liberator crew, nicknamed "Mother Of Ten." During that time, he kept a handwritten journal documenting each of his thirty-five combat missions, which have been transcribed into this book. Author Timothy D. Minneci sat down with his great uncle Michael Carestio to discuss his experiences before, during and after the war, and share his uncle's remarkable story.

Links to Purchase
Paperback at Amazon
Kindle at Amazon
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New Book out 8/27/19: 35 Days In The Air - A World War II Memoir

About a year ago, I posted an update to the blog about what was going on at the time with various book and music projects I was working on, including an interview I had just completed with my great uncle Michael Carestio about his experience in World War II. Over the last year, I poured over the copy of the journal he gave me, transcribed our interview, and dug deep into researching all aspects of his experience, including his plane, squadron, group and air unit, along with details about his life before and after the war, and wrote up questions for our follow-up interview.

I'm happy to report that we have now have a release date for the book, 35 Days In The Air - A World War II Memoir. The book will be available via Amazon for paperback and Kindle on Tuesday, August 27th. Here are the details:

From July 8th, 1944 to December 6th, 1944, Michael Carestio of the 713th Bombardment Squadron, Heavy, assigned to the 448th Fighter-Bomber Group, part of an Eighth Air Force B-24 Liberator Unit in England, kept a handwritten journal documenting each of the thirty-five missions over France, Belgium and Germany. Each mission was notated with the date, target, bomb load, type and length.  

In 2018, Michael first sat down with his grand nephew Timothy Minneci for what would end up becoming a series of interviews, revisiting his life before, during and after World War II. This book collects those interviews, provides a notated transcription of the journal, and shares photographs and memorabilia from Michael's personal collection.

Throw Another Log On The Fire

I haven't written much on the blog recently, but it's not because I'm not busy. In fact, it is (to the consternation of my wife) quite the opposite. Here's what's going on:

DOWN TO HIGH STREET
After building and growing the Columbus music discography database in preparation for the oral history book project currently titled "Down To High Street," I've actually started scheduling and conducting interviews. This is going to be a long process, based on the flexibility to chat with interview subjects, so I have no designs on completing it this year. My hope is by end of 2019, interviews will be done and I'll be on to organizing and editing.

EVEN MORE SMALL STORIES
Upon the release of Small Stories last year, in addition to raised eyebrows about some of the stories from certain family members, I also got a barrage of, "Hey, you know what story was hilarious that you left out? This one!" I compiled those stories, and managed to recall a few others that were not previously written up, and have started the process of fleshing out the full stories for a second volume of Small Stories, which incidentally, is now available over at Amazon via Kindle for just .99 cents.