ABOUT JOHN SAMMON
John Sammon and David Thornton play golf within sight of North Korea (top of picture in the background) at the UN Joint Security Area in 1972. This golf course, one of the few in Korea, and the only one North of the DMZ, featured three tee-offs and just one hole with a dusty, patchy crabgrass green. If you hit your ball over the fence seen below, you could climb the fence and hit the ball in a minefield, or you could take two strokes and hit again where you were. Nobody ever climbed the fence.
The course was the only one in Korea sanctioned by the PGA, Panmunjom Golf Association.
I decided to become a writer full time because I hated my eight-to-five dead-end job working for a boss who was as sadistic as he was dishonest and cowardly. But no negativity here that was in the past.
My first book was about my experiences as a United Nations guard serving north of the Korean DMZ in 1972. I began writing the book in my garage at night after work back in 1985. It took me months, hacking and pecking away on a typewriter (thank goodness for computers), and the final result, while at times a little uneven, I am proud of.
I have done every kind of writing there is to do except cover a football game as a reporter (too much math keeping track of yards gained and lost). Because I switched from a crooked sales job to reporting, I have lived a very interesting life.
For example there was the time a Las Vegas animal trainer brought his 700-pound Siberian tiger into the living room where I was interviewing him about doing shows using wild animals and the tiger came and laid his head (almost the size of the front of your car) in my lap.
I said to myself, “Does the tiger like me? Is the tiger happy? Can I stop shaking?”
Another time I was locked up inside a heavy fire-fighting suit with a bolted-on metal helmet and an oxygen tank on my back, and walked into the flames of a burning shed used as a test facility for fire fighters. Believe me no one can hear you inside the suit if you yell for help.
Since then I have been writing books full time on subjects like the military, politics and comedy, enjoying every minute of it. I don’t follow an outline in writing these stories, but simply make up the plot as I go along.
In a book I never know what plot twist I’ll write tomorrow after what I wrote in the book today. That’s the mystery and adventure of book writing.
If you’re reading this I would like to meet you. Drop me a line and say hello.