Typhoon Coast - Mark Clifford - Marine, Police Officer, Author

  Hey, welcome back to financial intelligence everybody I'm Vito Scarnecchia, and with me is Patrick McAndrew and we talk about all things finance We're trying to raise the bar of financial intelligence for everyone from students to financial engineers Today we have with us an amazing man.

He's a brother. He's a warrior. I haven't talked to him in I don't know how many years But it's just a grand experience to be able to see his face again. Mark Clifford, welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. Thank you for that wonderful intro. Everybody should have the preface of an amazing man before him.

Please reserve that for your future guests. Yeah, I've never gotten that, so that's pretty good. That's because you're Army. Ah. Mark, just a quick thing.

Patrick is he's active reserve right now. RV, he does some kind of Intel thing. He's like a spook. Can't really tell you, but it does, but we bought, we bust each other's chops all the time. And his brother Lee left. Okay. And I'll probably join in here. I need your backup, but yeah, clearly Mark, you and I go back what I want to say 30-something years, right?

Amen. Wow. You were, I was a private and you were a staff sergeant and I guess I grew up or you probably a sergeant. And then, I just remember you as staff Sergeant Clifford, this big grand, like a superstar, right? More, please stop. And you're a platoon sergeant.

I want to say first platoon second, first, and it was you and Civelli going off each other, having fun. And I was just a little fart of a mortar man. And you guys are just bigger than life having a grand old time. I just remember those days. Oh, dang it. I love this intro. Yeah. Let's make this more about me, this whole show.

This whole show is all about you. Yeah. And as things do, time moves on. And I you got out, and we were in the reserves then. And then you and I went to Okinawa together. Yes. We served at Desert Storm in Okinawa, becoming alcoholics and volleyball extraordinaire. Yes. Survived that went to Mount Fuji.

I'm sure I saw you at the baseball game or at Roppongi yeah, and then our time flew by and you got out and I was still in and We were driving on a bus I want to say, from what I remember, we were going to Angel Island to go see, not Angel, Treasure Island, to do a retirement ceremony. And there's Mark Clifford, civilian, running in Tevas.

And I want to say you were a cop by then and then I just remember everybody just remarking about how this guy was so tough. He would run up the hills of San Francisco.

So that's all I remember about you. That's great. Patrick, what do you think of this? A great memory of me. No wonder why he called you such an amazing man. But it's true, right? It's I don't know. It's I just remember like in high school, you had those all-American guys.

I just remember Mark being that all-American guy. So there you go, man. Don't make me cry in the middle of this thing. This is great. And then years later you become a cop, right? I do. Yeah. And then you retired as a cop. Thank you for your service. I support the blue, all that bullshit that these little, whatever guys are doing.

Yeah. Anyway, you retire and you write a book. I do. Do you want to talk about it? I do. So many things to talk about. Once again, thank you very much. That great introduction is that you're right after I left the Marine Corps. I got into police work and did 27 years of police work. I retired as a sergeant patrol sergeant and had a very colorful career.

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I did every assignment there was. And 2000 people came to my town and they looted the whole thing. It was June one, 2020. To use a couple of metaphors, military metaphors. My last day was like that last scene of Platoon, where That was literally your last day on the job? It was my last day on the job, yeah.

Wow. It was a planned retirement. They kept me on as an annuitant for three more months, and a lot of high-profile stuff happened, and I still have hanging over my head. But yeah, that last day was literally like that last scene of Platoon, that scene where Martin Sheen is in the helicopter rising above the battlefield.

My, the town that I gave so much to was devastated. Burning it was just really sad. And then from there you go, what's the next chapter in my life? What's the next chapter in my life? I was walking the streets. I. I felt that another metaphor was like Sylvester Stallone in the first scene of First Blood when he's walking down that street and night, he's not a wanted person.

We were police officers were not. The superstars that I was when I went in 1993, 94, they needed heroes. And we had, like I said, I had a great career at a noble career. I saw everything that law enforcement should have. And so you can imagine, we'll get into my Pinatubo story too, in the Marines and the Philippines is that back to back, you got a lot of military career and a law enforcement career.

And with that. You have a lot of post-traumatic stress that comes with it. And that's one thing that I learned a lot about as a police officer during, after critical incidents, I'd have to go talk to psychologists. So I learned a lot about the healing process and that, and then after police work, I got heavily involved with Zach Brown, the country music guy, his not-for-profit in Georgia camp Southern ground through a warrior week, helping veterans in transition and into civilian life and a path program called about post-traumatic growth.

And so when you ask about when people say, Hey, so what inspired you to write about your Mount Pinatubo experiences, it's really a contraction of my law enforcement career and my military adventures over in the Philippines that it's mine. In retrospect, it's my post-traumatic growth.

It's me. And people who know me, they recognize all the stuff in the book and say, Hey, Mark, that's you. That's not your main character, Trent McShane. It's a, and I go, yeah, 90 percent of it's me because it's unique. Is it sometimes you have stories that you can't tell the reality of it.

You have to fictionalize it. And that's what I chose to do with my story. So it'd have a better appeal to not just the Dark and Stormy Night veteran writers and cop writers, but an appeal to a wider audience. So they understand. What police work is and they understand what it's like being forward deployed and how lonely it is in the military.

So, I wanted to be a timeless book. I wanted to write a book that speaks to people and I have a funny note when I'm in the process and there's a whole story of how the book came about and in the process of writing going through different drafts of the book one night I came home from a shift and I hear my wife reading to My youngest kid, and I think it's like a Harry Potter book, and I'm sitting on the stairs and listening to the story, and I go holy Toledo, my wife is reading an earlier draft of Typhoon Coast.

And I go, I really got something there. It was a lot of inspiration, a lot of education went into it, a lot of going back to college and learning how to write in the writing process and the marketing process, the financial side of writing. Yeah, I bet that must have been quite a journey to go through all that.

I couldn't even imagine where to start really. So I'm not even sure which, what to ask first. However, I will say how many years in the Marine Corps did you do? 10. So 10 years Marine Corps and then followed by, over 20 in the police force. We'll talk about 27. Close to 30. Almost 30, close to 30.

40 years serving. Yeah. Yeah. 40 years of serving, and and sometimes along that journey, you don't become the best versions of yourself and you want to become a better, who you were when you started out, be a better dad, be a better husband. And one of the therapists that I spoke to, they go, Mark, the human body and mind are not engineered, to do what you put yourself through.

And somewhere along the line, the healing has to begin, and that's one of the things I have a platform and things to advocate for. And that's the healing process for our veterans and our first responders. It's very important to me. It's something that I know a lot about two things. I have three things.

I know a lot about the Marine Corps. I know a lot about law enforcement. I know a lot about writing and I know a lot about healthy ways to recover from post-traumatic stress. And PTSD is, it's so ubiquitous that you have to find your path. You have to find, you have to be, it took me, I just said it today in my life.

It took me about 15 years to give up the ghost of being in the Marines. Cause I, to this day, I still want to go back and I regret not going to combat because you get brainwashed into that and all the crap, dealing with staff sergeants and sergeants when you're a young kid and dealing with the higher-ups when you're, more mature, I was a staff sergeant, I had a platoon and we had an INI first sergeant.

That was just a useless piece of crap. We made everybody's life miserable. And one of the reasons why I left the Marine Corps, I would have stayed in for 20 years or more if they'd let me. One of the reasons why I left is because that guy made it. Being there so miserable, right? Oh, yeah, he hurt my feelings.

Yeah, absolutely, right? But at the same time, I got angry from it and I didn't know how to deal with that anger and that was my form of PTSD I can handle getting bombs blown up and I can handle shooting stuff and having cannons ripped off and, blown shot out right underneath my, by my ear.

And at the end of the day, you have to realize that you will be affected. I know Patrick, you do all that crazy Intel spook stuff, right? For anybody listening and knowing me disregard any of this intel spook stuff. And Mark, I was just going to say, man, thank you. Two times a citizen, because you're two times a service.

That's awesome. It was my honor. And I tell you, when we go back and we talked about like Vito talking about his post-traumatic stuff, is that one of the things that I advocate for is that veterans and cops, we don't corner the market on trauma. And so I had a podcast series last year called Heroes for Hope Thriving Beyond Trauma, where I introduced it.

People who went through some really horrific stuff and the whole process of turning your trauma into your superpower. It's the theme for Typhoon Coast 2 and my experience over in Pinatubo is that we owe it to citizens to build a bridge. And I did it through the arts to really advocate for all the stuff that we learned because in the end, and I work with a lot of veterans and different Generations is that we really don't get hung up on our enemy.

We get hung up on the people who are in charge of us, and the poor decisions that were made. But,, my son just got out of the Marine Corps over the summer and he's going through transition and he's going through the whole veteran experience and there are so many great programs out there for our veterans to take advantage of now.

But I know for me when I. When I left Echo back in 93 ish, is that I got out of the Marines like my hair was on fire. I just wanted to start my life, get married, finish college start my police career. And it's different. Veterans have different needs now. The generation, younger generation of law enforcement, the generation that's replacing me, has different needs now.

In fact, reaching out to the VA for disability claims and law enforcement for disability claims, they say the only problem with you, Mark, is that you came from the suck it up generation, and we, they never told us about all of the things that we were entitled to in law enforcement.

Or in, in, in the military side of the house is that, why suffer in silence, build a sense of community. That's one of the things that I tell you the story of leaving Sylvester Stallone and first blood is that I had playmates for 10 years. I had the civilities.

I had all those guys that were my buddies for all those years. And then I left that and I went into law enforcement and I worked investigations and recovery. I was on SWAT for 15 years. I had buddies and then when you're out of there, you got to find new playmates. And so my new playmates are my veteran community now.

And also the writing community. I'm involved in a lot of writing stuff. I'm associated with the San Francisco Writers Conference and the volunteer side of that. I was on the board of the California Writers Club last year. I do a lot of. stuff to promote my book and my writing. So I found a new sense of community because one of the problems that we find in a lot of our people who deal with critical incidents, they have a tendency to isolate, and I go, I'm not going to stay home for the next half of my career.

I'm going to get out there and be a part of the community. Bravo, it's strong. I tell you my healing came from giving back to my community, right? So once a semester we all go to San Jose State and talk to veteran students and talk about what I do in real estate So I talk to them about the VA loan and then Patrick comes and talks to them about his financial and his financial investing and putting away for the future.

And we created this group and now we have an insurance guy. We have we have a loan guy. We have a home finance counselor to coach, and she talks to the veterans and it's just our way of giving back. And that has really helped me. Feel so much better because of the time that I've lost being angry.

I can't get it back. So what can I do? I can just start giving back. And now I spend a lot of time volunteering, doing stuff. I'm involved with another veteran organization called No of That. I was going to say, I was going to say, don't sell yourself short. There's a lot of ways, a lot of ways you give back.

It's not just, I'd say what you just mentioned on the veterans group that we're putting, we put together, that's probably the least of all the things you're doing. Yeah, but it's my way of healing though. I feel like I talked to this, I talk about this to all the veterans out there that are in my position.

I never got to, I never got to fight in combat. That's such a huge guilt thing for me because. That's what I grew up doing. I was, I grew up being groomed and brainwashed to go to war. We went to war. We just never got called. We never got put in our chess pieces never got put over in the sand. And I feel guilty about it.

Because, we went over there thinking that was going to last for four or five years, and we were the largest marine. Infantry battalion on active duty at the time we were read all the debriefs on it. We did a hell of a job. We picked up a lot of real-world missions, but that ground war ended in 100 hours, and one of the lessons was to be taken away from the desert storm.

So we did total war over there and our next war lasted for 20-plus years. Is that we finished that quickly and so a lot of people wrestle with that and I know a lot of veterans that wrestle with the same issues that you're wrestling with, is that this last issue incident in Afghanistan where we lost 13 of our beautiful Marines and is that there are people out there that, yeah, you know what, you can't unsee what and that's the thing about law enforcement and my experience over in the Philippines, the Pinatubo, is that we're all people here to do what God wants us to do. And so maybe if you did see combat or some horrors of wars, that's the thing is that we, we're trained to see that stuff, and we shouldered those burdens, but what really gets to us are the command issues that we deal with.

And we just gotta be people of faith and know that we were where God wanted us to be. At the time we won. And just a little backstory about how we ended up in Pinatubo is that we were there doing the combat security patrols against the NPA the first time we took the USS Dubuque over there and that's all in my book, and and then.

We had the opportunity to turn our unit into SOC, Special Operations Capable, so 3MF needed a staff and COIC in charge of 19 guys to run them through the the Special Operations Training Group for 3MF, the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force, so I was the I was that staff staff in COAC. And I remember going up to first Sergeant Murphy.

I just finished the staff at COACademy, but I couldn't graduate cause I was downplaying football with you guys. And one of the Marines jumped up and hit me and tore my chest muscle away from my rib cage. And so I go, man, I was expected to be, the golden child of that academy class.

And I couldn't graduate. And so I begged Murph, I go, Murph, you got to send me to this. I gotta be in charge of this. I gotta be, I just need this. And he sat there, from Kentucky and he's all, man, Staff Sergeant Clifford, I don't know. And he let me go. He chose me. And He didn't choose ve screw pork chops and yeah.

No. But that kind of, in that low point of that deployment for me, ended up getting me over to the Philippines for that pin, the two adventure, which was just a mind-boggling experience at a base typhoon coast on, yeah. Yeah. And I was so jealous that I didn't get picked to go Rodriguez in my section, got to go to my squad.

And cause I always wanted to go to the Philippines. And if you, I know you don't remember this, but like the second day we were there, I got my knee jacked up playing soccer and I had to limp around in a little Velcro cast and they wouldn't let me do anything. And I was like, I was such a little bastard.

I just would stop doing it, I would go and do training and limp around and I'd get yelled at and get put back on light duty. And I would just keep on, cause I didn't want to miss out on the war. I was like, I was going to go to war. And I kept on getting yelled at and like the, finally the doc, the doctor, the orthopedic surgeon came in and said, we're going to operate on you or you're going to do this.

And I'm like, you're not going to fucking touch me while you have to be on light duty and you have to wear this, or I'm going to put you, I'm going to, I'm going to put a full-on cast on you. And then. I never got to go to the Philippines. So you guys floated over to the PI on the Dubuque.

And I sat there in Hanson while you guys got to go play. I tell you, we showed up for that war, we showed up, we did a great job showing up for that war, but the war never happened, it ended so quickly, we had, there was a role for us, I went to the first Marine Division debrief, we had a real role to play in that war if it came to fruition, I think America couldn't stomach that that highway of death, and they said enough's enough, and And that's when we drew the line, when we probably should have kept on going and just brought that Iraqi army to its ashes.

Yeah. And you know what, I'm 55 years old now. And many years ago during my healing, I realized I was blessed. Did not have to see that because, I didn't know if I could handle it or not, but I was blessed, but still the ghost is there to this day. You know what? To segue into the book, we all have to agree that life is a ghost story.

And the people that I write about, the fictionalized version of the people I write about in Typhoon Coast are my ghosts, and they're my therapy, and art was a great way to deal with Them These people in my life that haunted me that were here for me at special times. I am the product of the people that were around me, and they're fortunate and they're fortunate opportunities that they presented to me.

And that's why I put a lot of them in my book, a lot of people, they recognize who they are, and so to go back to the Pinatubo story and your buddy Rodriguez, it was with me over there is on, on June 12th, we were out on this island. We were going.

We were assault climbers. So we're doing a lot of climbing out on this Island across from Subic Bay. And I get this call and on the radio and we were out there having to just, training hard and having a great time. It was just us. And is this a PG-13 or what? Oh, you can do whatever you want.

And so if anybody's going to take notes on this, write this down, right down the fuck it bucket by Mark R. Clifford. Okay. I actually wrote a short story that may entice you to Read the book and it was published by a military arts magazine It's like 2, 000 words quick read, but it's a quick down and dirty of what life was like in the very coveted destination of Subic Bay in 1991 we had service members out there Since the end of world war two, before world war two in and out for years everybody wanted to go there and we really got a, we were able to partake in the culture and all the fun and all the stuff that generations of people.

In fact, my dad was stationed there in the Navy before in the fifties, and he actually started the Naval radio station there. And his claim to fame is that he. He was three barracks down from where who's the guy that the name skips me. I'll get back to it.

And the assassinator of JFK Lee Harvey Oswald. Yeah. He was stationed at the same time as Lee Harvey Oswald. So we're here on this Island train and I get this call, Hey, you got a, You gotta go to the evacuation point and go back to your barracks at Subic.

So a mic boat was gonna meet us there. So I told my buddy I had a lot of good friends that were with me at the time. They're they're still friends with, and I go, Hey we got to go back to Subic, to the barracks. And he's all, why? I go there's, they say there's a volcano erupting.

So I, I look up to the sky and I see this. Big white cloud with the backdrop of this real pristine tropical blue sky. And I go saddle up guys. Let's go down to the mic boats. We're gonna go back to Subic. And so we saddle up. I remember saying goodbye to one of the villagers, the chief of the village.

And he is all, what should we do? I go, just stay indoors 'cause the ash was already starting to drop. And so we get on the mic boat. We went for a little 40-minute ride across Subic, and by that time, the Mike boat was almost sunk by the weight of the ash, the falling ash. So we get to our barracks, and I go I'm a California guy, I just.

Rode out the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake the anniversary was a couple of days ago. And I go, let's just get all our MREs and fill up all our five-gallon water jugs and just weigh this thing out. We did that. And then three days later on June 15th. A major eruption happened. So as just a plug to military planning and science is that they predicted, yes, this volcano would erupt.

They anticipated that it was going to erupt and just take out Clark Air Force Base, all the heavy stuff, and the Leihars. So they excised this operational, Operation Fire Vigil. So you had around, I think, 10 major naval. Ships came into Subic and they evacuated. I think it was 25, 000 people. So we're credited for saving probably over a quarter million people because we still didn't know how big this thing was going to be.

We evacuated all the people from the lower lands around the mountain. And so then it was time to write it out. And this thing when it went off. It was dark for a couple of days. Earthquake the entire time. We had a typhoon that came through a typhoon union and it was apocalyptic.

It was Sodom and Gomorrah. It was a biblical explosion. It ended up being the second-largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. The first largest in a populated area. Unbelievable devastation. So I'm down there with the 19 guys that I'm in charge of, and we're literally being buried alive, the ashes piling up around our Quonset hut.

The typhoon came through and turned that stuff into cement. And that's where most of the loss of life came from. It's just the weight of the ash. So what happened was that they anticipated, yes that, Clark would be taken out. Clark was taken out by a lot of the heavy stuff, but they did not anticipate that all that ash was going to come over Subic and that's where most of the death happened in the Subic area.

And it was dark for, 24 hours, almost two days in that Quonset hut. And and, there's only so much you can do before the panic really sets in. And then you really. You resolve it. You know what? We're gonna die here. And I was figuring, I'm gonna die here. I think the reason why I had a little more bravery is because I was in charge of these guys.

If I hadn't, I probably would have been more panicky. And I was 2025 26 years old. I was a kid. And so I remember going to sleep saying, I'm probably gonna be found like a soldier in Pompeii here, and I'll never know. Thank you. Family life and all my other ambitions and left again sleeping below me.

Remember Mike let again. He's a good buddy of mine today. And okay, I will. And so he shakes the rack and he goes, I think it's over. And so we went over to the hatch door, the Quonset hut. And, and started digging our way out, through this hot ash. So we dug up, I had no idea we could have been 100 feet under, under this ash for all I knew.

And we dug our way out and we pop our heads out. And it was like what used to be a triple canopy jungle was now like the desolation wilderness in in Tahoe area. It was just. complete devastation and you knew it was going to be devastation because for 24 hours that jungle was defoliating.

It sounded like an automatic machine gun fire. It was so loud. It was just really something. It was a crazy time. And then that's when we jumped into the humanitarian role. We had a lot of missions as assault climbers. And there was some tragedy associated with that. And that's a whole other story about, the one thing I found out, Vito in this whole experience is that one of the missions was to go out and clear the ash off of the roof of this 80-foot high hangar.

They needed guys that were specialists in climbing the... Commander says they go out and survey it with an engineer. And so we go down to the flight the flight area and this big old Cori, eight aluminum thing built for the tropics. The fly hangar was shifting around and it had helicopters inside.

We needed to get the helicopters out. Because the NPA was starting to get really aggressive coming on the base. And so we really needed to secure the base better and we needed to get our air asset back. So I go out there to look at this, to look at this and I go wow. This thing is just creaking.

It's full of ash on top and it was creating a lot of pressure to keep the doors closed. And the engineer says, man, you get up to that thing. It's going to collapse 80 feet. And I go back to the commander and I say he said, it's going to collapse and the commander says, get out there.

And so it's a whole concept of in the Marine Corps mission accomplishment comes before troop welfare, and we know that and it's. It's different for another branch to service, but the mission is everything. So here I am, I got my mission. I go out there, I get my guys up there, and sure as shit, a section of it collapses, and two guys fall 80 feet unforgiving 80 feet on cement is unforgiving to the human body, to say the least.

And, what happened was, though, is that we were able to get those helicopters out and get our air assets back, and so that's the Marine Corps mentality is that you sacrifice for the greater good. And those are things that I wrestle with, and a lot of other things in my life that I struggle with and it's a long struggle.

And I've chosen my way to deal with it. That's, was the beginning of my struggle in reality. Of life is that life requires life's nuts. It's crazy. You'll never know what happens next. And that's the thing going to go back to writing that is that you can live your life over and over again.

And if you know what happens next, every time it loses its luster, but that's the great thing about being a writer is that you have to set up an environment of what happens next, and anybody can go and read the volumes and volumes of. Mount Pinatubo, an Operation Fire Revigil, but nobody writes about it.

I'm the only person that writes about it. It's like my gem, everybody else writes about all sorts of stuff that I'm so familiar with. I'm so familiar with a lot of Marine Corps stuff. I'm so familiar with police stuff, shootings homicides, triple homicide. You name it.

Okay. That was my bread and butter for so many years, but this. the story was my gem, and when I came home and I knew I had this story in me a few years later but I kicked myself about, how quickly the goal ended. I remember walking through the squad day and one of my Marines they're all staring at the TV and I came in with the orders for the day old, pressed up, Sergeant Staff Sergeant Clifford, and out, and and they go, Hey, guess what?

Staff Sergeant go what? And they go, the war is over. And I'm all like, are you effing serious? And that's just the way it was for me, to go back to effing, and the story of the fuck it bucket is that when I was a cop, a lot of shit was going down, especially when I got promoted.

I got promoted during the defunding of the police during the black lives matter and all that stuff. And a lot of my fellow supervisors just got so. Annoyed with absolutely everything and one of my supervisors was getting all, my fellow supervisors were getting all messed up about some stuff and I go, Hey man, you gotta have a fuck it bucket.

And I go, what's that? He says, what's that? And I go, I got one under my neck. So I take this invisible bucket. I go, you just got to start throwing shit in there, and you just got to say, fuck it, and throw stuff in there. And everybody needs to have a fuck a bucket about some of their problems because not everything matters too much, the things that really matter in life are I guarantee you this, the things you made out of your life with family and relationships and you know what because combat and all the crap that I had to see and law enforcement those are ghosts that will be with me all the time that I'll deal with all the time.

Yeah. It gives me shit to write about. It gives you shit. And, there's plenty of time for you to write about it and that's your healing, right? Yeah. And I'm just, I'm really happy that you found that as your gift to heal and share with others because other people are in pain, right?

I work with no event. org. It's a. Online service that helps veterans find help, whatever issue it is. It could be sexual trauma, PTSD, drugs, or financial. And it's just a, it's a portal that helps people veterans get. And I think that's it you said, right? We are, our mission comes before us.

And our mindset is to suck it up buttercup. And there are still veterans who are from Vietnam who are in pain and suffering. And you had the wherewithal to start your healing. It took me 15 years to figure out how to start my healing. And it takes something of a massive switch to say, Hey, now it's the time for me to heal.

And it could be your wife. It could be your husband. If you're, whatever it could be your daughter. And once that switch comes out and says, I need to heal, then that's when you're going to start healing. And these portals are designed for other people to figure out how to talk to that veteran that's hurting.

And I'm just, I'm so glad that we got to catch up after 30 years and help out, help each other, spread the word. Cause. I know that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of veterans out there who are suffering. And if we can help one or two, we've done our job. Hey, brother, you are doing the Lord's work out here.

Both of you guys are, and it's awesome that you're doing it. If there is something that I would love to share with you about the organizations that I'm involved with, I'll, I can send you the links on these things. I write about it on my website, markrclifford. com. Feel free to go and check out my blog.

And one is the warrior week through Zach Brown's warrior week. It's very unique and it gives veterans resources to transition into civilian life. A lot of our veterans really struggle with that. And then there's a warrior path program that is also available at Camp Southern Ground.

And, but it's an it's a national program. They have a lot of different places that you can go to. I write about that too. These are life-changing experiences because a lot of people get stuck in their trauma, and that's one thing that I don't know. I always grew from my trauma.

I carried it with me, but there was a growth process and that's what, and that's what path is about. It's about that your trauma doesn't define you, it's part of your growth, it's about your ability. And this is my mantra: your ability to turn your trauma into a superpower.

It's not there to bring you down, but it's there to enhance you and change your perception of yourself in the world around you. And that's, and the path that I chose for this was writing and I'll write my entire life. I'm a creative person, and, in life, as far as creativity and ideas are, and maybe this might resonate with some of the veteran community you got billions and billions of ideas that bombard your freaking head every day.

Okay. Ideas are looking for a human host. And most of us say, eh, not good enough to do that. Eh, not qualified to do that. But a few of us. I'm looking at you to you go. You know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna do something with that. I did something with that. I did something with my idea. I put my feet on it and you guys by doing this very nature.

You're doing this and all the stuff that you do. You're putting your feet on helping other people out. For me, it's the hope that somebody flips open one of my books or reads One of my blog posts or what have you. And they get back to me and they go, man, you know what, you really opened my view of myself and the world around me, and that's my goal.

We all give back differently, but we're giving back. We're giving back. Yeah. It's funny, Patrick, you can chime in anytime you want to, but I sell real estate. I've been selling real estate for 12, 20, 20 years now, almost 20 years. And I struggled trying to figure out how to make things work.

And. By me giving back, I get so much more in return and I'm just, I'm really happy that you're doing this and you're reaching out to fellow veterans and people that are hurting and doing that. And like I said if we could help five or one or two people learn how to become authors, right?

I guess we should really talk about the business end of it because this is financial intelligence. I just don't want to, I don't want to lose my thought real quick though, Vito. I just wanted to, I was really struck by what you said on a lot of things you said, Mark. However, I thought you said it beautifully when you said, ideas are looking for hosts.

Reminds me of the, also of the saying. Of opportunities aren't missed. They're just passed on to other people. Yeah, you may not take that idea, but somebody else will. And ideas are looking for hosts. And that's a fantastic way to put it. And this whole experience you have with Mount Pinatina Tubo.

Trying to make it a household name. There you go. No, that's a fascinating chapter in history, military history, even that I think you're spot on. That's why I think you cornered the market on that. What an interesting and different and crazy experience to learn about and read about. Just so glad you made a story about it that we can all dive into.

And I couldn't imagine how much more trauma was layered up on top of that after 27 years of being a. A public servant as a police officer, too. Just. One heck of a journey you're still on and these resources you just offered. I'm pretty, just like Vito, I do a lot of things myself and by myself, always coming across new opportunities to share resources to support our veteran community, but I've never heard of Zach Brown's camp or Southern Ground and these courses.

So excited to share those too. So thank you for bringing those to light. And Patrick also, if I may, is that. Yeah. Is that these are free, no expense. They'll get you out to Georgia. You fly into Atlanta and it's so interesting how, there are people that, you know what they. They can't get themselves out to do it for free.

You're eating at the same level food prepared by the same cook who's cooking for Zach Brown. And people still don't take advantage of these programs and there's so many of them out there. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm going to share that as far as I can and and excited to learn more about it actually.

And thank you for that. And I love that post-traumatic growth, baby. That's right. I love that. And yeah let's segue here. We don't have a whole lot of time, but if I want to get into it, I guess we're going to have to come back again a couple of times, maybe. I would love to have you on, dude.

It's like recapturing my youth.

So when you decided to write this book, did you have a plan on how to get it out to the market? Did you, or did you talk to a publisher or how did that start? So I've always been a writer. When I got out of the Marine Corps and had a family, I had a journalism degree. I went to San Jose State, and yeah, Spartans, and yeah.

Didn't graduate from San Jose State. I had to take a hiatus and I finished up at Cal State Hayward. East Bay is something. And I've always enjoyed writing. And so I had a lot of. First persons out, in San Jose Mercury and all the newspapers. I put him out about, being the dad and stuff.

And so when people would read those, they go, Hey, Mark, I read your thing in the Mercury or whatever. And I felt good. It really felt good. So it got me stuck on it. Then I entered the short story writing and took a lot of classes on it, so I learned the craft behind it, had a writing coach, and had a lot of short stories put together, and so one-day sad story behind it, a friend of mine, Dan Neamey in 05 he's, he was my beat partner was killed in the line of duty.

And and he was also a writer and he is a group of his friends got together and he was brutally murdered in the line of duty. It was very sad, and really impacted my entire agency and a lot of lives. And so a group of friends, his friends got together and they said, Hey, let's start a writing competition in his memory.

And so I wanted to be, a writing friend to his his beat partner and and and enter. And so I wrote a piece and sent it to an editor to have him review it before I sent it in. You have to work really with an editor. And he got back, hey, change this, change that, good piece.

By the way, when's the deadline for this writing competition? I looked down, I missed it by two days. And I go, hey, Joe, I go, Joe, my editor at the time. I go, I'm going to write a book. I'll talk to you in 10 years. And so 10 years later, I had this book and I put it on Amazon and it's great.

A lot of people write books. I worked with an independent publisher. Like a lot, like I said, a lot of writing coaches, a lot of revisions, what really professional path on this. I learned a lot about the academics of writing, and I took a very unique risky approach to writing it too. And when it came out the other end, now you gotta market it, okay?

. So you put it out there. And so that's that. And that's really where a lot of a lot of people they, they just come out with their book and here's a little typhoon coat. Can you see it? No. I'm holding it up here. And I guess you can't see it. iPhone comes, okay. And then it comes to the marketing.

Okay. So I have a blog. I got a killer website that my, publisher, my indie publisher put together for me, and I surrounded myself with a lot of people who were. at my level and wanted to get better in their craft too. So I got an artist to do a lot of my merchandising. I got mugs.

I got stickers to give to the kiddies at book signings. I got it, I had a podcast, so I did a mug for that one too. One thing I talked about when I meet writers, I meet a lot of new writers in my California writers club, and they tell me about their book and I go I'd like to hear more give me your card.

And they go, I don't have a card. And I remember when I was a new writer and I was at a restaurant and fellow writers telling somebody about my book. And I go, and he goes, Hey, Mark, give you, give their card. And I go, I don't have a card. I tell you what. The next day I had a card. I got a nice QR code on there.

I got my Pinatubo logo, which has. It tells a lot about the book. It's got my logo on there that says life's a treasure hunt seeking you will find. Those are words that I really believe in. I really believe that life is a treasure hunt. God ain't going to tell you where your treasures are.

They're not going to be in a hole somewhere. They're not going to be on the shelf someplace. But you know what? They're in people. People around you. And so when you are finding treasures, you're finding the treasures and the opportunities other people and people like you are creating, you're creating that you're finding the treasures and other people.

So you got to get out there, you got to do a lot of marketing, you got a part, you got a partner. In fact, one of the things I did early is that I buried a gold ticket in San Francisco for 1, 000. And it's still there, as far as I know. But if you read a poem in the book, and you have to A bit of a savvy for San Francisco history, you'll be able to find it.

That's 1, 000 tickets. And it's right there buried in a public place. I got information on it on my website. And I'm always starting to come up with unique marketing concepts. And so for My second book, I have a YouTube channel. And I think if you, and actually these little pictures behind me, it's all based upon the snake man in my book.

Growing up, I thought I was related to the great bat Masterson of the Old West is famous. Don't say you are. Yeah, and I'm going to say I still am spiritually, maybe. He was also a law enforcement guy, a famous guy, became a writer, and died at his typewriter. But I based a lot of my,, my character's backstory on that relationship that he had, knowing that he was.

Relation related to Bat Masterson and so I really enjoyed that if you google Snake Man 248 you'll come up with,, my very new YouTube channel, and I have 10 episodes. Animations of kind of the backstory of my book to promote Typhoon Coast. And I also have my second book, earthquake Coast, that's gonna be coming out.

It's the second in the trilogy. In April. Oh, nice. Right on. Is that for the 89 earthquake? The 89-year earthquake is featured actually in that animation. You're probably looking at right now. Did you find Snake Man? Two, four, eight. I've written a couple of posts that actually taught a class on bringing cop characters to fiction.

And so I really flesh them out and it's it's just really cool. Two, four, eight people go, where's two, four, eight come from. Two, four, eight was my badge number. But yeah, this whole concept of the snake man is just wonderful. It appeals to kids with a superhero quality to it.

And it's, and it, the inception was you can read about on my blog of how this kid came to understand it. Is it Trent McShane in my book? He's he's an only child. I was one of actually six boys and a girl. So I came from a huge freaking family, a big Irish Catholic family where you get lost half the time.

And so I wanted to make my book fantasy for me to be what it was like to be an only child.

And so that's the perspective and everything has a point of view. Think about it. Somebody is going to write about Ukraine one day. Somebody is going to write about the Gaza Strip one day, or the Gaza one day. And so it's perspective. And I, and the perspective that I chose to write about my law enforcement career at a very tumultuous time and my time in the Marine Corps, that's how I chose to tell my story.

And a lot of other successful authors do that too. And as a, like I said, it's a part of healing for myself, part of healing for myself. Yeah. Do you think you could ever put that into, would you do a movie with this? Yeah. So it funny asked is funny that during the writer's strike, I got a LinkedIn account, and the people who really responded to my LinkedIn or, screenplay writers. And so I got a bunch of guys and gals that called me. They actually read the book. They had a full understanding of the book. The people who don't understand the book are the people who do not read the foreword. The foreword is a very important part of my artistic creation is that it's the map of the book.

You have to read it. You'll know the book. And so these people are good readers. They read it. And you can read a lot of my, reviews on Amazon people get it, and and so it's a lot of fun to understand that And so yeah, they made offers there was a financial buy-in for it That I'm not really prepared for now.

I'm probably gonna solicit more for it after the second book. The best thing you could do for your first book is write a second book. Never be a standalone author, never do a one-and-done. Cause that's what they're always going to ask you. And to go back to say how do you publish it?

Not like everybody, they have this big dream. Is it, Oh, I'm going to write a book. It'd be my bestseller and be made into a major motion picture. I wrote the major motion picture with an appeal. This is this book. And if you read like me, if you listen to look at my trailer for it, it's got.

It's got a major motion picture written all over it. And so people, they would look at my trailer and they. It's pretty natural. It's a natural progression. Yeah. And so I'll go down and I'll pitch it. I'll pitch it. I make, I made a lot of friends, a lot of connections, a lot of screenplays, ofri, writing connections, and I'll give that the, give it a try.

Next year, I'll, what I really wanna do is next year when I turn 60, if you can believe that I want to go walk up Mountain Pinatubo, I want to go back. To the Philippines and walk a Pinatubo. And now, oddly enough, it is a... I know somebody who's always wanted to go to the Philippines too.

Yeah? Yeah. Vito, we'll go! I'll take ya! I don't know if... That'd be awesome. I don't know if the USS Dubuque's still sailing, but I'll get your Philippines. It might be sunk down in the water somewhere. Yeah, I... I'm not available in April or May, but after that, I think I could probably, I have some business associates out there that I have to meet and yeah, I'll be interested in going.

Vito, when you have an Italian name like you have, and your first name is Vito, when you say you got business associates to see, it makes you sound very suspect is all I'm saying. It's all I'm saying. Yes. The Filipino mafia, right? That's what we're saying. There is such a thing, especially in the Navy. Yeah.

Anyways. Mark, we have to get moving here. I'd love to have you on again listen to your adventures and talk to you about what's going on. Maybe the next time we talk to you, we can talk about the journey. How you're getting your book out there and how you're marketing it and how maybe the trail of how we're getting it over to Hollywood for you or something like that.

Cause I'd love to learn more about that. Oh yeah. I could talk about it for hours, man. And I'm glad I had this opportunity. Once again, if you want to learn more about me where I am in writing, and what I'm doing next, you go to my website. Markrclifford. com and that's Mark with a K, R, what I hate, I hated growing up having my two names clash together.

That's why it was like rank, Mark Clifford, those two hard continents. So remember that R is in the middle and you'll see all the stuff that comes up on me on Google and the stuff that I've been doing and love to do. Right on. Now we'll be sure to get all that information on how to contact you. I think this might be a great show to put out for with Labor Day Veterans Day coming up here soon.

So this would be great. Yeah. There you go. You know what, guys? Is it, I love to see our fellow veterans thrive. Whatever we can do we're thriving, and for every one of us, there are a lot of guys that are struggling and gals that are struggling. And so whatever we can do, because we're gems to the United States.

We are ready to go. People, we get out of the service. We're dependable. We have a great work ethic and we get out of the service with our tails between our legs, and. You got to get out of the service with a carpe diem attitude, man. Seize the day. You are a national treasure, veterans. Get out there and do it.

There are some other things I know we're running out of time that I wanted to bring up, life is fragile. Life is fragile. Pursue your dreams and start as soon as possible. Don't wait. Don't wait. If I were gonna write a book, it would be called Don't Wait. That's right.

Dude yeah I am just so excited, so happy that we got to go and hang out. Me too. Chat a little bit. And me too. I know we're only a few like, we're not even an hour away from each other. Yeah. We should go and hang out. Al one L Rosemiller, Rosemiller, he wanted to do a reunion, but I think something passed off, and I think he moved.

He's up. He wasn't cemetery. He moved to Reno. So we got to find another place to do a reunion, but I got a big clubhouse. I live in a place with a huge clubhouse. In fact, my daughter's getting married in November. We're putting 150 people in there. So it's huge. And so we could talk about that.

We can talk about that. Definitely love to reconnect with a whole bunch of people. It's so fun watching people get older and see their stories like you, right? You're just, it's exciting to see what's happening. So yeah, let's let's catch back up in a month. And once the wedding's done, let me know.

And then we can figure out something for them. For sure. Stay in touch. All right, brother. Pleasure meeting you, Mark. You too. Semper Fi out to everybody. All right. Yeah. See ya.

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