Navy Veteran Writes to Give Back

At 63, Tage Wright is feeling age breathe down his neck. It’s a feeling he doesn’t like.

“I’m 63 years old,” he says, “and I’m out of work.”

And so, the Navy veteran, former instrument technicial and general carpenter, is working on a book.

And not just one book, but a sweeping trilogy, “The Brotherhood of the Sword.”

Wright has self-published “The Armageddon,” the first book in the series, and is donating half of the royalties from every book he sells to the Wounded Warrior Project. (To buy the book for $17.95, click here, or go to authorhouse.com, and search for "The Armageddon," or Tage Wright, or ISBN 978-1-58721-287-1)

It’s a great cause, he says, a way to pay back. And it is a way to get noticed, too.

WRIGHT GREW UP IN GROTON, getting his first education in a two-room school in Center Groton on Candlewood Road. He remembers that there were two teachers and two classes in each room.

He graduated from Fitch, and after a brief stint at Electric Boat, went into the Navy.

It was 1969, and Wright served a six-month tour on a guided missile frigate, followed by a 30-day tour off Korea, and a three-month tour in the Mediterranean.

After his time in the service, he worked as a welder at United Nuclear, and then at Pfizer, starting as a general worker, becoming a chemical operator and then an instrument technician.

He took an offered buyout, planning to move out west – but that didn’t happen.

Wright stayed in the area, working at a company that eventually was sold to Amgen, and he took a job in Boston, commuting 100 miles each way.

“That got old really fast,” he says.

One afternoon, he says, he stopped at a plant on the way to his Boston job, and was hired. That job lasted five years, before the plant was bought by Dow Chemical.
Wright was 58 at the time, and suddenly, it was hard to find work.

So he went out on his own, with a home improvement business. Now, he’s on Social Security, doing odd jobs here and there, and writing.

THE TRILOGY is about a group called The Brotherhood, and an idea Wright had. What if 666, the so-called “mark of the beast” did not just signify a number, but signified a number of men? What if, throughout the world, there was not one Satan, but 18 – six plus six plus six.

“The Brotherhood is running an outfit that’s worse than the Mafia,” Wright says. It wants to start a war between the Islamic world and the U.S., Wright says, adding that he dreamed all of this up long before 9/11.

The group schemes for power, using any and every means, with no hesitation or conscience. It haunts people’s dreams, exacts vengeance, and generally acts as badly as a group of evil-doers can act.

“It’s a really good story, if I must say so myself,” Wright says.

THE WOUNDED WARRIOR Project helps honor and empower members of the military who have been severely injured in the line of duty. It provides programs and services to these men and women to help them make the transition back to civilian life.

The program also works to raise awareness of the issues of these severely injured service men and women, and to enlist the public’s aid.

Provides programs and services to severely injured service members during the time between active duty and transition to civilian life.

“Now we have so many really severely injured soldiers,” Wright says, “mainly because the survival rate is higher. They would have died when I was in the military. Then I wanted to talk about why I wanted to do this.”

IN SCHOOL, ENGLISH was Wright’s least favorite subject. When he began writing, he had no idea what he was getting into, he says.

“When I started out writing The Armageddon, I was going to write a short mystery, and as I started to write it, the characters took over, starting to go in all sorts of directions I hadn’t planned.

“I had a character in ‘The Armageddon’ who I thought was going to run the whole book and he got killed in two chapters,” Wright says, laughing.

These days, he says, he sees in his mind what’s happening, and that’s what he writes.

“I find when I write, it’s very therapeutic.”

RESPONSE TO THE BOOK has been strong. He had 100 readers test it, and they all came back with positive remarks, he says. One reader was so involved, he stayed up all night reading. Another told Wright that the only thing he didn’t understand “is why this isn’t a best-seller.”

Wright is scheduled to be on Channel 8’s Connecticut Style program on Tuesday at noon. He wants to talk about “The Brotherhood,” and the Wounded Warrior Project, and also about a play he’s written, “A Rare Encounter.”

He wants to find a group that will put on the play and donate the proceeds to Soldier On, a Massachusetts-based group that provides living spaces for homeless veterans.

Wright says that people who know have told him that “A Rare Encounter” is better than most plays on Broadway.

“It’s a really good story, if I must say so myself,” he says.

WRIGHT IS NEARLY FINISHED with the third book in “The Brotherhood,” and now, he’s facing a wall.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says, in terms of sending it out to people. “What I am trying to do with donating royalties is getting people to know who I am.”