In 2008, Matt Gallagher was ordered to discontinue his blog Kaboom—but on Thursday, almost eight years later, he candidly reflected on his time in Iraq, his writing career, and his first amendment rights as a soldier in an AMA (Ask Me Anything).

“Due to a rash posting on my part,” he wrote on June 27, 2008, “and decisions made above my pay-grade, I have been ordered to stop posting on Kaboom, effective immediately.”

The ill-fated piece Gallagher mentioned was entitled “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage,” in which he humorously recalls rejecting a promotion, writing, “I came here to fight a war, not to build a resume.”

Since that fateful post, Gallagher adapted his blog into a memoir by the same name, earned an MFA from Columbia University, and taught writing through the Words After War nonprofit, which “bring[s] veterans and civilians together to examine war & conflict through the lens of literature.”

His latest venture? A debut novel, called Youngblood, released earlier this week by Atria Books.

In his AMA, Gallagher addressed redditors’ questions about what really happened with the shutdown of his blog, the most “bonkers” thing he witnessed overseas, and which of the current presidential candidates he believes would make the best leader for the US military.

The Doom of Kaboom

If you missed the widespread press coverage of the end of Gallagher’s blog, he retold the story for one redditor, with the short version—”tl;dr – I made fun of my boss on the Internet”—and the longer version:

Winning Battles, Losing Wars

On First Amendment Rights

His Role Model

“Most Bonkers Thing You Saw Overseas”?

How Autobiographical is Youngblood?

On the Current Presidential Candidates

The Military-Civilian Divide Today

You can read all of Gallagher’s answers to redditors’ questions in the original AMA thread. His debut novel Youngblood is out now.