There’s something peculiar about small towns.

It’s not just the quiet streets or the coffee shop that closes at 6. It’s not the fact that everyone waves to each other—or knows what you paid for your new siding. It’s the invisible weight pressing behind smiles. The silences that stretch too long in the grocery aisle. The way everyone knows something—but no one says anything.

That, right there, is the heartbeat of The Smoke Eater, my newly published crime thriller and the first novel in a planned series. It’s not just about a fire chief facing down violence, grief, and corruption in a town that’s unraveling—it’s about how small towns bury their truths.

Writing this book wasn’t just a technical exercise in plotting or pacing. It was a psychological exploration. A deep dive into how isolation, community pressure, and familiarity can twist people into silence—or solidarity. This blog isn’t about selling the book (okay, maybe a little). It’s about sharing the emotional and creative terrain I had to walk through to write it.

Small Towns: Where Everyone Knows… and Forgets

Let’s start with Hillfort.

It’s fictional, yes—but it’s made up of every small town I’ve passed through, lived near, or been told about. It could be on the prairies. It could be in upstate New York. It could be southern Ontario or northern Alberta. That’s the point—it’s meant to feel both familiar and claustrophobic.

When I started outlining The Smoke Eater, I knew I didn’t want to write a big-city procedural. I didn’t want a detective with a cigar and a six-figure case backlog. I wanted a fire chief. Someone local. Someone who drinks coffee with the same people every day. Someone inside the community.

Because that’s where the real tension lives.

In cities, secrets hide in anonymity. In small towns, secrets hide in plain sight.

Isolation: The Quiet That Screams

One of the first things that came to me while drafting was the idea that isolation doesn’t always mean being alone—sometimes it’s just the feeling that you can’t speak. That if you did, everything would collapse.

Hillfort is a place surrounded by forest, framed by riverbanks, and divided by quiet grudges. People don’t lock their doors, but they do lock up their stories.

Take Dave Fulton, my protagonist. He’s a fire chief, a leader, a father—and a man carrying the kind of grief you can’t post about. His son goes missing under circumstances that are murky and painful, and everyone around him either tiptoes or avoids the subject. It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that they do. And that’s the trap.

When you’re isolated in community, the silence is louder. Everyone’s watching, but no one’s speaking. You’re surrounded by people, and yet you feel completely alone. That’s where Dave lives. That’s where many of us have lived, even if just for a season.

Community Pressure: The Weight of Being “One of Us”

Now, let’s talk about conformity.

In Hillfort, there’s an unwritten rulebook. It’s not posted at the town hall. It’s in the looks people give. The things they don’t say. The way they remember what your uncle did in 1994, or how your sister left town under strange circumstances.

Writing this kind of pressure into The Smoke Eater was a balancing act. I didn’t want to demonize small-town life—because I’ve seen its warmth. I’ve seen people shovel each other’s walks before their own. I’ve seen bake sales turn into lifelines. But that same closeness can suffocate.

Characters like Jim Harris (Hillfort’s police chief) and Blake (an officer who’s trying to find her place) are caught in this very tug-of-war. Jim knows more than he lets on. He’s buried secrets to preserve order. Blake’s trying to figure out whether being accepted means staying silent—or challenging the very people she calls neighbours.

Community pressure creates moral compromise. People justify their silence because they think it’s protecting something. But often, they’re just preserving their own position. That’s a core theme in the book: When does loyalty stop being noble and start being dangerous?

Familiarity: The Comfort That Corrupts

One of the most chilling aspects of small towns is that familiarity breeds tolerance—of the wrong things.

You know someone’s history. You watched them grow up. Maybe you helped them through something hard. So when they cross a line, you hesitate. You make excuses. You say, “That’s just the way he is.”

In Hillfort, this plays out across several character arcs. Elijah, for example—the outsider who arrives under the guise of negotiation—is a stranger in a town full of bonds. But he sees the fractures others ignore. He weaponizes their relationships, exploits their blind spots.

Meanwhile, long-standing residents like Donny or Gunner are wrapped in that dangerous comfort. People overlook their volatility or pain because they’re familiar. That’s just Donny. That’s just how Gunner talks. But what happens when the behaviour escalates? What happens when tragedy strikes and everyone looks the other way—because “he’s one of ours”?

That familiarity becomes complicity. It allows the rot to set in.

Writing the Gray Areas

What makes a small-town thriller resonate isn’t just a good mystery—it’s moral ambiguity.

The Smoke Eater isn’t a story about good guys and bad guys. It’s a story about good people who make bad choices. About decent folks who stay quiet. About institutions that start out noble and slide into shadows.

When I was drafting, I didn’t want to offer easy answers. I wanted the reader to feel unsettled. To wonder whether they would’ve spoken up. Whether they would’ve buried the same secrets—or dug them up.

That’s the real psychology of small-town secrets. Not that they exist—but that everyone participates in keeping them. Some out of fear. Some out of love. Some because it’s just easier than blowing everything up.

The Personal Thread

People sometimes ask if Hillfort is based on a real town. The short answer: no. The long answer: kind of.

It’s built from fragments. A firehouse I once visited. A dusty main street from my childhood. A diner where a man sat alone some mornings and always ordered the same thing. The stories people tell when they think no one will repeat them.

And maybe that’s what this book is about. Not just secrets, but stories—and what we choose to do with them.

Wrapping It Up: What the Book Asks

The Smoke Eater asks a lot of questions:

• How do you grieve when no one will let you talk about it?
• What happens when the institutions meant to protect become part of the threat?
• Can a community love itself into blindness?
• And maybe the hardest one: Is silence ever justified?

I don’t have tidy answers. I don’t think anyone does. But that’s what made writing this book such a rewarding, maddening, and soul-searching experience. I had to live inside the gray. And I had to bring the reader with me.

So if you pick up The Smoke Eater—or even if you just think about your own version of Hillfort—know this: every town has secrets. What matters is what we do with them.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Coming September 2025 to Amazon