When I first started writing The Smoke Eater, I thought it was going to be a straight-ahead thriller about a fire chief, a small town, and the kind of gritty emergencies that keep first responders up at night. Fires. Accidents. Criminals. All the chaos that demands courage and order. But somewhere along the line, the story shifted. The characters started pushing against the neat boundaries I’d imagined for them. That’s when I realized the book wasn’t just about fire or police work—it was about power.

And not just the shiny kind of power—the kind wrapped in medals, titles, or polished speeches. No, it was about the messy, contradictory power of men in uniform. Men who are sworn to protect, yet are tempted by control. Men who save lives, but sometimes destroy them too. In The Smoke Eater, that tension drives the heart of the narrative, because it’s the truth: the line between hero and monster isn’t always as clear as we’d like it to be.

The Weight of the Badge

The starting point for this book was my fascination with the badge. Not the object itself, but the authority it grants. A badge is both a shield and a weapon. Firefighters, police officers, and other first responders carry immense responsibility—and with it, immense trust. Communities lean on them in moments of absolute vulnerability.

But what happens when the badge becomes more than a responsibility? What happens when it transforms into entitlement, or worse, a mask for personal ambition? That question runs through every page of The Smoke Eater.

Fire Chief Dave Fulton is a man defined by his duty. He’s the protector, the leader, the one who puts the town of Hillfort before everything else—including his own family. Yet in his quest to live up to that duty, he risks crossing into obsession, sacrificing pieces of himself until there’s nothing left but the role. At what point does dedication stop being heroic and start being destructive?

Police Chief Jim Harris, on the other hand, wears his authority like a suit that never quite fits. He knows the compromises that come with power, the temptations that trail behind influence. His arc asks: is it possible to keep your integrity intact when you’re constantly negotiating with forces bigger than you—whether it’s crime, politics, or your own fear of failure?

Neither of these men are purely heroic. Neither are purely corrupt. And that’s the point.

Why Moral Complexity Matters

There’s an easier version of this story I could have told—the kind where the firefighter is a pure-hearted savior and the police chief a steady hand of justice. Plenty of stories work that way, and they work well. But I wanted to dig deeper, because reality rarely lines up so cleanly.

Real people are complicated. They make decisions under stress, sometimes with incomplete information. They justify shortcuts. They tell themselves they’re doing what’s necessary, even when the voice in the back of their head whispers otherwise.

By leaning into moral complexity, The Smoke Eater challenges readers to sit with discomfort. To ask: what if my hero isn’t who I thought he was? What if the protector is also the predator? What if the systems I trust are fragile, flawed, and human?

These aren’t questions with neat answers—but that’s exactly what makes them worth exploring.

The Monster Within

One of the recurring motifs in the book is fire itself. Fire is both savior and destroyer. It warms homes, cooks meals, and clears dead wood from forests. But it also consumes, erases, and devours. It doesn’t care who you are—it just burns.

That duality mirrors the men in uniform at the center of the novel. Dave and Jim are forces of order, yet they carry chaos inside them. Their choices ripple outward, sometimes saving lives, sometimes leaving wreckage.

The antagonist, Elijah, sharpens this theme further. He’s an outsider, yes, but also a mirror—a man who embraces his monstrous side unapologetically. Where Dave and Jim wrestle with the tension between protector and predator, Elijah simply declares: power is meant to be taken. In his own twisted way, he exposes the fragility of their moral lines.

This isn’t a story of good versus evil in the comic-book sense. It’s a story about the monster that lives in all of us—the hunger for control, the fear of losing relevance, the temptation to bend rules because we believe we’re justified.

Writing Into the Grey

From a creative standpoint, this theme gave me both freedom and responsibility. Freedom, because it allowed me to write characters that aren’t bound by cliché. Dave doesn’t always say the noble thing. Jim doesn’t always take the right path. Elijah, despite his menace, occasionally makes unnerving sense. That tension makes scenes crackle—it’s what keeps me (and hopefully the reader) from ever feeling too comfortable.

The responsibility came in how to handle it with honesty. When writing about men in uniform, it’s tempting to drift into propaganda on one side or cynicism on the other. Either they’re spotless heroes or corrupt caricatures. I wanted neither. Instead, I wanted to show the reality: people who sometimes rise to the occasion, and sometimes fail spectacularly.

That’s not an easy balance. Draft after draft, I found myself asking: is this character too far gone to be sympathetic? Is this scene too soft to feel authentic? Finding the middle ground was like walking a tightrope. But that’s also where the best storytelling happens—on the thin line where everything could tip one way or the other.

Power, Community, and Consequence

Another angle that emerged while drafting was the way power doesn’t just affect the individual who holds it—it reshapes the community around them. When a fire chief makes a reckless call, it’s the crew that bears the scars. When a police chief bends to corruption, it’s the town that loses trust.

In The Smoke Eater, Hillfort itself becomes a character of sorts. The town reflects back the consequences of its leaders’ choices. Families grieve, businesses struggle, rumors spread. People start asking: who really has our best interests at heart? Who can we rely on when everything’s burning down—literally and figuratively?

This ripple effect fascinated me. Power is never just personal. It’s relational. Every action reverberates outward. That’s why the hero/monster tension matters so much—because when a protector crosses the line, the entire community pays the price.

Why This Story Now?

When I look at the headlines—whether it’s about police use of force, systemic failures in emergency response, or the quiet burnout of first responders—it’s clear this theme isn’t abstract. We’re living it. Communities are wrestling with questions of trust, accountability, and the human limits of those in power.

Writing The Smoke Eater wasn’t about offering answers. It was about holding up a mirror. It was about saying: here’s what it looks like when the line between hero and monster blurs. Here’s what it feels like when the people you rely on most are also the ones you fear might lose themselves in the fire.

And maybe, by sitting with that complexity on the page, we can be a little more honest about it in real life.

Final Thoughts

At its core, The Smoke Eater is a story about power—not just who holds it, but how it changes them, and how it changes the people who put their faith in them. Firefighters and police officers stand at the heart of our communities as protectors. But they are also human, vulnerable to ego, exhaustion, and temptation.

By exploring the tension between protector and predator, the book asks readers to reconsider what heroism really means. It’s not a spotless record or a perfect decision. It’s the constant, often painful effort to choose integrity over control—even when the monster inside whispers otherwise.

So, when you pick up The Smoke Eater, know this: you’re not getting a clean-cut tale of good guys and bad guys. You’re stepping into the grey, where fire both saves and destroys, where men wrestle with their own shadows, and where the line between hero and monster is thin enough to burn.

BTW – We’ll have a preorder soon for a book release coming September 28, 2025.