There’s a moment every writer hits when the story you’re trying to tell becomes bigger than the people in it. It’s not about the detective anymore, or the criminal, or the man who’s lost everything. It’s about where they live. The streets they walk. The places they hide. The secrets buried deep beneath the surface of the town itself. That’s what happened to me while writing my new novel, The Smoke Eater — now available for sale — and it completely changed how I thought about storytelling.

Hillfort is a special place—at least it is to me. But at first, Hillfort was just a backdrop — a place to set a crime thriller. A quiet little town where the usual things happen: bake sales, town council meetings, kids riding their bikes down cracked sidewalks. But as I drafted and redrafted the story, Hillfort stopped being a setting and started becoming something more. It turned into a character in its own right — flawed, complicated, full of contradictions — and, in many ways, more dangerous than any villain I could have written.

This is a post about that process: how Hillfort came to life, why small towns are the perfect breeding grounds for crime stories, and how building a setting as if it were a living, breathing character became the creative engine for the entire book.

The Birth of Hillfort: Building a Town from the Ground Up

Writers talk a lot about “world-building,” but in crime fiction, the world you build isn’t about fantastical kingdoms or distant planets — it’s about layers. It’s about the history that shapes a town’s present, the grudges that never die, and the quiet, simmering resentments that no one talks about. That’s where Hillfort began.

When I started outlining the novel, I knew I didn’t want a big city. Cities have too much noise, too many moving parts, too many people to keep secrets hidden for long. A small town, though — that’s a different animal. Small towns are like pressure cookers. Everything is contained. Everyone knows each other. The gossip, the history, the unspoken rules — they all swirl together until the place takes on a personality of its own.

I also chose a small-town setting because of my own background. I spent years working in the oil industry, often in remote communities scattered across North America. Those towns had a unique rhythm — a mix of hard work, quiet desperation, and deep, complicated loyalties. They were places where the bar fights, break-ins, family feuds, and whispered scandals felt just as consequential as any high-profile crime in a big city. Hillfort grew out of that experience. It carries the same kind of scars, the same uneasy balance between pride and decline.

Hillfort was built around those ideas. It’s a town with a proud past and a troubled present — once a booming mining community, now a place barely hanging on. The factories have closed. The downtown storefronts are empty. And the people who’ve stayed behind cling to what’s left with a kind of desperation. That desperation infects everything. It seeps into the way they talk, the way they act, and the way they look at outsiders.

It also means that when something sinister happens — and it always does in a thriller — the town doesn’t react the way a city might. There’s no anonymity in Hillfort. Everyone’s watching. Everyone has an opinion. And everyone has something to lose.

Making the Setting a Character

The turning point in writing the book came when I stopped thinking of Hillfort as a place and started thinking of it as a character. Just like a character, a setting can have a backstory. It can have moods. It can have contradictions and motives. It can push back against the people who live in it.

Here’s how I approached that in the drafting process:

1. Give the town a history.
Hillfort wasn’t just “somewhere.” It had a founding story, an economic rise and fall, a series of defining moments that shaped its people. The town’s mining past — and the pollution, accidents, and corporate betrayals that came with it — isn’t just background noise. It drives resentment, fuels class divides, and explains why certain families hold power while others barely scrape by.

2. Make it influence the plot.
In Hillfort: A Small Town with Big Secrets, the geography isn’t passive. Narrow streets limit police responses. Old tunnels beneath the town become hiding places. Weather turns the simplest investigation into a battle against nature. The town’s architecture and infrastructure are as much a part of the conflict as the criminals themselves.

3. Reflect characters’ emotions in the environment.
A crumbling fire hall says more about a community’s priorities than a paragraph of exposition ever could. An abandoned church, once the heart of town, becomes a metaphor for lost faith — both spiritual and civic. When a character is trapped, the town feels tighter. When they’re hunted, the streets feel emptier and darker.

4. Give it secrets.
Every good character has something to hide, and Hillfort is no different. There are hidden deals between power brokers, decades-old crimes swept under the rug, and forgotten parts of town that hold dangerous truths. As the story unfolds, the town reveals itself in layers — and with each revelation, the stakes rise.

By the time the first draft was finished, Hillfort was no longer a backdrop. It was alive — shaping the decisions of the people in it and serving as both a weapon and a shield in the unfolding conflict.

Claustrophobia and Danger: The Small-Town Trap

One of the most common questions I get is, “Why a small town?” The answer is simple: because small towns are naturally claustrophobic. They force characters — and readers — into tight spaces, both physically and socially.

In a city, you can disappear. You can reinvent yourself. You can hide. But in a small town, there’s no hiding. Everyone knows your history. Everyone remembers your mistakes. And if you’re hiding something, someone is always watching.

This claustrophobia becomes a key driver of tension. It’s not just about the physical limitations of the setting — the narrow roads, the empty streets, the way sound carries in the cold night air. It’s about the psychological pressure. In Hillfort, gossip spreads faster than evidence. Trust is currency. And when the walls close in, the town itself seems to conspire against those who are trying to escape.

There’s also the paradox of safety and danger. Small towns project an image of safety — low crime rates, familiar faces, peaceful surroundings. That’s why when something dark happens there, it feels worse. The betrayal cuts deeper. The fear spreads faster. And the illusion of control shatters completely.

For a crime thriller, that contrast is gold. It allows the story to play with expectations, to make readers question what they think they know, and to remind them that evil doesn’t only lurk in back alleys and big cities — sometimes, it’s right next door.

Drafting Hillfort’s Personality: The Creative Process

Building Hillfort wasn’t a single act of imagination — it was a process of layering details draft after draft until the town felt real. Here’s a peek behind the curtain of how that happened:

The First Draft: The town was just a name and a few landmarks — a fire station, a police department, a handful of streets. It functioned as a place, but not a presence.

The Second Draft: I started writing scenes where Hillfort interacted with the characters. The weather complicated a manhunt. A power outage hid a crime. An old bridge became a crucial meeting point. The town wasn’t just there — it was doing things.

The Third Draft: This is where Hillfort developed its moods. Certain neighbourhoods felt oppressive. Others felt eerie and abandoned. I wrote scenes where the town itself seemed to pass judgment on the people living there — through graffiti, boarded-up windows, or the silence of a long-forgotten street.

The Final Draft: Hillfort had a voice. It wasn’t loud or obvious, but it whispered through every scene. It was a place with grudges and loyalties, with scars and secrets. It was the kind of place where nothing is ever truly forgotten — and that made it the perfect stage for the story I wanted to tell.

Why Settings Like Hillfort Work So Well for Crime Fiction

There’s a reason crime thrillers so often unfold in small towns. It’s not laziness or cliché — it’s because they’re perfect story engines. Here’s why:

• Tight-knit communities heighten suspicion. When everyone knows everyone, every lie and secret has a ripple effect.
• History is always present. Old crimes don’t stay buried. Old rivalries resurface. The past is never really past.
• Isolation amplifies stakes. With fewer resources and less anonymity, mistakes are harder to hide, and help is harder to find.
• Moral complexity thrives. In a small town, villains are rarely outsiders — they’re neighbours, family members, respected community leaders. That makes betrayal sting more and justice harder to achieve.

And, perhaps most importantly, small towns remind us of a universal truth: evil doesn’t need a metropolis to thrive. It only needs opportunity — and sometimes, a quiet place where no one is looking too closely.

Hillfort Is Waiting

Writing The Smoke Eater was an exercise in transformation — not just for the story, but for me as a writer. It taught me that a setting isn’t something you create once and forget about. It’s a living, evolving force that shapes everything that happens within it.

Hillfort is more than just a backdrop. It’s a character with a dark past and an uncertain future. It’s a place that traps people as often as it protects them. And it’s a reminder that danger isn’t always where you expect it. Sometimes, it’s woven into the fabric of the place you call home.

The book is now available for sale — and if you’re drawn to stories about secrets, betrayal, and the darkness that hides behind familiar faces, I think you’ll find Hillfort every bit as compelling as the characters who inhabit it.

Final Thoughts

Every writer has a moment when the place they’re writing about stops being just a place. For me, that moment was Hillfort. It started as a pin on a map and ended as one of the most complex, dangerous, and fascinating “characters” I’ve ever written.

That’s the real secret of crime fiction. It’s not just about solving a mystery. It’s about exploring the soul of a place — and realizing that sometimes, the setting has more secrets than the people living in it.

So welcome to Hillfort. I hope you enjoy your stay. Just don’t trust anyone too quickly — especially the town itself.

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When you hit “publish” on a book, it’s not just a button click—it’s the exhale of years of imagining, drafting, tearing pages apart, and piecing them back together again. My new novel, The Smoke Eater, has finally stepped out into the world, and honestly? It feels like sending a kid to their first day of school. You’re proud, nervous, and more than a little curious to see how it survives outside your hands.

But here’s the thing—I didn’t write this story in a vacuum. The world of The Smoke Eater is stitched together from shadows I knew firsthand. I worked in the oil and gas patch, and that experience—those transient workforces, those booming paycheques, those makeshift man camps—gave me a front-row seat to the ways crime sneaks in when the lights are bright and the money flows. What better soil to grow a crime novel in?

This blog is my attempt to peel back the creative layers. Let’s talk about how the gritty realities of the oil patch became a stage for crime in The Smoke Eater—and how I blended fact, memory, and imagination into fiction that feels uncomfortably close to reality.

The Oil Patch as a Thriller Backdrop

One of the first creative decisions I made was to treat the oil patch itself like an major thriller component in the book. Anyone who has worked in the industry knows the atmosphere is thick—it hums with diesel, groans under machinery, and rattles with the push-pull of supply and demand. Towns swell overnight when a project is announced, then hollow out just as quickly when it finishes. That transience isn’t just physical—it’s psychological. People arrive, do their shift, and vanish.

Danger is everywhere!

For storytelling, that kind of instability is gold. You’ve got a town that doesn’t know its own identity anymore, where locals eye newcomers with suspicion, and workers know they won’t be around long enough to build roots. It’s a perfect environment for organized crime to slip in unnoticed.

Why Transience Breeds Trouble

When thousands of workers pour into a region with fat cheques and not much to spend them on, the vacuum fills fast. Bars overflow. Drug dealers follow the money. Small-town law enforcement, used to handling a couple of DUIs a month, suddenly has a meth ring or fentanyl pipeline setting up shop in its backyard.

Research backs this up. Studies have shown that oil and gas “man camps” often coincide with spikes in violence, substance abuse, and even human trafficking (https://lawblogs.uc.edu/ihrlr/2021/05/28/pipeline-of-violence-the-oil-industry-and-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women). These camps aren’t designed for community—they’re designed for efficiency. And where there’s no community, there’s no accountability.

That’s the knife-edge I tried to capture in The Smoke Eater. My fictional town is a mirror of so many real ones, where the oil boom brought prosperity, but also a shadow economy that thrived right under the noses of folks too busy to notice—or too scared to speak.

The Lure of Quick Cash

Another root I tapped into: money. Oil work pays well. In some cases, absurdly well for the hours. For young men fresh out of high school, it can feel like winning the lottery—until they realize the costs. Easy money is a magnet for the drug trade. Dealers know these workers will pay top dollar to take the edge off the twelve-hour shifts.

But organized crime doesn’t stop at selling weed to rig hands. In Mexico, cartels have turned fuel theft into an empire. By 2018, authorities were finding over 15,000 illegal pipeline taps a year, compared to a couple hundred a decade earlier (https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/articles/2023/06/fuel-theft-and-cartels/seeking-revenue-cartel-fuel-thefts). In Ecuador, pipeline theft and extortion have cost the state-run oil company over $215 million in just two years (https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fuel-theft-violence-siphoning-215-million-ecuador-oil-industry-2024-12-12).

That real-world backdrop shaped my fictional villains. In The Smoke Eater, they aren’t cartoon criminals—they’re entrepreneurs of the underworld, seizing opportunity where oversight is weakest.

The Human Cost: Workers in the Middle

Something I wanted to explore was how workers themselves become pawns. These guys aren’t hardened criminals. Most are just chasing a paycheque. But exhaustion, loneliness, and distance from home chip away at judgment. Drugs and alcohol become coping mechanisms. Some fall into debt. Some get recruited to “look the other way” on a job site. Before long, you’ve got good people tangled in bad webs.

And that’s where crime fiction gets interesting—when the line between villain and victim blurs. I wanted readers of The Smoke Eater to feel that tension. To ask: is this guy bad, or is he just broken?

Writing the Patch into Fiction

From a craft perspective, I had to balance authenticity with accessibility. Too much jargon and you lose readers. Too little, and the setting feels fake. So I used what I call the salt method: sprinkle real terms—“hot shot crew,” “flare stack,” “safety stand-down”—without overexplaining. If you’ve been there, it resonates. If you haven’t, it still feels textured and real.

I also leaned on rhythm. Crime fiction thrives on pace, but oil patch life is a strange blend of frantic and boring. Twelve hours of monotony punctuated by moments of sheer panic. I wrote in that rhythm. Long, dragging scenes that suddenly snap into chaos. It keeps readers off balance in the same way workers often are.

Organized Crime: Fiction Meets Reality

One of my favorite things about crime fiction is how it echoes headlines. When I read about cartel fuel theft in Mexico or gang pipeline taps in Ecuador, I didn’t just see news stories—I saw plot devices. Crime fiction thrives on plausibility. Readers should finish a chapter and wonder, Could this really happen here?

And the answer, in the oil patch, is yes. It already does.

Crime, Culture, and Community

But it’s not just about drugs and stolen fuel. It’s about culture. Boomtowns change the DNA of small towns. Rents skyrocket. Schools get overcrowded. Policing shifts from community relations to triage. And locals feel pushed out of their own homes. That resentment creates fertile ground for distrust, which organized crime can exploit.

This is something I dug into in The Smoke Eater. Crime isn’t an outsider problem—it’s a community one. And sometimes, the people you thought were protecting you are the very ones greasing the wheels for the underworld.

Creativity and Real-World Roots

The real creative challenge? Not letting the real-world grit overwhelm the story. The Smoke Eater is crime fiction, not a policy paper. But grounding it in truths makes the fiction sting harder.

Think of it like blending oil and water—on their own, they separate. But shake them hard enough, they mix into something new. That’s what writing this book felt like: shaking together lived experience, hard headlines, and fictional suspense until it turned into a story.

Wrapping It Up: The Roots and the Story

So where does that leave us? With a crime novel that owes as much to oil rigs and man camps as it does to classic noir tropes. With characters who bleed reality even as they walk through fictional streets. With a story that whispers, this could happen in your town too.

Let me put it plainly instead of that confusing “TL;DR” shortcut:

Key takeaways from both the oil patch and The Smoke Eater:

• The oil industry’s transient workforce and oversized paycheques create cracks that crime seeps into.
• Organized crime follows opportunity—whether it’s dealing drugs in man camps or tapping pipelines in Mexico and Ecuador.
• Fiction gets sharper when it’s sharpened on reality. Readers feel the truth even when it’s dressed up as story.
• Writing from lived experience isn’t just cathartic—it’s transformative. It turns rough memory into crafted narrative.

And most importantly? The Smoke Eater is out in the world. A novel born from oil patch dust and underworld shadows, finally ready to breathe in readers’ hands.

Available September 25, 2025, from Amazon:

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When I started writing The Smoke Eater, I knew the story wasn’t going to shy away from violence. You can’t write a crime novel about a fire chief, a police department on edge, and a town being quietly swallowed by outside forces without dealing with the physical realities of danger. But I also knew I didn’t want violence to become spectacle.

That’s a tricky balance. Crime fiction readers have a sharp radar for authenticity. They can tell when a fight scene or a shooting is just window dressing, something thrown in to jolt the plot forward without any real weight. I wanted every punch thrown, every shot fired, and every scrape with danger to matter—to echo back into the characters’ choices and shape who they are becoming. Violence, when written with purpose, is never just action. It’s revelation.

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The First Rule: Violence Serves the Story

I wrote The Smoke Eater with the mindset that violence is never random, even when it surprises the characters. Every moment of conflict had to serve a bigger purpose. Was it testing loyalty? Was it forcing a character to confront their own limits? Was it exposing the cracks in a fragile alliance?

Take a scene where two men wrestle in the mud outside a bar. On the surface, it’s a brawl—gritty, messy, and raw. But under the surface, it’s not about fists or bruises. It’s about the way power shifts in Hillfort, how one man uses dominance to assert control while the other discovers just how far he’s willing to go to defend himself. The violence isn’t filler—it’s the stage where their real selves are revealed.

Readers may remember writers like Elmore Leonard or Michael Connelly for their clean prose, but one thing that sticks with me is how their violence is purposeful. A shove, a gun drawn, or a sudden blow—each detail tells you something about who has the upper hand and who is losing ground. That became a rule I applied to my own work.

Realism Versus Drama: Walking the Line

Crime fiction is at its most gripping when it feels real. But “real” violence—what actually happens in bar fights, gang disputes, or a tactical raid—is often quick, confusing, and over before it begins. A single punch can end a fight. A gunshot can silence a room.

On the other hand, fiction thrives on drama. If you made every violent encounter last three seconds, it would be technically accurate but narratively flat. The challenge is finding the sweet spot: pacing the scene so that readers feel the adrenaline and danger without drifting into comic-book exaggeration.

In The Smoke Eater, I leaned into sensory detail rather than drawn-out choreography. Instead of cataloging every jab and counter, I focused on the crack of bone, the sudden silence after a gunshot, the ragged breathing of someone who just realized they could have died. Violence in real life leaves echoes—physical pain, emotional trauma, the realization that life just tilted in a way you can’t undo. Those echoes are where the story lives.

The Character Lens

One of the creative decisions I made was to filter every act of violence through the character experiencing it. That means a punch doesn’t land in the abstract—it lands on the jaw of a man who has memories, doubts, and private fears. A bullet doesn’t just tear through flesh—it rips open the inner world of someone who may have thought themselves untouchable.

For example, when Fire Chief Dave Fulton sees his crew in danger, his instinct isn’t to run toward the gunfire like a cop would. His instinct is to protect, to contain, to shield others even when he knows he’s outmatched. His reactions in moments of violence reveal him as a leader under pressure, but also as a father searching for a son. Violence exposes his desperation as much as his strength.

Contrast that with Elijah, the outsider who sees himself as a prophet of chaos. For him, violence is ritual, symbolic. He references Biblical imagery, cloaks his brutality in destiny. Writing his violence required a different rhythm—calculated, unsettling, and almost cold in its inevitability. Through him, I could explore how violence becomes ideology.

By keeping violence anchored in character, it avoids slipping into spectacle. Instead, it becomes a mirror: what does this person do when pushed past the line?

Violence as Escalation

Crime fiction thrives on rising tension. Each scene should push the characters closer to breaking points, exposing vulnerabilities or hardening their resolve. Violence is one of the strongest levers a writer has for escalation.

In The Smoke Eater, I used violence not only to propel the plot forward but to raise the stakes. An assault in the dark isn’t just a scene of danger—it’s a signal that Hillfort is no longer a safe place. A gun drawn at a negotiation isn’t just a threat—it’s the moment when words fail, and the true cost of trust is revealed.

Escalation is about context. A punch early in the story might be shrugged off, but later, when alliances have shifted and everyone is frayed, that same punch might topple the balance of power. The physical act becomes a pivot point, and the fallout ripples into every chapter that follows.

The Research Side

Violence in fiction has to feel real, even if it’s dramatized. To write it responsibly, I dug into both technical research and human reactions.

On the technical side, I looked at how firearms actually sound and behave, how fights unfold under stress, and what physical injuries really look like. Movies often glamorize a character taking ten punches and walking away fine. In reality, even one punch can cause a concussion, break a jaw, or change a life forever. I wanted those consequences to be present, even if subtly, so the reader feels the weight of every blow.

On the human side, I leaned into psychology. What happens to your vision when adrenaline floods your body? How do people actually respond in moments of fear—freeze, flight, or fight? These details help ground the violence in truth. Readers can feel the difference between a fight scene written with lived or researched understanding versus one written purely for effect.

For those interested in further reading on trauma and human response, resources like the National Institute of Mental Health (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/trauma-and-violence) provide an evidence-based look at how people carry violence with them long after the moment has passed.

The Cost of Violence

One thing I refused to do in The Smoke Eater was let violence be clean. In real life, it never is. Violence leaves scars, both visible and invisible.

Reid and Gunner, two firefighters in the book, are celebrated as heroes after a rescue, but the physical pain and lingering injuries tell a deeper story. Dave Fulton, already worn down by leadership pressure, is pulled apart by grief and the strain of facing violence outside the firehall walls. And Jim Harris, the police chief, carries the burden of trying to maintain order in a town where each act of violence chips away at his authority.

The cost is what makes the violence matter. If a character can walk away without consequence, the reader feels cheated. But if the cost is real—if it changes how they see themselves, their town, or the people they thought they could trust—then violence becomes story.

Writing With Restraint

Perhaps the hardest part of writing violence was knowing when not to use it. Not every conflict needs a fist or a gun. Sometimes the most chilling tension is in what doesn’t happen—the hand hovering over a weapon, the silence between threats, the decision not to strike.

Restraint makes the moments of actual violence sharper. When the bullet finally flies or the fight breaks out, it matters more because the reader knows it wasn’t wasted. Restraint also honors the realism of violence: in the real world, most people avoid it until they can’t.

Why Every Bullet Matters

In the end, my philosophy was simple: every punch and bullet in The Smoke Eater had to carry narrative weight. If it didn’t reveal something about a character, escalate the story, or show the true cost of conflict, it didn’t belong.

Violence in crime fiction is never just about shock. It’s about stakes. It’s about who these people are when their backs are against the wall. And it’s about how a small town like Hillfort can become a pressure cooker where every act of violence echoes louder than the last.

For readers, I hope the result is a book where the tension feels authentic, the fights cut deep, and the bullets aren’t just noise—they’re decisions, mistakes, or turning points that change everything.

Closing Thoughts

Writing The Smoke Eater was as much about restraint as it was about release. Crafting violence with purpose meant looking past the surface action and into the psychology, the aftermath, and the moral weight. It meant giving readers the grit they expect from crime fiction while holding on to the humanity that makes it matter.

So, when you open The Smoke Eater and find yourself in the middle of a fight, or staring down the barrel of a gun, know that you’re not just there for spectacle. You’re there to see what breaks, what bends, and what survives when violence comes knocking in Hillfort.

Because in crime fiction—as in life—violence is never free. It always leaves a mark.

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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.

If you’ve been following my posts about the town of Hillfort, (imagined for The Smoke Eater), you already know it’s not the kind of place you find on a tourist brochure. This isn’t your sleepy, small-town postcard—it’s a place where loyalties shift, secrets run deep, and a bad decision can get you a funeral before the week’s out.

When I started writing The Smoke Eater, I wanted you to feel that tension in your bones. Many of you have read my previous behind-the-scenes notes on Hillfort—how I built the town’s shadowy politics, the rivalries between police and fire, and the dangerous charm of people like Elijah. But here’s the thing… familiarity doesn’t guarantee survival.

That’s why today’s post is different. This isn’t just a peek behind the curtain—it’s your turn to step into the story. Think of it as a survival stress test based on the kinds of choices my characters face every day. You may think you know how to navigate Hillfort after reading my earlier posts, but let’s see if you actually make it out alive.

Scenario 1 – “You Just Found a Body”

It’s an early morning walk by the river. Coffee in hand, you notice something in the weeds. Not a deer. Not a store mannequin. A body.

Before you can even dial 911, Police Chief Jim Harris appears. He gives you a flat, deliberate look and says:

“Here’s the thing—you didn’t see this. You didn’t find this. You’re going to forget you were ever here.”

Do you…

1. Keep your mouth shut and walk away, thinking you’ve just bought yourself some peace.
2. Smile, nod, but tell a friend later—because no way you’re keeping this bottled up.
3. Refuse and insist you’re calling it in—Harris’s orders be damned.

Returning readers will already guess the odds here: A buys you temporary safety, but it’s never free. B will get back to Harris before sundown, and you’ll wish it hadn’t. C? You just lit a fire that’s going to burn until it finds you.

Scenario 2 – “The Firehall BBQ”

If you’ve read my earlier notes on Dave Fulton, you know the Hillfort Fire Chief isn’t just wrangling hoses and hydrants—he’s juggling secrets.

You’re at the Firehall for a community BBQ when you overhear Dave on the phone. Words like “Drugs,” “not here,” and “don’t let Reid know” slip out before he notices you.

Do you…

1. Walk away. You came for the burger, not the drama.
2. Linger nearby, pretending to eye the dessert table.
3. Step right up and ask him what’s going on.

Seasoned Hillfort watchers can already smell the danger: A keeps you safe but in the dark, B might get you recruited—or silenced, and C… well, direct questions here are like poking a sleeping bear.

Scenario 3 – “A Stranger Named Elijah”

You’ve heard me talk about Elijah before—the man with that unsettling blend of charm and threat. You meet him at the gas station.

“Name’s Elijah,” he says. “You look like someone who understands opportunity.”

He slips you a paper with a phone number and the words: We should talk.

Do you…

1. Pocket it and drive off, hoping to be forgotten.
2. Tear it up before you even hit the highway.
3. Call him later, curiosity gnawing at you.

If you’ve been paying attention to my past posts, you already know: A buys you time, B makes you an enemy, and C… well, that’s how people end up inside these things.

Scenario 4 – “Gunfire in the Night”

You’ve read the stories—nights in Hillfort don’t always stay quiet. This one’s no exception. Shots outside. Two trucks speeding away. A text from an unknown number:

Stay inside.

Do you…

1. Lock the doors and keep the lights off.
2. Call the police.
3. Grab a flashlight and head out to check.

If you’ve been here before, you know A is the safe play, B is… complicated (police aren’t always the safest bet), and C—well, that’s the kind of move that makes for an exciting chapter, but shortens your lifespan considerably.

Why This Quiz for Returning Readers?

If you’ve read my other Hillfort posts, you’ve already peeked into the mechanics of The Smoke Eater—how every choice my characters make has weight, cost, and consequence. But here’s the truth: knowing the lay of the land doesn’t mean you can survive it.

The real question is whether you can keep your head, your integrity, and your pulse when Hillfort starts to close in. This quiz is a way to test that—without the hospital bills.

Writing Hillfort’s No-Win Choices

When I built Hillfort, I didn’t want a clear “right” path. For you long-time readers, you’ve seen me talk about three key pillars in my process:

• Moral ambiguity – Nobody’s completely clean, nobody’s completely dirty.
• Unpredictable consequences – Playing it safe can be dangerous; taking risks can save you.
• Secrets within secrets – The moment you think you know it all, you find out you don’t.

Those elements are baked into these scenarios—familiar to my veteran readers, but still sharp enough to cut you.

Did You Make It Out Alive?

If you’ve been through my earlier posts and still answered cautiously here, you might last your first week in Hillfort. But no one gets to stay neutral forever.

If you went bold, challenged the power players, or dug where you shouldn’t, you probably didn’t make it past midweek—but you earned a dangerous kind of respect.

One Last Thing

If you enjoyed this, The Smoke Eater takes these choices and raises the stakes until the only way out is forward. And for those of you who’ve been following Hillfort’s shadowed streets with me for a while—thanks for sticking around.

You’ve seen the edges. Now it’s time to step inside.The Smoke Eater come out September 28, 2025, and we’ll have a pre-sales link soon.