Why I Write Stories About Power and Choice

There is a question that follows me into every story I write:

What do people become when they are forced to choose? Not easy choices. Not obvious ones. But the kind that tests identity. Loyalty. Survival. The kind that reveals who we are when comfort is stripped away.

Before I understood it intellectually, I felt it emotionally. From a young age, my grandmother poured into me and my dreams. She provided me with the tools I needed to be successful, but more importantly, she fostered my love of writing. When others told me I couldn’t do something, she reminded me that I could. When doubt tried to settle in, she countered it with belief.

She taught me something powerful without ever framing it as philosophy: belief is a form of power. Encouragement is a form of power. Choice is a form of power. And sometimes, survival begins with someone choosing to believe in you.

I have always been drawn to stories where power is uneven — where someone holds it, someone wants it, and someone must live under it. Power fascinates me not because of dominance, but because of consequence. It reshapes relationships. It rewrites memory. It exposes fault lines in families and communities.

Choice is where the truth lives. In my writing, characters are rarely offered a clean path. They are often navigating fractured systems, inherited burdens, generational expectations, or histories that refuse to stay buried. I am interested in the tension between survival and integrity—and what happens when they no longer align.

This is especially true in Historian of the Wasteland. At its core, the novel asks:

What is worth remembering? And who gets to decide? In a world where memory is currency and truth is dangerous, power is not just political — it is personal. The act of choosing what to preserve, what to reveal, and what to protect becomes an act of rebellion.

I don’t write heroes who are untouched by compromise. I write characters who wrestle. Who hesitates. Who sometimes fail. Because moral complexity feels honest to me. And honesty — even when unsettling — is what lingers long after the final page. As I continue building new stories and worlds, this theme remains constant. Power. Survival. Identity. The cost of choice.

But beneath all of it is something quieter — a legacy of belief. A reminder that the earliest power we experience often comes from those who tell us we are capable before we believe it ourselves.

If you are drawn to stories that ask difficult questions and sit with uncomfortable truths, you are exactly where you need to be.

Thanks for being here!