As a storyteller, authenticity matters to me more than spectacle. Anyone can describe what war looks like. Fewer can describe what it feels like—and even fewer can explain why those sensations matter. Real conflict isn’t cinematic. It’s noise that never fully stops, the kind that leaves a constant ringing in your ears. It’s the smell of unwashed bodies mixed with dirt, fuel, hot metal, and old smoke that clings to everything. It’s acrid air that burns your throat, sweat that stings as it runs through cuts you didn’t even notice at the time, and machinery that vibrates through your bones. War isn’t one sensation—it’s a thousand happening all at once.

I also know that everyone experiences the same moment differently. One person remembers fear. Another remembers boredom. Someone else remembers the smell of oil or the strange calm when everything goes quiet. None of those memories are wrong. That’s why I’m careful not to pretend there’s a single, universal truth. Reality is fragmented and personal, and if you ignore that, the story feels fake no matter how polished the prose is.

That same mindset carries into everything I write. I spend hours—sometimes days—researching not to show off facts, but to make the impossible feel believable. Even when something is hypothetical, futuristic, or hasn’t been built yet, it has to make sense. It has to feel like it could exist. For me, storytelling isn’t about shortcuts or exaggeration. It’s about respect—for the reader, for lived experience, and for the idea that the truth, even when imagined, is always messier, louder, and more human than fiction wants it to be.