Black Forest Protocol is an alternate-history thriller in which a UFO crash in Nazi Germany forces an SS officer to confront the gulf between domination and preservation when the regime tries to weaponize a sacred alien presence. What sparked the idea of placing a first-contact story inside Nazi Germany?

There had been reports and a number of journals/books dedicated to the Black Forest crash in 1936. This is roughly 10 years before the Roswell incident. Through my research on the rise of the Nazi regime, German manufacturing made extensive technological leaps from 1936 through 1939, prior to the invasion of Poland. It mirrored the technological leaps the US made post-Roswell. I used creative license to involve the Nazi SS and advanced technology/alien abilities that would have been used to reshape a totalitarian regime reality to fit ideology.

How did you approach writing Ernst Falk so that his moral awakening felt gradual and believable rather than heroic from the start?

The key was to start with competence instead of conscience. Falk is intelligent, disciplined, and emotionally detached. He isn’t written as a monster or a secret hero—he’s a professional who follows systems without questioning them. That makes his starting point believable and grounded. From there, I avoided any sudden “moral epiphany.” Instead, his change happens through accumulated friction: small moments that feel off, observations he can’t fully explain, and emotional reactions he initially suppresses. Importantly, he fails repeatedly. He hesitates, rationalizes, and makes the wrong choices even after he begins to feel doubt. That delay is what makes the awakening feel real—he understands before he acts. Finally, his awakening comes with cost, not reward. He loses certainty, identity, and alignment with the system that once defined him. He doesn’t become heroic—he becomes unable to ignore the truth.

The aliens feel mournful, vulnerable, and almost sacred. What did you want them to represent beyond their role in the plot?

The aliens were meant to represent a form of intelligence untouched by human corruption, that is something gentle, restrained, and morally unbroken. Their vulnerability highlights the contrast between coexistence and domination, making humanity’s instinct to control feel invasive rather than justified. They serve as a mirror to Falk and the reader, suggesting that intelligence doesn’t have to lead to cruelty—and that what we often call progress may actually be a loss of something more sacred.

How did you balance the book’s eldritch atmosphere and allegorical reach with the historical weight of writing about the Third Reich?​

I balanced the eldritch atmosphere with the historical weight of the Third Reich by keeping the human reality grounded and specific, never abstracting or stylizing the regime’s brutality, while letting the cosmic elements emerge as a destabilizing force around it. The horror doesn’t replace history; it intensifies it, exposing the dangers of ideology, control, and moral certainty when confronted with the unknowable. By anchoring the story in authentic human behavior and consequence, the allegory expands the meaning without diminishing the reality.

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