Arctic Fire follows a former Marine as she battles PTSD, corruption, and hired violence in the Alaskan wilderness, where a fight over land and oil becomes a brutal test of duty, survival, and truth. What were some sources that informed this novels development?

The genesis of a powerful story must always start from within. For me, that started with my year-long deployment as a Squadron Commander in Kandahar, Afghanistan flying combat missions. I was making life-or-death decisions. Setting up defense against the Taliban while forward deployed. Sending men out on missions from which they didn’t return. Now I wasn’t in constant danger, but I worked with men and women who were. Then I came home. Everything that should be normal felt so foreign. I immediately went to Air War College and continued to reconnect with my wife and three children, all under 5 years old at the time.

That disconnect is the core. The violence you carry in your heart versus the peace you’re supposed to inhabit. This became Zoe’s core struggle. She lost. She lost big. But she also survived when others did not. This does something indescribable to people. It breaks them through grief and regret.

Now, the Alaska setting came from family. My parents spent years living in Alaska when they were young. They were on the same skydiving team there (it’s how they met). I grew up hearing stories about jumps, bush pilots, and remote locations. One day they told me about the land lottery of the 1970s and it sparked an idea. One that mirrored the current political pressure to open more federal wildlife refuges in order to access energy. I knew this was a concept that would be a never-ending conflict of ecology and power.

The collision of these led to Arctic Fire. Zoe’s not just fighting oil companies. She’s fighting the parts of herself that can’t reconcile. The external conflict mirrors the internal war.

The novel moves from Afghanistan’s heat to Alaska’s brutal cold. What drew you to that contrast, and how did setting shape the emotional tone of the story?​

First, irony is at the heart of every great story. Conflict. Duality.

Afghanistan and Alaska are these wonderful opposites. One is a scorching desert and the other is frozen wilderness. But in the end, they are both the same: unforgiving. Each demands constant vigilance. These harsh environments punish mistakes with death.

That parallel felt essential for Zoe’s arc. In Afghanistan, she made decisions under fire and duress. I cannot emphasize how hard these kinds of decisions are to make in real time. We have soldiers, sailors, and airman making them constantly. This is also Zoe’s life, to her core. It is common for operators to claim they were forged in the heat of combat.

In knifemaking, you take heated metal and supercool it in oil or water to forge a weapon. Alaska is the second half of this process. If done correctly, it makes a hardened and formidable blade. If done incorrectly, the shaft will shatter and snap.

I fought with the concept of how to portray this to the reader. In my early screenplay versions, I kept her wound hidden for a release at the end of the book. I, like so many screenwriters, was thinking about the surprise. But a surprise only lasts for a second. That’s why I changed my mind and moved the core injury forward to the beginning of the book. I wanted the reader to know and feel the agony over the length of the novel. To squirm under the knowledge of what had happened to Zoe, especially as many characters were unaware.

That made everything click. The cold now became metaphorical. Zoe’s grief had frozen her. She was self-medicating and avoiding human connection. Alaska’s landscape became a mirror of her emotional state. Lethal and isolated. The reader needed to inhabit pity and fear, not confusion.

Zoe couldn’t outrun the cycle that broke her. She could only learn to function within it.

Duty seems to run through the novel in several forms: military duty, family duty, civic duty, and duty to the truth. Was that theme central from the beginning?​

Duty is at the center of the book.

Zoe’s defined herself through duty her entire adult life. Duty to her Marines. Duty to her family. Then she loses both. Her unit is decimated through command failure. Her family, through a car accident she wasn’t there to prevent. Now she’s left without identity.

I’m a student of psychology. And one of the most amazing things about humans is that we need to know who we are and how we fit in society and life. When these are ripped away, it leaves someone unable to reconnect with what they lost. This, above all, leads to more suicides than anyone suspects.

Alaska forces Zoe to choose new duties. Duty to the Masons, who remind her what families fight for. Duty to Daniel Reeves, who’s pursuing truth when institutions have failed. Duty to the land itself, which represents something that endures and represents our frontier heritage. Duty to her position and as a representative of the federal government.

But what happens when these duties conflict? When protecting one duty means harming another? When two right answers conflict, now you’re in a dilemma. For someone who has also lost their connections in life, this can be a fatal problem.

Zoe’s military training taught duty as absolute. Real life often treats duty as a negotiation of conflicting values. That tension drives this novel.

What do you hope readers take away from Zoe’s fight to stay functional, protect others, and confront forces that want to erase both land and truth?​

I hope readers see that broken doesn’t mean finished.

Zoe’s drowning in PTSD and alcohol. There is no worse combination, yet we see it all too often. She’s barely functional at first and then gives up. People try to be there for her, they just don’t know how to help. The real takeaway is that healing and fixing someone are not the same thing. One is about endurance, the other is convenient fiction.

We all need purpose. When the Masons need someone who understands their problem, she’s the only option. And for her, stepping back up to the plate is difficult. The novel asks if you can be shattered and still show up? Can you lead when you don’t trust yourself?

The novel tries to say yes. But it isn’t on the usual Hollywood timelines. Zoe doesn’t magically get better after someone gives her a dramatic speech. No magic pill. She doesn’t even really get closure. She just learns to function despite the damage.

That’s the hardest truth to grasp: you don’t fix trauma. You carry it. Always. But it does become easier with time, support, and purpose.

I want readers to recognize courage isn’t absence of fear or pain. It’s action in the presence of both. Zoe’s fight isn’t about becoming whole again. It’s about protecting others even when it hurts. When it costs her something. But in the end, that same thing is what makes her strong once more.

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