i Why I write

My writing comes out of three things that have shaped me: my years serving in the U.S. Army, my study of psychology, and the slow, particular pain of trying to carry the Cross of Christ. Each brought its own revelations and its own suffering, of body and of spirit. And in the hardest of those seasons, I found that well-meaning pastors, priests, and Christian authors often seemed unsure what to do with genuine anguish.

Too often, suffering gets treated as a problem to be fixed rather than something to be walked through patiently. Real pain of body, mind, and soul is hand-waved away by pointing to the good it will someday produce — or worse, softened with platitudes that amount to little more than “chin up.” I do not begrudge anyone that instinct, but it was not what I needed, and it is not what many others need either. The rush toward resolution is a kind of erasure, however kindly meant. Suffering deserves precision, and space enough to be safely inhabited.

I return again and again to Job 10 — a man of deep faith who does not soften his complaint, who calls God’s justice and love into open question. Scripture lets the anguish stand. No editorial correction, no tidy explanation. That allowance is its own theology: it says our grief is legitimate, that we are permitted the anguish of our souls — and still, somehow, that the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. That is what I want my stories to offer. Put plainly: I want to articulate the exact shapes of human grief so clearly that a reader can feel the hidden, healing presence of God — without guilt for being exactly where they are.

ii What I write

I write dark fantasy, theological horror, and historical fiction with an Eastern Orthodox theological bend — work that ventures into the territory more traditional fiction tends to avoid. These are not the tidy, redemptive stories of mainline Christian publishing. They are darker, grittier, and unwilling to look away.

I stand for the conviction that darkness in fiction is not a problem to be resolved but a space to be inhabited honestly. The heart of it is simple: Christ enters into human suffering rather than bypassing it. The Incarnation is a descent into it. So when I write of the sickness of mankind, I am not trading a hopeful worldview for a nihilistic one — God forbid. I am using these genres as a means of venturing into the dark for the express purpose of carrying the Light of Christ to those who dwell there.

iii For whom

The readers who take to my work tend to be patient. They read slowly — not from any inability to read quickly, but from a desire to truly inhabit the worlds and questions set before them. They distrust easy answers and are drawn to fiction that takes faith seriously without sanding away its difficulty.

I write for the reader who is angry at God and needs that anger treated as something other than a spiritual failure to be corrected. Not so that they remain there — repentance and healing must ultimately come — but because grief and anger and wounds deserve their space, patiently borne, before any resolution can be properly integrated. I write for the ones who are spiritually drowning, handed too many lifeboats that do not float; for those grown numb to the gentle movements of grace; and for those willing to undertake the difficult work of learning empathy for the “other” in an age of darkness.