I did not set out to write fan fiction.
I found it the way most people do, through a story that ended too soon. Someone built a world I wanted to stay in, and then they stopped, and I did not know what to do with that. So, I started writing.
First, I read Greg Younger's Stupid Boy, which led to SmokinDriver's Nick series. By the time Cold Creek launched the Defenceman series, I had invested enough to read every chapter on the day it posted. Michael Stewart was a character you did not encounter very often, someone whose decency was not a weakness and whose story kept earning its next chapter. The collegiate career, the Olympic arc, and how Cold Creek took matters off the ice as seriously as those on it. I was not a casual reader by the time that series ran its course.
Then Refusenik. Island Mine opened a different kind of story, and I wanted more. Waylon Eckermann explored what a decent, principled person does when something extraordinary arrives. Scott MacIntyre, a Marine, operated a West Texas bar. His story posed a subdued version of the same query: what does a man destined for significance do when his fulfilled life faces upheaval? Refusenik was building toward something real with both characters.
And then nothing. Both Cold Creek and Refusenik, within a few years of each other, went quiet. Michael Stewart, Waylon Eckermann, and Scott MacIntyre were all mid-story. I kept checking back. I continued to hope, and to be honest, my hope persists. But at some point, I stopped waiting for their return and started asking a different question.
Not whether I could do what they did. I cannot. I write in my voice, and my voice is not theirs, and the most respectful thing I can offer these characters is honesty about that. Instead, I asked a simpler question: what happens next? Where do Michael Stewart, Waylon Eckermann, and Scott MacIntyre go?
That question is where I live now.
I have been writing in these worlds for a while. Defenceman: Parallel Ice was my attempt to give Michael Stewart's story a proper close before opening something larger. Writing in their worlds is how I say thank you.
A new novel, The Vallis Defense: Cold Human, launches in July. More on that soon.
CCTW