The Origin Story: Part 1 of 2

Featured Image: Proud Place at dusk: a fence, a watchtower, and a community trying to hold. It was the night before the line was crossed, and there was no coming back.

Every civilization thinks collapse belongs to someone else’s century.

Before we close out 2025 and look toward the 2026 release of Eulogy for the Stripes, I want to share where this story really began.

I’ve carried it since 1998.

For years, it lived as a horror story in my mind. Not dystopian, nor prophetic. Just something dark that refused to leave. Then the world shifted. Like the fall of Rome, you could feel the strain in society’s foundational tenets first. The old saying echoed louder: we are always one generation away from losing what makes a republic a republic.

The distance between safety and collapse is always shorter than people believe.

Then came COVID.

The distance between fiction and reality narrowed. I had the first dream. It didn’t feel imagined, but visited and real. I woke with the sense that I had been an overseer in the community of Proud Place myself and wrote what I could as quickly as possible, before it faded. That dream became the foundation for the opening chapters one through three.

The second dream came later. Heavier. Sharper. It now lives in chapters eight through ten. The most challenging work wasn’t dreaming. It was stitching the story between them, building chapters four through seven, closing Act One, and forcing the narrative into Act Two.

That took years.

Life kept pressing in. Work. Certifications. Family. Early mornings. Quiet nights. The book felt like applying for the same role over and over, only to hear “almost” every time. I thought about quitting more times than I’ll admit.

But I didn’t.

And I’m grateful the horror novel never got written. What emerged instead is a dystopian thriller shaped by faith, liberty, and the stubborn resilience of people who refuse to hand the future to fear. Yes, our national debt is racing toward $40 trillion. Yes, the cultural foundations feel fragile. Maybe Elon’s purchase of X slowed the descent for a moment. Time will tell how long. But our spiritual revival is never automatic. We must choose it before the dystopia arrives, not after.

My hope isn’t to predict the future, but to write a cautionary tale that asks what happens when we stop paying attention.

To those who serve, have served, or will serve — military, law enforcement, and first responders — your discipline and courage guard the line the rest of us depend on. This story carries that respect in its bones.

If the themes here resonate, the homepage explains how to acquire the first three chapters as we wait for the green light for Pre-Order, not as bait, but as an invitation to walk the road with me.

In the next post, I’ll share the second half of this origin story: how Proud Place came to life, and how the characters refused to stay quiet once they arrived.

Eulogy for the Stripes is coming.