The story began with an idea I had carried since 1998. I grew up loving horror novels, video games, and the kind of outdoor childhood you could still experience in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, I envisioned it as a short horror story, but I never found the time or the right structure to write it.

During the COVID era, I had two unusually vivid dreams that transformed the original idea into a dystopian thriller. Both dreams eventually became part of the novel’s first act. From there, the story grew into something larger: an examination of faith, family, liberty, responsibility, and what one generation must preserve for the next.

The dreams helped the story become the novel it needed to be. My family’s support gave me the resolve and space to finish it.

The central theme is that loyalty becomes difficult when institutions no longer uphold the principles they were created to protect.

Eulogy for the Stripes follows military personnel, citizens, families, public officials, and private-sector professionals facing pressure from different directions. Governments operate through offices, agencies, procedures, parties, systems, and incentives. Any of those can fail, drift from their purpose, or become distorted over time.

A constitutional republic must be rooted in something deeper: rights, restraint, accountability, consent, duty, and the moral limits of power. When those principles weaken, ordinary people must decide what they owe to their families, communities, consciences, and country.

I hope readers leave thinking about responsibility rather than despair.

Eulogy for the Stripes is a cautionary story about what can happen when constitutional guardrails weaken and ordinary people assume someone else will protect what matters. I wrote it for men and women, and as a husband and father, with the belief that freedom cannot be sustained by institutions alone.

It also requires citizens who remain attentive, vote, serve their communities, understand the principles they are asked to defend, and recognize when temporary exceptions begin becoming permanent habits. If the novel creates meaningful conversations about faith, family, duty, liberty, and the future of the republic, it has fulfilled part of its purpose.

The title serves as a eulogy for a republic, not for an individual.

The “Stripes” refer to the American flag and the principles it represents: sacrifice, liberty, duty, restraint, and constitutional government. The story examines what happens when the flag remains flying, but the meaning beneath it begins to weaken.

I wanted the title to carry both honor and mourning. It salutes those who have sacrificed for the country while warning that symbols alone cannot preserve a republic if the people and institutions beneath them no longer uphold the principles those symbols represent.

I chose 2049 because I wanted the future to feel tangible rather than remote.

I grew up reading Marvel Comics 2099, so I understood the appeal of placing a speculative story far into the future. But Ronald Reagan’s warning that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction kept drawing the novel closer to the present.

The year 2049 gave current political, technological, financial, and social pressures enough time to develop while allowing the world to remain recognizable to today’s reader.

The Texas Panhandle came from the first dream that influenced the novel. Although I grew up in South Texas, the story moved north because the Panhandle offered a different kind of isolation, exposure, strategic pressure, and physical conflict.

The novel does not rely on one central villain. Its primary threat is systemic.

That choice was intentional. The danger develops through institutions, incentives, technology, financial pressure, public fear, political calculation, and the gradual normalization of decisions that would once have seemed unacceptable.

AtlasPay, the financial institution in the novel, draws partly from my experience in banking, financial technology, logistics, and complex program delivery. I wanted the story to move beyond familiar dystopian threats such as zombies, electromagnetic pulses, or nuclear war. Those stories can be powerful, but this novel examines a different danger: constitutional, technological, financial, and social forces converging until ordinary people become trapped inside systems they once trusted.

The greatest challenges were time, restraint, and plausibility.

I wanted to be the best husband and father I could be while continuing to carry significant professional responsibilities in high-pressure environments. That meant writing time was always limited and had to be protected.

Restraint was equally important. I could not address every political, technological, constitutional, or social concern and still write a disciplined, fast-moving thriller. I had to decide which ideas advanced the characters and which ones, however interesting, slowed the story down.

Plausibility was the third challenge. I wanted the dystopia to feel heightened but recognizable, not exaggerated for effect. That required drawing on real-world experience, looking beyond the immediate news cycle, and considering how pressure might compound across institutions, infrastructure, finance, communications, leadership, and public trust.

Trust is the most important element.

I came to writing first as a lifelong reader and as someone who has spent years working with interconnected systems. Good writing must make the world feel real enough that the reader stops noticing the author guiding them through it.

For me, that requires physical realism, emotional realism, and consequence. Characters should experience genuine pressure. Their decisions should carry costs. Their mistakes should matter. Even extraordinary events need to feel grounded in understandable human behavior.

I want readers to become immersed in the world, but I also want them to feel that every action has weight and that the characters must keep moving even when no choice is clean.

Writers have always relied on libraries, subject-matter experts, primary sources, professional experience, and careful observation. I still believe in that discipline.

I also use modern research tools, including AI-assisted research, scenario testing, comparison, and proofreading. Those tools can help identify questions, test assumptions, or reveal areas that need stronger verification, but they do not replace authorship or judgment. The writing, characters, interpretation, and final decisions remain mine.

My professional background gave me a broad foundation in systems, infrastructure, governance, technology, finance, public safety, logistics, and practical mechanics. That helped me ask more specific questions about how the fictional world would function.

For example, it is one thing to ask what a burning building smells like. It is another to understand what materials are inside the building, how they burn, how the smoke changes, and what the heat and air would feel like to the people trapped inside.

Proud Place is another example. I wanted the small, faith-based rural Texas community to feel physically real rather than like a vague backdrop. That meant thinking through its structures, materials, terrain, resources, vulnerabilities, and the way those elements would behave under pressure.

The best place is mfmcgehee.com. Readers can also find me on X at @mfmcgehee, or search for Eulogy for the Stripes if the title is easier to remember than the spelling of my name.

I designed the website to feel like an extension of the novel rather than a standard author page. Its parchment tones, navy background elements, and crimson accents reflect the atmosphere and visual identity of the story.

Readers can watch the cinematic book trailer, explore the cover and concept art, sign up for the newsletter and first three chapters, watch a short introduction to the novel, and read spoiler-free essays on the Transmissions page.

The site also includes the dedicated Eulogy for the Stripes Book Page, the Book Club Kit, Press Kit, appearances and events, social links, and additional background on the world behind the story.

I studied nearly fifty author websites while building it because I wanted the experience to feel immersive for readers, not merely informational.