I didn’t set out to write about broken systems.
I set out to write about people who are trying to survive.
But the longer I write, and the older I get, the harder it is to separate the two.
No one grows up in a vacuum. We inherit rules, structures, hierarchies, and quiet expectations before we ever understand them. Some of those structures protect us. Some of them limit us. Some of them quietly decide our value long before we get a chance to speak for ourselves.
In Ash and Hunger, Kael is born into poverty so deep it shapes every decision he makes. Hunger narrows the world. It sharpens it. It forces him to think in terms of immediate survival. Serenya, on the other hand, is born into power. She has food, education, influence, access. And yet her world is just as tightly controlled. Her life is negotiated in rooms she doesn’t enter. Her value is measured in alliances and bloodlines.
Two cages. Different materials. Same suffocation.
That tension fascinates me.
I’m drawn to the moment when a character begins to see the structure around them clearly. Not just as “the way things are,” but as something constructed. Designed. Maintained. Defended.
That realization is destabilizing. It’s rarely loud. It often arrives quietly, through a crack in the story they’ve been told.
When someone recognizes the system is flawed, they face a choice. Adapt to it. Fight it. Exploit it. Escape it. Break it.
Those choices drive my stories more than any villain ever could.
Because the real question isn’t whether a system is broken.
It’s what you’re willing to risk once you see the break.