I grew up in wide desert spaces where the horizon felt infinite.
There’s a kind of honesty in that landscape. Nothing hides. The light is sharp. The distances are clear. You can see what’s coming from miles away.
Living in the Pacific Northwest changed that for me.
Here, the forest closes around you. Light filters through layers. Sound carries differently. Things move in your peripheral vision. The ground itself feels alive underfoot.
That environment shifted something in my imagination.
In Ash and Hunger, the forest isn’t backdrop. It isn’t a neutral stage where events happen. It’s a boundary. It’s a threshold. It’s the place where the known world thins and something older presses through.
Forests, to me, represent the parts of reality we try to domesticate and never fully succeed. We can build roads through them. We can mark borders. We can claim ownership.
But the roots keep growing.
There’s something honest about decay in a forest. Rot feeds life. Fallen trees become soil. What looks like death is often transformation happening out of sight.
That idea shapes how I write magic.
The ancient ruins in the woods. The sword waiting to be found. The sense that something has been preserved, not abandoned. These elements aren’t accidents. They reflect a belief that history lingers. That the past is not gone just because we’ve built something new on top of it.
The forest is where Kael’s life fractures. It’s where Serenya steps beyond the carefully managed world she’s known. It’s the place that refuses to stay orderly.
I don’t write forests as safe.
I write them as places where truth waits.