The Unspoken Words

 Some detectives are chasing criminals. Ben Eliot is running from ghosts. When I started writing Song of Shadows , I didn't need a hero. I needed a man haunted by silence. Someone who knows that the truth is rarely pure - and often comes in blood. Ben left Willow Creek twenty years ago with a bloodstained jacket and a name he didn't want to keep. He's been running ever since - through motel rooms, fake IDs, cheap bourbon, and cases that mirror his own fractured past. He's not one to kick down doors or make speeches. He observes. He memorizes. And when he finally returns home, he brings with him not answers - but more questions. What I like most about Ben is that he's not fearless - he's just tired of pretending. He's sarcastic, aloof, but somewhere deep inside him there's still a flame of who he used to be. Song of Shadows is as much about him remembering his old self as it is about solving the mystery of Emily Carter's disappearance. In many ways, ...

  There’s something about small towns that stays with you — or maybe refuses to let you go. Willow Creek, the setting of Song of Shadows , isn’t a real place on the map — but in many ways, it feels more real than the towns I’ve lived in. It came to life from a single question: What if a town could remember everything — and forgive nothing? I imagined a place where rust creeps over every signpost, where old men sit on the same benches watching everyone who returns, and where secrets grow deeper than tree roots. I chose Maine for its fog, its rivers, its silence. It felt like the kind of place where guilt lingers in the air like woodsmoke — slow, dense, and inescapable. Willow Creek is not just a backdrop. It’s a character. A witness. And sometimes, a judge. The town knows who you were, what you did, and what you ran from. That’s why when Ben Ellit returns, the streets don’t greet him — they glare. The town is layered: with history, decay, and memory. I built it from fragments —...