There are moments in a writer’s life that feel less like milestones and more like thresholds, the kind you cross with your breath held and your heart wide open. Today is one of those moments for me. After eight years of imagining, researching, doubting, stopping, restarting, rewriting, and sometimes simply staring at the wall and wondering what I had gotten myself into, I am finally able to say the words I’ve waited nearly a decade to speak.
The 51st State is finished. Will be released on, Novemebr 25th, 2025… Alive.
Even typing that brings a little tremor to my chest. This book has been a companion, a challenge, a puzzle, and at times a fierce teacher. We began this journey together in January of 2017, when the world felt different in ways that are hard to describe and yet impossible to forget. Donald Trump had just begun his first presidency. California was deep in an extreme drought. North America was buzzing, cracking, shifting. And I, doing what writers do, let my imagination wander into the uncomfortable terrain of what if?
Where It All Began
It started with a single question, small enough to write on a sticky note, big enough to keep me awake:
What would happen if the United States wanted Canada’s water?
And because my imagination has the curiosity of a raven and the stubbornness of a mule, it didn’t stop there.
What if they didn’t just want the water?
What if they took it?
What would actually happen on the ground? In the air? In the halls of power? In the hearts of Canadians?
To answer those questions responsibly, I did what any self-respecting novelist with a spiritual-warrior streak does.
I called my friends.
Not the ones who would comfort me or humor me. The ones who know things. The ones who have served. The ones who have worn uniforms, sat at command centers, flown aircraft, built protocols, dealt with classified systems, or seen firsthand what governments can do when they feel entitled to resources.
Those conversations were an eye-opener in ways I could never have predicted.
Some of those talks were matter-of-fact. Some were unsettling. A few stopped me in my tracks. It was like being given a pair of glasses that showed a version of the world that polite society doesn’t acknowledge. My fictional scenario was no longer hypothetical. It was suddenly plausible.
And that, more than anything, was when The 51st State stopped being just a story idea and became a mission.
The Cyber Shift
Once the military side was anchored in realism, my mind went hunting for the next layer.
If a modern conflict were to unfold between North American nations, brute force wouldn’t be the only battlefield. Cybersecurity, infrastructure vulnerabilities, digital infiltration, these would be the silent weapons beneath the noise.
So I turned to my friends in cyber security, server protection, penetration testing, and digital forensics. This crew doesn’t mince words. Their job is to see danger where others see convenience, to find cracks where others see sleek design. Their insights added a new dimension to my story, one that was colder, quieter, more precise.
I realized that if someone wanted to cripple a nation, they wouldn’t have to start with bombs.
They could start with code.
Between these military and cyber discussions, the book began to swell into something layered, something gritty, something bigger than I expected when I first scribbled that “what if?” in my notebook.
And then, as life tends to do, everything shifted.
The Detour Through Other Worlds
I set The 51st State aside. Not because I wanted to, because another story seized me by the collar and refused to let go. An Unregistered Male arrived like a storm. Then Shavon Sun Cloud: The Alchemy of the Heart. My creative river forked into several tributaries at once.
For a while, I felt guilty. Writers are good at that. We imagine our manuscripts waiting for us in dark rooms, arms crossed, tapping their feet. But stories have their own timing. Their own seasons. The 51st State wasn’t ready. And, truthfully, neither was I.
Then the world turned once more.
The Spark That Rekindled the Flame
When Donald Trump returned to power and casually referred to Canada as “The 51st State,” something ancient and primal stirred in me. Call it patriotism. Call it warrior spirit. Call it the beating heart of a Canadian who loves his country fiercely even while seeing its flaws.
Whatever it was, it lit the fuse again.
Suddenly the story that had been dozing in the corner snapped its eyes open. The characters who had been whispering quietly stood up and spoke clearly. The plotlines that once tangled suddenly aligned. Everything the military personnel had shared with me. Everything the cyber experts had taught me. Everything I had lived through as a man, a coach, an author, a Canadian, it all crystallized.
For the first time, I felt ready to finish the book.
More importantly, the book felt ready to be finished.
Eight Years is a Long Time
People sometimes ask why a book takes so long. The honest answer is that a novel isn’t a product. It’s a relationship. Sometimes you’re dancing beautifully together. Sometimes you’re not speaking. Sometimes you need space. Sometimes you need to tear each other apart to discover what the story really wants to be.
The 51st State walked with me through:
- A shifting political climate
- Writing multiple other books
- Releasing work under a new pen name
- The growth of my coaching business
- Marathons, quiet mornings, and meditative bike rides
- Lessons about resilience, sovereignty, and heart-centered leadership
This book aged with me. It matured as I did. It stopped being just a geopolitical thriller and grew into something layered with moral questions, human cost, and the bittersweet threads of patriotism and responsibility.
What the Book Became
By the time I wrote the final page, I realized The 51st State is not a story about war.
It’s a story about identity.
About power.
About what happens when nations forget that they are made of people, not resources.
About what loyalty means when borders are no longer lines on a map but scars in the heart.
It is fiction grounded in truths I learned over hundreds of hours of conversation with those who have sworn oaths to protect, those who understand the digital shadows we live in, and those who know the price of freedom is never theoretical.
Is it political?
Yes and No!
Is it provocative?
Absolutely.
Is it rooted in my deep love for Canada?
Without question.
A Long Road to This Moment
To say I’m excited would be an understatement. I feel proud. I feel relieved. I feel like a warrior who has finally delivered the message he was entrusted with. But there is also a gentler piece of my heart that simply feels grateful.
Grateful for the people who helped me research.
Grateful for those who encouraged me when the book went quiet.
Grateful for the readers who waited, and for the new ones who will join me now.
Grateful that I get to write at all.
Grateful to be Canadian.
Grateful to finally set this story free.
The Book Is Yours Now
Once a book leaves the author’s hands, it stops being mine. It becomes yours. You will bring your own feelings, fears, memories, and patriotism to it. You will interpret scenes in ways I never imagined. You will feel things I cannot predict.
And that, to me, is the magic of storytelling.
So here I am, after eight years of gestation, incubation, procrastination, revelation, and determination, saying with both joy and humility:
The 51st State is released.
Thank you for walking this road with me.
Now let the story unfold in your hands.
If you’ve ever wondered what might happen when political bravado collides with scarcity, when cyber warfare meets military force, when sovereignty is challenged and Canadians are pushed to their limit, this book is for you.
And if you love a good story… well, this one has been waiting a long time to meet you.
