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How I Came Up With The Lost Hero

There wasn’t one single “eureka” moment for this book, more a chain of small sparks that finally caught.

One spark came from my own service. I joined the British Army young, passed P Company, and served in the Royal Artillery through the 1990s. Soldiering leaves you with a certain way of seeing the world: how a room sounds when boots hit the floor at first light, how a joke lands after a hard day because it has to, how a mate’s nod can carry more reassurance than a speech. I wanted to bottle that feeling, discipline, camaraderie, fear, pride, and pour it into a story that felt honest.

Another spark was time spent with veterans, from lads my age to legends like “Fred,” 91 and still sharper than most of us. Over breakfasts and long walks, I heard the kind of stories that get lost if someone doesn’t write them down. Not just battles, but the in-betweens: boredom, banter, grit, and quiet acts of courage no one ever sees. Those conversations convinced me this book should be a salute, not just to those who served, but to those who waited at home.

The final spark was closer to the bone: watching someone I love fade into dementia. It changes the shape of memory. You realise how fragile our stories are, and how vital it is to hold on to them. That’s where the heart of The Lost Hero came from: a son reading to his father, knitting together the past so it won’t unravel.

The Concept I Chased

I wanted a father–son story set against the backdrop of British airborne history, intimate in scale, big in feeling. The present-day thread is simple: Michael sits with his dad, William, whose memory is slipping, and reads to him. As the pages turn, we cut to the life William lived: young, sharp, and stubborn; a paratrooper standing his ground when it counted.

Those flashbacks travel through real moments that shaped generations: the jungle fight at Plaman Mapu in 1965, street patrols in Belfast in the early ’70s, and the bitter cold of the Falklands in ’82. I built the scenes around details soldiers will recognise, wet webbing, cam cream, SLR heft, the smell of boot polish, because authenticity isn’t a garnish; it’s the meal.

Structurally, I wanted rhythm: quiet, tender chapters at the bedside; then the heat and noise of soldiering; then back again to the soft light and the creak of a chair. That contrast does the emotional lifting. It says: this is the cost, and this is the love that pays it.

Why Fiction (Not Memoir)

Fiction gave me room to honour truth without naming names. It let me blend the feel of real operations with an original family story, to chase emotional accuracy over documentary detail. The aim wasn’t to write a history textbook, it was to write something that feels true in the chest.

What I Hope You Feel

Pride, for the men and women who’ve worn the uniform, and for the families who carried them. Recognition, for the small, unshowy moments of courage we rarely talk about. Remembrance, because memory matters, especially when it’s slipping away.

A Promise to Readers

The Lost Hero is my salute, to veterans, to spouses and children, to mates we’ll never forget. If you’ve served, I hope you see yourself here. If you haven’t, I hope this book lets you sit in our world for a while and understand why the bonds run so deep.

Read the book: The Lost Hero is available now on Kindle (link in my bio/profile).

Tomorrow’s post: “From Notebook to Novella – How I Structured the Story (and Kept It Honest).”