There’s something almost unnerving about watching fireworks light up the night sky while you’re inside, writing about something that, without giving too much away, also involves a sky being lit up for reasons far more unsettling.
That was my reality on July 4, 2025. While most of the country was grilling burgers, waving flags, and setting off bottle rockets, I was on my phone most of the day at family get-togethers typing out Chapters 11 and 12 of Ephemeris (aka StarHammer). They’re pivotal to the whole Man Man Sky story. The turning point. The moment when the truth starts to burn through the haze, whether the characters are ready for it or not.
The Odd Sync of Fiction and Reality
It wasn’t planned. I didn’t read that Wired article and think If I time things just right… I didn’t look at my outline and say You know what would make this part better? Writing it on Independence Day. It just happened to be where I was in the manuscript when the calendar landed on July 4.
But once I realized the overlap, I couldn’t stop noticing the strange parallels. Outside my window: explosions of color, the sound of distant cheers. On my tiny screen: a very different kind of spectacle, a broadcast meant to inspire awe but layered with tension, propaganda, and consequence.
In real life, fireworks meant to be harmless symbols. Bright bursts in the sky that faded almost as quickly as they appeared. In Ephemeris, StarHammer is something else entirely. The fireworks are just the window dressing for what’s really happening.
Writing to the Soundtrack of Celebration
There’s a peculiar feeling when you’re writing something that’s heavy, calculated, and emotionally charged while the air outside smells like barbecue and sparklers. It’s almost like two versions of America existing side by side: one carefree, one quietly questioning.
Every pop and boom outside seemed to echo the fictional display I was describing, but with a different emotional weight. My neighbors’ fireworks were for fun. The ones in my story? For show.
And maybe that’s why the writing felt so urgent that night. I could feel the contrast in my bones: the celebration outside and the underlying tension inside my head.
Why It Hit Different
I’ve always thought of July 4 as a day of dualities. Pride and reflection. Celebration and critique. It’s a day when we talk about freedom while acknowledging that freedom has always been complicated. Writing StarHammer that day felt like stepping straight into that paradox and staying there for hours.
The fictional world of Ephemeris doesn’t map directly onto ours, but the themes have resonance. In the book, StarHammer is a moment meant to define history, and how people respond to it reveals more about them than the event itself.
That’s not far off from real life. Our shared events: holidays, news cycles, national moments…are just a stage. What matters is what we do with them afterward.
The Weight of Chapters 11 and 12
Even without spoilers, I can say that Chapters 11 and 12 are where the book turns a corner. They’re the kind of chapters you can’t rush, because the tone and pacing have to be just right. The shift from spectacle to reality has to be sharp enough to leave a mark, but subtle enough to feel real.
These chapters also carry the burden of tying past choices to future consequences. It’s where the reader starts to feel the tremors of decisions made long before the first page. And it’s where I, as the writer, have to be at my most disciplined: balancing the temptation to overexplain with the need to let readers connect the dots themselves.
Writing them on July 4 didn’t make that job easier. But it did make it more vivid.
The Afterglow (and the Hangover)
When I finally stopped typing that night, the neighborhood fireworks had ended. The air was thick with smoke and the faint smell of gunpowder. My ears were still ringing from both the outside noise and the inside intensity.
It felt a little like I’d been through my own celebration. Only mine was private and much heavier. I’d crossed a big milestone in the book, and I knew it. But unlike the bursts of light outside, this milestone wasn’t going to fade in ten seconds. It was going to cast a shadow over every chapter that followed.
What Stays With Me
Three things linger from that night:
- The contrast: Celebration outside, calculated tension on the page.
- The timing: How unplanned it was, yet how perfectly it lined up thematically.
- The realization: That sometimes, the best writing moments aren’t about the perfect setup. They’re about leaning into the moment you’re given, even if it’s a strange one.
That’s the thing about writing a book that lives in your head: life doesn’t stop for it. Sometimes, life syncs with it in unexpected ways, and when it does, you have to capture that spark.
When Ephemeris is finally in readers’ hands, most people will have no idea that I wrote StarHammer’s turning point on Independence Day. But I will. And I think, quietly, it will always make those chapters feel a little more alive to me…like they carry the echo of that night. The mingled sounds of celebration and unease, the scent of smoke drifting in through the window while I typed as fast as I could on my little iPhone .
Because that’s writing, really: holding two things at once. The light and the dark. The heart and the head. The celebration and the reckoning. And if you’re lucky, the words you write in those moments will carry both.
