Some films misread the assignment. Some ignore it entirely. Wing Commander had the assignment written on the box — beloved franchise, built-in audience, a universe already mapped across a decade of games and books — and it still turned in someone else's homework.

The result is a film that has humanity on the brink, a war-winning MacGuffin in enemy hands, a half-breed outsider nobody trusts, and a ticking clock counting down to Earth's destruction. It sounds like everything you'd want.

It plays like someone describing a great film rather than making one.

Week four behind a coffee machine, and somewhere between the noise of a toddler disco and the quiet of midnight, a sci-fi trilogy is being written. New job, same midnight sessions — exhausting days don't stop the writing, they just change its shape.

Burn the Sky: Book 2 Redemption is have its final chapters edited, the next trilogy is taking shape, and the writing desk is seeing more late nights than it probably should. This one is about editing the past while building the future, the trap of chasing perfection, and why the version you almost published is the one nobody reads.

A KGB defector sits down for an interview.
You expect talk of spies, secrets—something explosive. Instead, he describes something quieter. A process that takes years. One that changes how people think without them realising it.

It doesn’t sound like a thriller. It sounds like science fiction, and a familiar one at that.

This is Stage One.