Hemingway’s advice to writers was to “write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” That’s where all my novels start, with truth. And then I follow that truth wherever it may lead.
Sometimes that’s a teenage scavenger hunted across the stars, forced to negotiate with traumatized alien intelligences instead of being enslaved by them. Sometimes it’s a young woman disguised as a boy, on the run for murder, using her wits to crack historically-accurate ciphers and stop a regicide. Sometimes it’s a soldier making command decisions where one mistake costs lives—and living with those consequences long after the battle ends. Sometimes it’s a woman who never wanted to be anyone’s messiah, burning down a 3,000-year empire from the inside.
The settings change—military fantasy, space opera, historical spy thriller, YA adventure—but the pressure stays constant. My protagonists think their way through impossible situations, make hard choices with permanent consequences, and survive by intelligence as much as strength.
Readers have compared my work to Joe Abercrombie, Richard Morgan, and Glen Cook for the unflinching violence and moral complexity—but with the cultural worldbuilding and political sophistication of writers like Arkady Martine and Ursula K. Le Guin. I’m after that intersection: genre fiction that takes ideas seriously without pulling punches on what conflict actually costs.
I write in the tradition of Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark trilogy—adventure fiction that treats serious philosophical questions with uncompromising honesty, that respects reader intelligence, that refuses to simplify moral complexity
And then I rip off the guardrails.
People die. Not as noble sacrifices that advance the plot—they just die, like people do. Victories cost something permanent. PTSD doesn’t reset between chapters. The moral complexity is baked into the story, not delivered as lecture. You’ll get the genre experience you came for: the firefights, the starship battles, the conspiracies, the magic.
But you won’t get any easy answers.
Because my books are Rorschach tests with teeth—structured moral arguments disguised as adventure fiction. How you respond to the impossible choices my characters face reveals what you actually believe about power, violence, and the limits of utilitarian ethics.
I recognize that might make some readers uncomfortable. And that’s good. Discomfort is the point. Comfort is complacency, and the world can’t afford that.
Especially not now.
I see articles bemoaning men not reading recent literary works exploring what it means to be a man. My bet is more men would read if those literary works were as good as Born in Battle instead of being bloodless academic musings that are homework with a thin veneer of story.
5-Star Goodreads Review
You can see what happens when I push that approach through three books spanning nearly half a million words in Born in Battle—the final chapter of my #1 bestselling Military Fantasy and War Fiction trilogy Doomsday Recon. It follows a soldier’s arc from green optimism into the kind of darkness that can eat you from the inside out like a cancer.
Readers have called it “a literary work in a military fiction trench coat with a fantasy fedora and sci-fi time-traveling accessories,” “likely one of the most terrifying horror stories I have read since I stumbled across H.P. Lovecraft,” and praised it for its authenticity: “What makes [it] work so well is the author’s grasp of small unit cohesion in a modern military… This book does it better than any other I’ve read.”
Long after reading they’re still lying awake at night thinking about duty, sacrifice, and what it costs to keep going.
Ryan is an exceptionally talented writer—absolutely on the shortlist of the best writers I’ve worked with in my fifteen-year career. Every interaction is a pleasure.
David Gatewood, Editor-in-Chief, WarGate Books
Ryan Williamson is a Canadian expatriate who chose to serve America as a U.S. Army Cavalry Scout, and writes stories that aim to entertain while asking hard questions about systemic oppression, necessary violence, and moral compromise. He and his wife live in the Pacific Northwest with their pack of unruly dogs, and have four kids, including an actively serving Army Ranger.
You can find him on your favorite social media platform as @rywilwrite.
What You Can Read Now
Doomsday Recon: When a freak rainstorm transports Army Cav Scout Nephi Bennett and his platoon from 1989 Panama to a brutal fantasy world ruled by an Aztec god, survival becomes their only mission. In the Land of the Black Sun, fuel runs low and ammunition dwindles as they face savage beasts, witches, and tribes demanding human sacrifice. This #1 bestselling military fantasy trilogy follows a soldier’s arc from optimism into darkness that doesn’t reset between chapters—a tale of duty, sacrifice, and the cost of keeping your humanity when an ancient evil rewards your worst impulses.
The Widow’s Son: Utah, 1867: When demons abduct a widow’s infant son—a child born of supernatural forces—Federal Agent Zarahemla Two Crows faces a malevolent enemy from his past. The young pioneer mother insists on joining the reluctant lawman, and together they’re thrust into a continent-spanning apocalypse. Aided by a vampire-slaying nun and a steam-mech pilot, these unlikely heroes battle through a haunted American West filled with skin-walkers, zombies, and ancient evils. Their quest leads them through the gates of Hell itself to prevent the resurrection of a godlike entity of darkness—where faith and six-guns are their only salvation in a world where the West got weird.
A Fistful of Demons: Headlined by veteran storyteller David J. West, this massive anthology assembles over twenty of the freshest voices in the Weird West genre into 600+ pages of supernatural gunslinging action. Inspired by The Widow’s Son, these tales weave North American mythology, magic, alternate histories, and steampunk into the grit of the Old West. From undead plagues and demon hunters to ancient evils and unholy relics, each story delivers the genre-bending thrills of classics like Deadlands and The Dark Tower. Keep the Good Book close and your six-gun closer—this tome is bursting at the seams with weird western adventure.
Little Mouse: Mia’s daddy is a large, frightening man who hits Mama—but he’s never touched Mia. She’s his “little mouse.” Trapped in a world of domestic violence, young Mia wishes she wasn’t little. She wishes she was strong. She wishes she could make it stop. Tonight, Mia discovers she can. In this haunting tale of paranormal horror, a child’s desperate need for protection awakens something dark and powerful within her. Brutal yet beautifully crafted, this short story explores the terrible cost of childhood trauma and the monsters we become to survive. Received an Honorable Mention from the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest in 2015.
Coming Soon
Doors to the Stars: A YA Science Fiction novel about a dying sixteen-year-old scavenger named Wulan who discovers an ancient alien artifact in the ruins of a dead world. The Forger disk calls to her in her mother’s lullaby, offering her the power to reactivate the gates connecting thousands of worlds—but at a terrible cost. Rescued by a smuggler crew who becomes her found family, Wulan must navigate deadly space and negotiate with traumatized alien intelligences while evading the tyrannical Ascendancy. As the disk changes her, she faces an impossible choice: sacrifice her humanity to save the galaxy, or stay herself and watch it burn. Available April 28th, 2026. Join my mailing list for Doors to the Stars ARC access.
I’m currently seeking representation for the Dark Dominion sequence, a literary space opera about an impossible pregnancy that exposes the genetic lies holding together a theocratic empire. The foundational duology—Immortal and Godsbane—is for readers who loved the cultural worldbuilding and imperial politics of Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire but wish it had the unflinching violence and moral complexity of Richard Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels. It tells the story of an interstellar revolution involving trillions of souls through the eyes of one woman who has nothing left to lose and a galaxy to burn.
Immortal (131K words) and Godsbane (134K words) are complete and available upon request.
Beyond the Margins 