Behind the Books #1
By Scott Evans
I didn’t grow up dreaming of being a writer. I grew up learning how to survive.
I spent years in the British Army. I learned discipline, pain, precision. I carried weight most people couldn’t imagine—sometimes on my back, sometimes in my head. And when I left that world behind, I thought I’d be fine. I wasn’t.
Civilian life wasn’t the freedom I’d expected. It was slow. Silent. Unstructured. The battlefield had changed, but the war hadn’t ended—it had just gone inward. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was carrying trauma like shrapnel. Not visible. Not talked about. But sharp enough to cut through everything.
I tried the gym. I tried routine. I tried staying busy. None of it worked.
And then, one day, I ran.
Not far. Not fast. Just enough. Enough to feel something shift. Enough to clear a corner of the noise. That desperate jog turned into a ritual. That ritual turned into a habit. And that habit gave me my life back.
That’s what Running on Empty is about.
It’s not a fitness book. It’s not motivational fluff. It’s the raw truth of what it’s like to lose yourself—and find the first thread of who you are again through something as simple as putting one foot in front of the other. It’s for anyone who’s ever felt like their mind was the real battlefield.
But something else happened along the way.
The more I ran, the more my mind unlocked stories that didn’t belong to my past—but felt just as real. Stories of identity, of memory, of control, of handing over your data just to buy a pizza. Thats when I started wondering:
What happens when even your memories aren’t your own?
That thought spiralled into Memory Wars—a gritty sci-fi novel written under the name Seth Calder Edwards. It’s set in a future where memories are currency and forgetting comes with a cost. It’s cinematic, a bit cyberpunk, and filled with the kind of quiet horror we’re already brushing up against in the age of AI and data exploitation.
It’s fiction—but it’s born from real fears. Real questions. And maybe even real futures.
So now I write. I run. And I try to turn what I’ve seen—on the battlefield, on the trail, in the quiet aftermath—into something that might help someone else feel a little less alone.
If that sounds like something you need right now, start reading.
Both books are different. But the voice behind them? That’s still me.
— Scott
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