25. May 2026

Welcome to Ratatoskr’s Dits

If you are going to tell a story that spans centuries, you need a reliable messenger.

In ancient Norse mythology, the cosmos is held together by Yggdrasil, the great World Ash tree. Running tirelessly up and down its massive, bark-covered trunk is a creature named Ratatoskr. He is the eternal messenger—a quick-footed red squirrel tasked with carrying dispatches, rumors, and vital communications between the wise eagle perched in the highest branches and the dragon coiled deep in the roots below. If a message needed to survive the journey across the nine realms, Ratatoskr was the one to deliver it.

But we aren't just dealing in ancient myths here.

In the culture of the Royal Marines and the Royal Navy, a "dit" is a story. It is a yarn spun between friends, a dispatch from the front lines, or a memory shared over a well-earned pint in a pub, in a barrack room, onboard a ship, in a cafe, a friend's home, or at a bus stop. A "dit" can be spun whenever, and wherever the need arises.

That is exactly what this space is for.

The Thread of Kindness Chronicles is a sprawling epic of immortal guardians, ancient engineering, and celestial caretakers like Odie and Frigg. But the grit, survival, and compassion you read about in those pages wasn't spun out of thin air. It is deeply anchored in the visceral reality of the real world. The courage to protect a fragile thread of kindness through the darkest winters is inspired by the real men and women and members of my own family—one of whom served in the dusty deserts of Egypt, others that have navigated the rough edges of constant displacement, and survived the trenches of history.

Ratatoskr has a new job today. Instead of running up and down the World Ash, Yggdrasil, he will be delivering these dispatches directly to you.

In the coming weeks and months, I will be using this journal to share the true, real-world history that inspired the books. We will explore the ancient legends, pull back the curtain on the writing process, and dive into the lives of the real heroes—like the people I have met who earned their own commendations and proved that kindness lives in us all, when we let it.

Pull up a chair, grab a pint, and listen close. The dispatches are on their way.

Now that the text is locked in, do you want to use that image of the red squirrel messenger I generated earlier to break up the text, or do you have a different picture in mind for this very first post?