Some stories take years to form. Others take a lifetime.

 

My father’s story as a prisoner of war during World War II first took root in my imagination while I was attending film school. For a class project, I asked him to write down his experiences. What he handed me was a nine-page narrative—raw, unembellished, and deeply moving. At the time, I didn’t fully understand the significance of what I was holding. I only knew the story stayed with me.

 

For years, those pages lingered in my mind, waiting for the right story to bring them to life.

 

The second thread came from a conversation with family friends about the women who stepped into wartime jobs—not only in factories, but in professional roles they had never before been allowed to hold. One story in particular stayed with me: a woman who fell in love through letters with the soldier whose job she had taken.

 

A love story born out of war.

 

The third piece came from my own career in advertising. Over the years, I became fascinated with the largely forgotten history of the War Advertising Council, the organization behind some of the most influential wartime campaigns. Their work shaped public opinion, mobilized a nation, and helped sustain the war effort—yet their story has rarely been explored in fiction.

 

These three elements—my father’s POW experience, the wartime love story, and the advertising war effort—eventually came together to form Two for Victory.

 

At its heart, the novel is about resilience, sacrifice, and the power of words to shape both war and love. It follows CC Gallagher and Joe Butler, two people who find each other through ink and paper in the midst of a world at war.

 

Writing Two for Victory became my way of honoring the stories that inspired it—the ones passed down through families, the ones nearly forgotten, and the ones that continue to shape who we are today.