Behind the Book Unyielding

D. Vincent Delorenzo

When water turns from weight to will, a ship is only a question. The people answer. That's actually the line that started this whole thing for me. It was buried in a footnote I found years ago, tucked into a book about maritime disasters—just one of those dry, academic endnotes about decisions made in bad water. And then there was this other detail—something one survivor said, years later, about the silence after the hull gave in. It got under my skin, in a way I couldn't quite shake. I couldn’t invent something like that, right? So that was the moment it went from, you know, nerdy fascination to—well, an obligation. It felt like, okay, either I write this story honestly, or I let it haunt me.

Clara Wren

And you’ve talked before about your research process—how you kinda spiral outward from a spark like that. What does that look like with ‘Unyielding’? Where did you start?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Yeah, it’s all about building a map first. I started with ship logs, weather records, the official maritime inquiry, all those little contradictions in period newspapers. And then finding the human pieces—oral histories, letters, even a couple of grainy photographs that barely survived. I mean, it became a bit of a nightmare, trying to reconcile stories that don’t always fit together. One paper says the flare went up at midnight, another swears by two a.m. So...you have to choose—does the detail serve the memory, or just...muddy it?

Clara Wren

What’s your rule when you hit those dead ends? Like, do you pick a side, or just—leave it blank?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Honestly, silence beats speculation. If I can’t verify something twice, I let the silence stay on the page. Let the reader feel that uncertainty—that’s part of the truth, too. Sometimes what’s missing says more than what’s recorded.

Clara Wren

That resonates for me because I remember reading about the Mary Celeste when I was a kid—the whole ghost ship mystery, right? Everybody hunting for clues, but what really stuck with me was all those gaps. I used to fill them in with wild theories as a kid, but now—I kinda cherish the silences more. There’s something honest about letting history hold onto its unknowns. It makes it feel alive, or... unsettled, I guess. Leaning into the silences makes it resonate deeper.

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Yeah. If you cover over the silence, you risk missing why the story matters in the first place.

Clara Wren

So—let’s talk about the craft side. When you’re working with real disasters, there’s this huge temptation to go, you know, full spectacle. But you…don’t. What are the ground rules you set for yourself?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Right. I made myself five rules for this. One: dignity before drama. That’s the big one—if a choice risks turning someone’s real suffering into entertainment, I cut it. Two: source everything, especially dialogue. No putting words in mouths. Three: never invent a villain. If the system failed—maybe it was a warning missed, or a flare misunderstood—that’s enough. Blaming a person is just lazy. Four: compress time, but only when you tell the reader you’re doing it—no sneaky blends. Five: portray the labor of rescue, always—nobody makes it out alone, ever.

Clara Wren

That’s a heavy list, but—feels necessary. So how do you still keep the story moving, without falling into melodrama? Like, how do you find tension in the restraint?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

I try to stick to images and objects. Melodrama usually happens when you forget to trust concrete things. Steel groans, oars bite, lamps gather salt. The verbs do the work—if I get the physical world right, I don’t need to shout or pound at the emotion. It’s like what we talked about in The Last Boat episode—let objects hold the weight. Even the smallest detail can carry everything, if you let it.

Clara Wren

When do those rules feel hardest to follow? Was there a point, in the manuscript, where you wanted to break your own guidelines?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

Oh, for sure. There’s this key scene where a rescue almost fails—not because of some villain, but because a signal flare goes up and gets lost in weather. For a minute there, everything hangs on a system hiccup, a little bad luck. Part of me wanted a ‘bad guy’, but I had to resist. The real story was a handful of people scrambling against the impossible, not some lone saboteur. The stakes are bigger, somehow, when it’s about the system faltering and the collective push to survive. It lands harder, I think, when you don’t give readers someone easy to blame.

Clara Wren

Alright, let’s dig into the bones of the book. How did you decide on the timeline and point of view for 'Unyielding'?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

I wanted a braided timeline. That means moving through Before—when everything’s routine but risk is lurking; During—the actual impact, the chaos, all those moments where someone chooses; and After, which is about reckoning and repair. The real challenge was circling just a handful of witnesses—keeping everything close, tight, so you’re inside the decisions but never floating outside with all the answers. So, close third-person, no cheat codes. No letting the reader see things the character can’t. It keeps the panic and confusion alive, I hope, and you’re making those decisions in real time with them.

Clara Wren

That POV choice really does amp up the sense of immediacy. I imagine it was tough to write the resolution—especially since you were living in Southeast Asia at the time, yeah? With all that rain and water around you?

D. Vincent Delorenzo

It really was—writing the 'After' felt like trying to ford the actual river every morning. There were monsoons outside; I’d be up before dawn and always hearing water—the rivers, the rain. It mirrored the book’s mood, just this sense of aftermath, survival, weather that doesn’t care what you need. I’m—well, I’m probably making it sound more cinematic than it really was. But being surrounded by water, constantly, absolutely shaped those last chapters. It made the reckoning more honest, less neat.

Clara Wren

That feels like the running thread through all your work, don’t you think? Letting the setting invade the story, but also inviting readers into the uncertainty—no easy answers, just the consequences and what’s left behind. It’s not so different from the ideas we touched on back in ‘Ashes in the Rain’—weather, endurance, and how stories echo real questions.