A Standalone Novel
Derek Wynn built things that lasted.
Forty years of architecture. Bridges, libraries, office towers. His work is still standing. His name is on the plaques.
He is sixty-two years old, in a hospital bed, and the later he kept promising himself never came.
Swatting Flies moves backwards — from the end of a life to its beginning, one season at a time.
Derek did not miss his life through laziness or cruelty.
He missed it through busyness.
The insurance dispute. The neighbor's fence. The project deadline. The small, urgent, endlessly renewable problems that felt important because they were right in front of him.
All his life, he thought he was keeping things from falling apart.
Only at the end does he see what was falling apart all along.
This is not a story about regret.
It is about what happens when a man finally sees the difference between what stood, and what was lost.