How The Trench Series was born

I started writing the Trench series in late 2021, during the fallout of the 2020 madness — back when COVID shut the world down and took my job as a cook with it. But the truth is, this story had been brewing inside me long before that. I’d been dreaming of writing a German-perspective World War I story since 2016.

I wanted something new. Something different. A story that took the First World War seriously, not just as background noise to bigger, flashier conflicts like World War II.
And definitely not another recycled take on the same old fronts. I wanted readers to feel it — trench by trench, month by month, bullet by bullet.

So I dove into research. Real research.
Every front. Every battle. Every prototype weapon and vehicle — even those that never saw the light of day. And what started as a passion project quickly turned into something massive: Trench 1915, originally written as one enormous volume, nearly 500,000 words and over 1,400 pages long.

When my publisher saw it, they were shocked. I was 24 years old at the time, and my father — a man who taught college and served with the U.S. Military — called me “prolific” in the best way. That meant a lot coming from someone who’s read more military books than most will ever touch.

We made the call to break Trench 1915 into five separate volumes. Now, with Trench 1916 nearing completion, I’m ten books into this journey, and I have no plans of stopping. The series will march forward until the historical end of the Great War — and every subplot, every scar, every unfinished story will get the resolution it deserves.

🔍 What Makes Trench Different?
This isn’t alternate history — even when I include a fictional tragedy or covert mission, I tie everything back to real historical context. I include notes so readers know exactly what was based on fact and where the fiction begins.

The war unfolds as it really did: mission by mission, from February 1915 onward. The series follows elite fictional units from both the Central Powers and the Triple Entente, and explores everything from battlefield camaraderie to classified weapons experiments. Some stories are short, others span across multiple volumes — just like war: unpredictable, brutal, and deeply human.

While most fiction tends to ignore or simplify WWI, I wanted to give it the complexity and depth it deserves. In many ways, I might be one of the only authors right now telling this kind of German-centered WWI fiction, month-by-month, with such a high level of detail and military accuracy. And I’m proud of that.

🧬 Why It Matters to Me
If you’ve read the bio on the back of my books, you know that both sides of my family have German ancestry — and both had relatives who fought in the Great War before emigrating. This isn’t just storytelling. For me, it’s personal legacy.

🛠️ What’s Next?
I’m not stopping with Trench. I’ve got much more planned — from historical side stories to alternate paths and deeper explorations of the world I’ve built. My goal is simple: to tell the kind of war stories that stick, that challenge, and that honor those who lived through one of the darkest chapters in history.

Thanks for reading — and if you're new to the series, I hope you’ll take a step into the trenches with me.

— Jake Barrett

https://coff.ee/jakebarrettbooks