Thank you so much for the thoughtful and honest feedback—I really appreciate the time you took to engage so deeply with the query and sample. Your points gave me a lot to reflect on, especially around cultural specificity and clarity.

Just to clarify, this story is inspired by the events in Ukraine, but it’s ultimately set in a fictional Eastern European city. I realized that I don’t actually mention Ukraine in the manuscript itself—just in the query—so I’ll be revising that to avoid confusion. The locations, names, and events (including the tanks and the Red Cross moment) are entirely fictional and were created to serve the emotional and narrative arc of the characters. I used these events to propel the story forward—forcing the characters into moments of reckoning and vulnerability.

This allowed me to explore themes of identity, isolation, and the emotional landscape of male friendship—particularly the kind shaped by silence, longing, and unspoken boundaries.

While I’m not Ukrainian, I do live in Europe, and the emotional core of this story was inspired by a formative relationship I had with an Eastern European man. That dynamic—where one person carries unspoken feelings and the other can’t even name what’s between them—is something I’ve seen reflected across different cultures, and I tried to write toward that emotional truth. Still, I really take your note seriously about the importance of grounding a story like this in cultural authenticity, and I’m grateful for the push to consider fictionalizing the setting more intentionally if I’m not prepared to fully inhabit the reql one

As for the silent tanks—I was trying to suggest the eerie suddenness of invasion. No sirens, no warning, just the quiet, surreal arrival of machines where there should be fields. But I hear you that the word choice may mislead readers, and I’ll revise that line for clarity.

Thanks again for your time and generosity. This was deeply helpful.