about the author
DAVID M. WARD
MILITARY SERVICE. MEDICAL EXPERIENCE. DARK FICTION.
Introduce Ward as a retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel and Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist with more than two decades of operating room and trauma-care experience. Position Excruciating as fiction informed by a life spent around discipline, pressure, medicine, and human resilience.
FROM PRIVATE E-1 TO COLONEL
37 YEARS OF SERVICE
David M. Ward began his military career in 1988 as an enlisted combat medic. Over the next 37 years, his service expanded through clinical care, aviation medicine, leadership, training, and nurse anesthesia. He later served as an Air National Guard Flight Nurse and spent 21 years as an Army Reserve nurse anesthetist before retiring as an O-6 Colonel in December 2025.
Enlisted
Combat Medic
The beginning of a military career rooted in medicine and service.
Air National Guard
Flight Nurse
More than a decade combining aviation medicine with patient care.
Army Reserve
Nurse Anesthetist
Twenty-one years applying advanced clinical expertise in military medicine.
Retired As
Colonel
Concluding a 37-year journey from Private E-1 to O-6 Colonel.
DISCIPLINE WASN'T A CHAPTER OF HIS LIFE.
IT BECAME PART OF HOW HE SEES THE WORLD.
THE DEBUT NOVEL
REALITY TO FICTION
Excruciating marks David M. Ward’s debut as a novelist, bringing together the worlds that shaped his life: medicine, military discipline, trauma care, leadership, and the study of people under pressure.
Grounded in decades of clinical experience, the novel blends medical realism with psychological tension and supernatural horror while exploring grief, suffering, human vulnerability, and the possibility of redemption.
SERVICE ACROSS CONTINENTS
EXPERIENCE ACROSS REGIONS
EXPERIENCE CHANGES THE WAY A STORY IS TOLD.
MEET THE AUTHOR BEHIND THE STORY
FROM EXPERIENCE
COMES FICTION.
Discover David M. Ward’s debut novel, shaped by decades of military service, clinical experience, leadership, and firsthand observation of people under pressure.
ELIJAH GADDIE
Elijah reads people better than paperwork. His instincts begin pointing toward a threat no police procedure can explain.
Levi Solomon
Levi warns Matthew that something is wrong at Benevolent Manor. His knowledge becomes essential when ordinary explanations begin to fail.
Emily Rix
Emily and Matthew survive the loss of their son, but grief, resentment, and betrayal destroy what remains of their marriage.
MATTHEW RIX
A grieving father trapped by addiction, guilt, and rage. When Matthew witnesses something impossible during surgery, no one has reason to believe him.
DETECTIVE CHUNG
Will follows timelines, records, and contradictions. The deeper he investigates, the less the case resembles an ordinary murder.
Marisol Cordero
Grief draws Marisol toward Matthew and the drugs they share. After her murder, their hidden relationship becomes evidence.
Abigail Apollyon
Beautiful, calculating, and merciless, Abigail turns weakness into obedience. Her influence may be far older and darker than it appears.
JONAH CROMWELL
Behind Jonah’s polished reputation lie stolen money, a dangerous affair, and something inhuman beginning to surface.