Draft Forward for In Thrall to Chaos

What you have opened—I assume in anticipation of high fantasy in the vein of Tolkien or Martin—sprouted from deep frustration. I do not write fantasy. Please don’t let that admission scare you from this work. I find myself thrilled with the final product. The entirety of my adult writing could be categorized among a jumble of sub-genres in literary fiction. I have steeped for decades in modern, contemporary stories along the tradition of Hemingway, Robert Stone, Jim Harrison, and Russell Banks. 
My endeavor to infuse anarchist idealism—a thing which inevitably lands in science fiction or utopian/dystopian forms of literature—into a more realistic form of storytelling has taken me on journeys into heist stories, crime thrillers, and family drama. I toiled and fought every word for symbolism and rhythm. I buried analogies and themes meant for maximum effect. I burned thousands of words in aspiration of literary voice. I have received positive feedback from people I trust on all of my work in the genre. However, success in literary fiction requires either (or both) a strong academic pedigree or special access to the people who guard the gates. I possess neither of these things. All I have is a pile of writing which I am confident stands as tall as most contemporary writers in the game. The exchange rate for confidence in the world of literature amounts to pesos to the dollar.
My novel previous to the piece you hold in your hand took three years to complete. I am very proud of it. I self published and have only performed mild fits of promotion in its name over the years. As my family grew, I assumed my next long project lay decades in the future. I am not a young man. Having kids in my early forties prognosticated a new novel by my mid sixties. This didn’t exactly break my heart, however, I knew my mind could not keep from dreaming up projects that I could never complete.
So I indulged in shorter works. Very short works akin to micro/flash fiction and they satiated me to an extent. Some of them I eventually revisited and retooled into bonafide short stories. Yet my imagination could not stop dreaming bigger stories.
As you may have surmised, I do not sell my writing, or more precisely, my writing does not sell. I have a career in the real world. Bills must be paid. By circuitous route, I have arrived in a profession which provides twenty to forty percent of free time on the clock. Unaccustomed to such freewheeling time management, I initially spent much of this time watching movies or television shows, solving crossword puzzles, or reading books on history or political theory.
A pair of my fellow employees know of my writing. One has read several of my stories, even contributed artwork to some shorter pieces. The other proved an avid reader in his free time. As a pair, they read many of the same books, mainly science fiction and fantasy. I remained on the periphery of these conversations. I had not read much in either genre since my teens. Once I had resolved to spend time and effort honing a voice as a writer, my interests settled firmly in a semblance of reality. My chagrin that most great anarchist fiction swims in the waters of the sci-fi and fantasy genres still haunted me.
Nevertheless, eavesdropping their discussions sparked a sense of nostalgia. The Iliad occupied my library from the age of ten. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and a compilation, Farmer Giles of Ham, arrived earlier than that. Around age fourteen, I discovered that Conan the Barbarian not only debuted in the 1930’s (not in a 1982 movie) but was authored by the intriguing Robert E. Howard. I read and adored anything by Ursula K. Le Guin whose work straddles the worlds of both fantasy and sci-fi as well as fostering my coming “no gods, no masters” attitude toward the universe. Science fiction filled my library in those years as well. I marveled at Phillip K. Dick, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, the strange and pulpy Robert Zelazny. My first attempt at reading Dune ended in failure when I was twelve, though I revisited it in my thirties and have read it at least seven times since. I have always and continue to be a fan of science fiction more so in film. I consider myself more of a Star Wars fan than the average person. I owned thousands of comic books of every variety. In short, between forty and thirty years ago, I owned a love of a certain styles of stories from which I strayed due to my desire for a pursuit of idealism and contemporary form in my own writing.
In any event, these conversations set tiny inklings to ping against my imagination. Most of the time, I brushed them away. I didn’t have the time to concentrate on such ideas. Again, it took me three years of dedicated writing sessions to complete my last novel. Still plot ideas and situations pestered me. Then, for no apparent reason, during the downtime I mentioned earlier, I allowed myself to write a few pages of a science fiction story. It became evident, I had nowhere near the time required for the immense amount of world building high science fiction required. No matter, another idea lay nearly ignored in some dark mental bin next to it. A fantasy story about a young king who makes an ill fated bargain with a god. 
Once I began writing and allowed the words to simply appear as any random thought in my mind, the world built itself as if my subconscious provided a textual description of a place and time that already existed somewhere all along. Within a month and a half of intermittent writing, I had an astonishing 25,000 words of worthy material. By eleven months I stood on the verge of 135,000 words and a preconceived, satisfying ending for the first installment of an epic tale.
I began this introduction with a reference to this book’s inception from my frustration. This now seems somewhat out of sequence. My frustration stems from several avenues. First, I began this book with a certain amount of disdain for the genre. I knew if I began a book meant to follow my preferred style, I might spend years on something that might never see completion so I chose to “play with this goofy fantasy story.” Second, the aforementioned time I’ve spent wrestling with themes and characters, allegories and symbolism in modern settings left with only enough strength to perform minimal effort in promoting the work grated on me. Then after those years of struggle (a word I generally use with positive iteration) I stumbled into a story that has flowed without effort and by mere existence contains many of the themes and ideals my conscience required in my previous writing. Third, I apparently possessed the wherewithal to create a fantasy epic for decades yet my obsession with modern anarchism and denial of my proclivity for more escapist settings kept me from such an indulgence. Perhaps frustration is not the correct word, though I fail at the point of writing this introduction to think of a more precise description of what brought this book into existence and how I feel in the aftermath. Perhaps what I am experiencing is bewilderment with serendipity.
All this said, I am proud of what this book became and the ease with which it developed portends future installments might evolve as easily and possibly at a faster pace. As one of the fellow readers/employees pointed out when I described my progress, “I know you enjoy a good fist fight but when you really enjoy the work, it comes across in the finished product.” I hope this truth is as obvious to anyone who reads this book.
  
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