Foreword By The Author

This book sure took its time getting into the world. The book you're now reading was first conceived in the spring of 1990. At that time I was fresh out of the Army, unemployed, and reeling from a terrible breakup. Other than write, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do in the world. I felt that directionless void that most people feel at one time or another. I wasn't sure where I was going, or what I was doing. But I did know that adventure begins with a yes, and one of the things I said yes to was going to the desert.

Like Jack in this book, I went with a group of new and old friends. We'd take supplies like beer and food and more beer and go out to the Verde River, fish all night, and return tired the next afternoon. Actually, my friends were there to fish. I was just there to be there, and I was drinking beer with both hands (one for me, and one for Elvis, though Elvis never showed up for his, so I always wound up drinking it).

That didn't last, of course. Before long I decided to return to New York and see if I could get myself established. You can't just go through life with no direction, drinking with both hands.

One night soon before I left for New York, I woke up thinking The Desert King … The Desert King … Of course! The Desert King! By the time morning came around, I had the main characters outlined and the general plot line established. Then, to finish writing my book about a big desert adventure, I went off to New York.

What a test that was. If there's one place that lends itself to vivid desert imagery, New York isn't it. I hadn't gone to the urban jungle of New York City, of course. I'd gone to the remote backwoods of western New York State, where my parents lived. There I held a few low-paying jobs, drank a lot of beer with my friends, hung out with my brother, wrote a couple of good (but worthless) poems, and loved and lost an enchanting girl.

Somewhere in there, too, I wrote The Desert King.

Everything was going nowhere, though, and I was having some doubts. On one hand, it really seemed that The Desert King was my ticket to being able to survive as a writer. On the other hand, the manuscript at that point was entirely handwritten, and I would have one hell of a time just getting it typed with no computer, no typewriter, and no money. From there, I would have one hell of a time getting a publisher to read it, considering the fact that publishers didn't read unsolicited manuscripts anymore. From there, I would have one hell of a time actually getting a publisher to buy it. And from there, I would have one hell of a wait until I saw any money from it. Getting The Desert King into print seemed a remote possibility. Writing books for a living seemed like the impossible dream of a drunken fool. Aw, hell!

I wondered if The Desert King, and I, were going to amount to anything, and I was considering that maybe I should take my time, my effort, and my life in another direction. Still, it really seemed that The Desert King could be the breakthrough I needed. It looked good to me, but I just wasn't sure, and it kept me awake many nights wondering.

One of those nights, I watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and things took a turn for the strange.

At the end of that movie, Bill and Ted help themselves out with their time machine now by remembering to leave the keys for themselves later, after they make their report. That started me thinking. There are those who believe that this life is like a book, and that in the next life you can see this one in its totality from an omniscient position. So, I started wondering if I could help myself out, right then, only later.

Intrigued by this idea, I headed outside and paced back and forth in the darkness of my parents' back patio.

Later, I thought, I can give myself a sign now that I'm not wasting my time with The Desert King, that it's as good as I want to believe it is, and that I'm going in the right direction. Surely, I thought, something that small should be allowed by a Higher Power. Not something drastic like dropping the finished manuscript into my lap or making the phone ring with a mysterious publisher, just giving myself a sign that The Desert King was the answer I was looking for. That should be allowed. Just a little sign …

But what kind of sign? The thought of a bolt of lightning rushed into my head, but left just as quickly. Not only was the idea incredibly unoriginal, the night was foggy, and to generate lightning in those conditions would have meant moving a whole lot of matter in this dimension. The sign I was looking for would have to be on a smaller scale, something that could be done by manipulating just a few atoms. Surely a Higher Power later would let me manipulate a few atoms to give myself a sign now.

And it had to be something I thought of in advance. If the big pine tree suddenly fell over, that wouldn't be the sign unless I had determined it ahead of time. So, I had to come up with a definite sign that would only take the movement of a few atoms to make happen. So, what?

Pacing back and forth, I noticed the streetlight at the corner of High Street and Route 417. Its stark light slanted into my parents' back yard. Intriguing. It had a photoelectric switch to turn it off during the day and on at night. I knew the switch was very small and generated only a tiny amount of electricity to do its thing. It would only take the manipulation of a few atoms to make the light go out.

That, I decided, would be my sign.

In the days after that night, I finished The Desert King and began to market it to publishers. I came up with some pretty creative marketing strategies, but it was to no avail. I worked and researched and beat my head against the wall. Nothing happened.

A few months later, I moved back to Phoenix. Back in the desert, I bought a typewriter, polished up the manuscript, and continued marketing the book to publishers. I studied sales and self-promotion and tried every angle I could think of. Still, I got nowhere.

Life pressed on. I went through a series of low-responsibility jobs and wound up with a real job. I went through a series of girlfriends and wound up married with step-children. I bought a series of junker cars and wound up owning a new truck. Though I don't regret any of those experiences, with every passing year I found myself further into responsibilities, further from my dream of writing for a living, further from The Desert King.

I started working on other books, but it was without passion. If I couldn't make The Desert King a success, what hope did I have with anything else? If I had been wrong about The Desert King, how could I ever be right?

In the mid-1990's, things turned south and went downhill fast. In my darkest days, at the end of the 1990's, I have to confess that my faith was shaken. In the depths of divorce, far over my head in debt, and emotionally bankrupt, I found myself so far from my goal of seeing The Desert King in print that it seemed truly out of reach. I was so far away, and so lost. I not only couldn't see the way, I found it (nearly) impossible to believe that a way even could exist anymore.

Still, even in the darkest nights, I did have a glimmer of hope.

You see, on that chilly September night back in 1990, on my parents' back patio, staring up at the streetlight with the fog overhead and the big pine tree off to my right, at the very instant that I thought that that would be my sign to myself later that now, The Desert King was the key to my dreams, just at that very instant, the light went out.

Through it all, I had that rock to cling to. And sometimes it helped.

It was a long way from completely lost to here today, writing the foreword for the first print edition.

It took a while, but I got my head screwed on straight and my feet under me. I found a decent job that provided some stability and a good pay check. I found myself a good woman and managed to hang on to her. I went to Phoenix College, where I took a ton of writing classes with talented and knowledgeable instructors like Jim Sallis and Laraine Herring, and I met a lot of amazing and supportive writers with fantastic stories of their own.

As I was getting my bearings, I found that the writing landscape was changing underneath me—underneath all of us. The Internet was taking over the world, and print-on-demand technology had finally matured to a practical state. For the first time, it was becoming feasible to print books on demand, with no overhead, and to sell them worldwide, all with no publisher. Suddenly, it was possible for an author to get his books out to the world without getting approval from anybody, without selling out to anybody, and without kissing anyone's ass. I smelled a revolution.

Still, the proper and respectable thing to do was to get a publisher, so that's what I set out to do.

With a foundation of practical writing knowledge under my belt, I took The Desert King out of the drawer and ran it through the editing wringer a few more times. I managed to rack up a number of new rejections for it before finally getting it placed at one of the publishers in this new revolution of publishing, a voracious new outfit called Samhain Publishing. Few days in my life have been happier than the day I sent off the signed contract to finally have The Desert King published.

The e-book version of The Desert King was released in June of 2007 to warm reviews but tepid sales. Samhain had started out as a romance publisher, and The Desert King was part of their ambitious foray into mainstream publishing. Unfortunately, it didn't work out. Samhain had strong connections in the romance market, but they couldn't seem to gain any traction with their mainstream books. Then, shortly before the print edition of The Desert King was to come out, Samhain decided to return their focus to romance books, and not to continue publishing anything else. In light of this, they offered to let their mainstream authors out of their contracts. After quite a bit of soul searching, I accepted. Once again, The Desert King was homeless.

This time, I made the decision to embrace the path that I had been advocating, and one it seemed fate had driven me to: the new revolution of publishing. It took a lot of work, but in the end, it seems better than right. It seems perfect.

Now, preparing the book finally for print, I feel mixed emotions. On one hand, this might be the start of something big. On the other hand—well, I've learned not to get my hopes up too high. Either way, this is a tremendous milestone, and it's been a long time coming. I wish I knew better what the light going out meant. Unfortunately, I didn't formulate a good question at the time, and I never have known what to expect.

Some things are certain, though. In the coming weeks and months I will be working as hard as I can to make sure everyone knows that The Desert King is finally available. That won't guarantee success, of course, but maybe it will help. With the release finally complete, I will return my attention to the two other books I've written featuring Jack Trexlor: The Broken Jack and The Dancing Queen. My main goal is to write things worth reading, but if I work hard enough, and if I get very lucky, it just might pay off in the end. We'll see. No matter what, it's been a great journey, and I look forward to seeing what the future brings.

So, without further delay, I give you The Desert King. It's come a long way here to meet you, down a crooked road. I hope you enjoy its company, and it seems fairly certain that you will. After all, the light really did go out.

And if sometime you find yourself up late at night, wondering about your dreams, perhaps you'll find your own incredible inspiration. I hope so. May your light go out, too.

But if it does, try hard to formulate a good question, and then, try very hard to remember it.

Thanks for reading, and be excellent to each other.

— T.F. TORREY, Phoenix, Arizona, June, 2008