Decades ago, late one evening while trying to fall asleep, I had a waking dream. A story-line presented itself to my mind fully fleshed out, in which the main character, a dwarven crowned prince, newly emerged from youth and unsure of what or who he is, is suddenly catapulted into an epic conflict, in which he must stand up and lead an army as its Commander in Chief. In the course of this cataclysmic adventure, he discovers in himself far more than a future king. He learns of his true nature and destiny, finds love in the arms of a foreigner, and sets in motion a revolution in the lives not only of his own people, but those of men, elves and of all the peoples of the world, in which he lives.

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This epic concept captured me in a way no previous attempt of mine at narrative writing ever had. I mused about it day and night, and one evening, after a week of college classes, when I could finally take the time to do something for myself, I stayed up an entire night, pencil in hand and lined college-rule notepaper in front of me, and wrote. What emerged was more than I could ever have imagined, a gripping tale of a young person discovering that he is much more than he ever thought he could possibly be.

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In writing this story, I drew upon my love of linguistics and found myself creating dwarven names and words. From these emerged a language, complete with its own phonology, grammar and glyphic script very different from the Nordic runes and those of the dwarves of J.R.R. Tolkien, but very dwarvish with glyphs of straight lines and angles in imitation of natural crystalline forms. I saw on the manuscript before me arising kingdoms of splendor and characters of a complexity new in my writing. The dwarven nation that arose from the pages of handwritten notepaper was not uncouth and ‘gross’ as dwarves are often depicted in film and literature. This was a people of greatness and dignity, of high culture, deep honor and values, and profound spirituality. And the main character of this tale himself was…well…let’s not spoil it. You will see when you read his story in "The Dwarven Prince".

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As I thought upon this creation of mine, I realized that it fictionalized my aspirations for my own life. I, a young man who had been raised with rigid expectations and a mold I never fit into, wanted to discover myself, to see what I am made of, to break out of the carefully planned future I had been told I should pursue, and invent instead my own future, to discover my own unseen destiny. Over the next two and half decades, from time to time a new story would emerge, first the tale of "The Maiden and the Wood", then later "The Sacrifice", and most recently, the tales of "The Sorcerer and the King" and "The Fairy and the Dwarf". During these decades I was undergoing a transformation, learning from my life how wrong the rigid path, carefully planned by others, was for me personally. I experienced deep regret and suffering on that path and eventually broke with those traditions and narrow expectations. I became liberated from fear of disappointing others, of angering God, of becoming an object of derision and rejection. I found within myself a very different man than the person I had been raised to become, a man of deep compassion who desires to liberate others from the chains placed upon them by family, religion and social expectations, a man who would come clean with his own truths and in accordance with one of of those truths, find a fullness of love with one of my own gender. I discovered within myself a man with a voice, a story to tell, a light to reveal.

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I share now these stories and invite my brothers, sisters and siblings in this world to enjoy them, to perceive the message behind the narratives, and to see how much these stories, set in fictional worlds of my own creation, inspired by the creations of J.R.R. Tolkien and George Lucas, among other great imagineers, mirror the struggles of people in today’s world. I invite you to see in these tales the emergence of unseen destinies and the surpassing joy they brought to those who discovered them and to all whose lives they touched. I sincerely hope my readers will see that they too have destinies yet undiscovered, unforged, unwritten, that will bring them joy and fulfillment beyond expectation.