SYNOPSIS

When young William arrived at Meadowsford Dale to begin his arduous training as a knight, how could he know that long before he ever achieved his accolade, he would experience more adventure than any of the legendary heroes of old?

While still a squire, he would be among the few on hand to witness the terrifying arrival of Daask the Dragon into the kingdom. He would race with his elders toward the palace to warn the king of this latest and inexplicable threat. He would join the sea of soldiers who had pledged to confront the beast and slay it.

And, on the brink of battle, he would discover to his astonishment that he alone possessed a strange and otherworldly connection with the mysterious dragon – a unique and privileged access into Daask’s soul that, if he could muster the courage to enter it, would render him far more powerful than anything he could possibly imagine.

INTRODUCTION (Excerpted from the book)

In February 1993 I began the second semester of my last year of high school. Only five months to go, and I would be done with my fifth and final year at Unionville High in the bleakest exurbs of an endlessly sprawling Toronto. This was still the era of OACs – the Ontario Academic Credit – which had been con-ceived as a stratum of 5th-year, advanced-level preparatory courses for those who were university-bound. (The system has since been abolished, and Ontario students now endure only four years of secondary school.)

To this day I have mixed feelings about the OAC regime. In the summer of ’92 – just before Labour Day – myself and three friends (Ryan, Dan & Greg) spent a week at Ryan’s family’s cottage lamenting our impending return to yet another year of high school, knowing full well that our counterparts from most of the other provinces were prepping for their first exciting year of university while we were heading back to the dusty-pink/slate-grey checkerboard décor of “the mall.” From the present, I can clearly see instances in which our frustration was well justified. For example, when I finally got to my freshman year the following September, I would discover that much of the OAC Calculus I had been “prepared” with was, in fact, a considerable part of the first year curriculum, and I ended up getting an extended review instead of actually learning anything new with my hard-earned (and quickly-depleted) tuition dollars.

There were, however, amazing benefits to the OAC program. In the English department alone were three (count ‘em – three!) distinct OAC-level courses. ENG-OA1 was the standard track for those who simply wanted to get the required English credit on their transcripts. But for those who were particularly keen was the ENG-OA2 Writer’s Craft course, taught by a fellow named Moe Jacobs, and the ENG-OA3 Independent Study course, also taught by Jacobs and touted (by him) as the closest approxima-tion to an advanced-level university course we would ever find in a high-school curriculum.

A schedule conflict prevented me from taking the Writer’s Craft, but, having had Jacobs as my Grade 10 English teacher, I knew I wanted to enroll in the Independent Study course with him. And so it came to pass that in February ’93 I officially began my OA3 experience.

Jacobs was (and remains today) a pretty laid-back guy. At a time when the education system was diving toward ironclad credentialism, useless administrative ballast, and standardized testing in the form of an occasional and meaningless “ping” into the brains of drowsy kids, he was perfectly content to invite a few well-regarded students onto his galleon and go for a vigorous sail in the sun. To him, the best education was one derived from the inconstant and unpredictable winds, not from the torque and temerity of diesel. And to become a part of his small coterie of sea-dogs was as easy as expressing an interest. If you admired and aspired to join the ranks of the erudite, and, more importantly, if you understood that the process of learning is, at its core, a self-directed endeavour, then Jacobs welcomed you aboard. Then, lest you become too prideful at having been admitted onto his boat, he’d hand you a bucket and mop and put you to work swabbing the deck.

Out on the open water, it soon became clear that Captain Jacobs didn’t really care where we were sailing. As long as we were moving, he was happy. He expected all his sailors to be learning a new knot every day. He was happy to point you in the direction of an old (but still accurate) chart whenever you wondered aloud at the direction we were actually headed. Naturally, he never fetched it himself – just told you where to find it. If you happened to look it up and get your bearings, so much the better. If you ignored the suggestion, it wouldn’t go unnoticed. One too many suggestions ignored would result in a simple request for you to head ashore at the next port, and you wouldn’t be invited back onboard when the ship hoisted anchor.

When it came to evaluating your work, Jacobs could be harsh. But harsh never meant “unfair,” it meant “honest.” There would be substantial and thoughtful comments tethered to each piece of completed work. The praise, if merited, was direct, congratulatory, and proud; the criticism, if warranted, was apposite, precise and supportive. Naturally, the naval brass still insisted that sailors’ work be given a percentage grade, but Jacobs didn’t put much stock in a number. If the deck was well swabbed, if the knot was well tied, if the chart was well studied, he was happy. The number, although always quite accurate, never mattered to him.

All this, by the way, was Jacobs in general. It was the Jacobs I had experienced in my Grade 10 English course. It was the Jacobs for whom the OA2 students wrote under a far more regimented work schedule of constant deadlines. And it was the Jacobs who advised his OA3 crew in the formulation of a self-directed course of study. The only thing that changed across the different latitudes he sailed was the colour of the waters. What stayed forever constant was the casual manner in which work was assigned, the good-natured way in which the sailors were supervised, and the astonishingly personalized quality of their individual evaluation.

So then. What of my course? What topic could I possibly choose whose richness would warrant five months’ worth of independent study? At 18 years old, I wanted something broad enough to hold my interest, but narrow enough so as not to become overwhelming. After a couple weeks of deliberation, I finally settled on a topic: Me.

The plan was to construct an elaborate metaphor for my identity, and then apply it to a literary tale of my own creation. In other words, I’d write something big and meaty – an epic! – and design its characters, settings, and plot points to symbolize characters, settings, and events in my life until that point. I figured five months of self-analysis under the watchful and perceptive eye of Moe Jacobs would do me some good. To my amazement, he promptly approved the project and sent me on my merry way.

I remember thinking, “Gosh, that was easy.” It hadn’t yet dawned on me that all good literature is, to some extent, metaphorical. I fell under the delusion that I was the first human being ever to come up with such a brilliant device. I self-centredly called my project “The Metaphor,” as if it was to be the inaugural one. In retrospect, I think Jacobs was under the impression that I was smarter than I believe myself to have been at the time. I suspect he was counting on the fact that I knew there were other works out there like the one I was envisioning for myself. If so, he was dead wrong. I genuinely thought I was forging new territory. Even when he said to me one day in class, “You should check out The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann – it’s a great, sprawling metaphor,” it didn’t quite sink in that he was advising me to compare Mann’s masterpiece to my own proposed epic. I just nodded, struggled through the first 100 pages, and then put it down in frustrated boredom. When I confessed this to him, he merely smiled. “You’ll come back to it one day.”

If I’m making it seem like Jacobs was completely hands-off, then I should clarify. The OA3 course was structured so that the criteria for evaluation rested on several components – not just the final independent study project. So for the first 3 months of the course, I was doing my “foundation” work. This consisted of a presentation to the other sailors on what I was trying to accomplish, critiques of their project proposals, and several essays whose purpose was to help me map out my key concepts. As an example, topics I set for myself and then tackled were things like “The Components of a Metaphor,” and “The Location of Imagination.” In the former I expounded on the mechanics and linguistics of the “M” word. In the latter, I drew a marvelously detailed map of the different areas of the brain, trying to understand (and prove to my reader, no less) how Imagination came to exist in the mind. The diagram itself looked vaguely intestinal, and Jacobs, to his credit, didn’t roll his eyes in my presence.

At last arrived the moment when I had jumped through all the preparatory hoops and could sit down to begin writing the actual story. The initial chapter, written in prose, started out quite well. If memory serves, I concocted an Arctic-like world where the first humans arrived via an ice flow. Or something like that. It was very evocative and very imaginative, but left me a little mystified as to how to continue on to chapter 2. I managed, somehow, to put a few more chapters to paper before I realized that the metaphorical symbols were starting to get confused. Not only that, the story wasn’t going anywhere interesting. I felt that the entire project was crumbling. And, in fact, it was crumbling.

To make matters worse, the semester was at an end. There would be no time for a second draft (or a brand new draft, at that), and final exams were a few days away. One day at lunch, having found myself in the random and spontaneous company of a lovely young woman named Jillaine, I suddenly burst into tears – for I realized that my project was in shambles, and my course credit – ergo, my acceptance into the university of my choice – was likely compromised as a result. For the 3-hour final exam, Jacobs had composed individualized questions for each student in his course. To Shawn Postoff, he wrote: “You have spent the past five months trying to construct a metaphor that would symbolize aspects of your identity up to this point in your life. What have you learned?”

With the clock ticking, I set the thesis of my final essay in very simple terms: I have failed. My evidence was as follows: a) I didn’t complete the story; b) the internal logic of the metaphor was blurry and confused. c) I wrote the thing in prose when – duh! – it should have been in verse; and d) I was a fool for thinking such a project possible in the limited time we had. My conclusion – what I had learned – was that literature is damn hard to create. Especially at 18. I left the exam feeling shattered and desolate.

Jacobs awarded me a 90% in the course.

And then, at gradation ceremonies, he assured me that The Metaphor was a project I would one day come back to, much like he had promised I would return to The Magic Mountain. Feeling emotionally drained by the experience, and looking forward now – at last! – to my first year of university, I didn’t really believe him. “Sorry, Moe,” I thought. “I’m through with that stuff.”

I had been accepted into the Honours Bachelor of Commerce program at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It was one of those practical career-oriented decisions I’d made despite my obvious love for the Humanities and the Arts. I believed that as a Commerce grad, I’d be in a good position to land a well-paying job which would afford me the opportunity to patronize the arts community rather than become one of its practitioners. As many of my friends predicted, I very quickly discovered that much of what my university curriculum was teaching, although practical and interesting to an extent, wasn’t exactly enthralling. Though certainly with no intent to abandon the program, and with my sights still set on high academic achievement, my mind nevertheless started to wander. About midway through my second semester, almost a year after I started writing the first failed attempt, I hit upon an idea for a brand new Metaphor.

It would, first and foremost, be a poem. It would be set in a medieval world that could afford me great narrative leverage and allow me to toy with pre-existing mythological conventions. And finally, it would have no deadline. This was no longer a project for credit, it was a project for me. Moe (as he was by now being called, for we were no longer bound by a formal student-teacher relationship) had been right. I was returning to the Metaphor.

My first stab at the new piece went very smoothly. It was a fairly robust tale about the birth of a dragon, and would eventually evolve into Chapter XI of the current story. The symbolism was still nebulous in my head, but strangely enough I saw this as an asset of the piece rather than a liability. (Notice, too, how my vocabulary was being influenced by my new environment). Furthermore, I somehow alighted on an eleven-beat line, thinking for some inexplicable reason that it sounded more polished than a ten-foot line. Iambic pentameter be damned: I was going one better. I sent the finished chapter off to Moe and he wrote back with an enthusiastic “Don’t stop now!”

Over the course of the next three years, a reasonable slice of my spare time was devoted to The Second Metaphor. Early on in the process, the dragon had assumed a name: Daask (pronounced, “Dosk”). It was a word which meant absolutely nothing. It was a word I alone had invented; it had no mythological precedent. This fact was important to me, and, more significantly, I thought the pairing of those two A’s to be pretty damn cool. But soon after, I discovered that the dragon was evolving into more than a dragon – he was becoming a state of mind. Thus, to be one with the dragon was to exist in a state of Daaskmere. Slowly, the pieces started to fall into place, and before long I had an entire narrative mapped out, complete with a corresponding legend to its symbolic representations. All that was left was to finish it.

And at 22 years of age, I finally did. And I sent the final draft to Moe, and he loved it. He implored me to try to get it published. And so I tried. I sent out 28 query letters, of which 2 publishers responded. They were both “No.” I looked into vanity presses, and found one who was actually quite interested (surprise, surprise). But he wanted about $10,000 from me, which, having just graduated with a $30,000 student loan, was financially impossible. Slowly, alas, the project’s importance faded. It moved from the front burner to the back. From the stove to the pantry. From the pantry into storage. It was forgotten.

My career as Mr. Businessman, B.COMM H. was short-lived. The film world gobbled me up, and within two years from graduation I had written my very first feature-length screenplay. It was absolutely terrible, but for a small time seemed to have enough momentum that I figured I should write another one. That second screenplay was exceptionally strong. It turned a lot of heads, including the one of my future agent. A few years after that, I was swept away, Cinderella-style, to LA on a 3-year contract writing for Showtime’s Queer as Folk. I was pro.

In the early months of 2005, shortly after my QAF contract had ended, I was working furiously on personal (read: unpaid) projects. A friend of mine casually told me about a great self-publishing website called Lulu.com. When I checked it out, I was amazed at the ease with which content could be uploaded, printed, and shipped. I fell in love with the idea of my own “storefront.” And I realized that there was a long-dormant manuscript buried in the bottom of my closet, waiting at last to be bound into a book.

As I dusted off the old document and prepared it anew for printing, I was both horrified and delighted to discover how much my writing had evolved since Kingdoms of Daaskmere was penned. I was horrified by the inflexible metrics of the verse that girded an extremely limited and unadventurous vocabulary, by the anachronistic dialogue that often felt clumsy if not downright foppish, and by the frequent rendering of scenes in such a direct and artless manner that it risked offending the reader’s sense of propriety. Yet for these very same reasons, the text also held a strange and inexplicable appeal. Perhaps it was the innocence of it all; the guilelessness of our narrator William’s tone. There was a heartrending earnestness to his intent, a heroic devotion to his reader, and a complete lack of insight (and, hence, embarrassment) at how ingenuous was his own writing. It struck me as remarkable that the piece had essentially become a window into the primitive compositional skills not only of old William, but young Shawn Postoff as well. Which (to me at least) rendered all the more amusing those long-ago delusions of grandeur I experienced on the assumption that I was writing something perfect, brilliant, and destined to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Regardless of the work’s technical merits (or lack thereof), I was nevertheless gratified by the realization that this piece existed as a clear demarcation point between my “juvenilia” and my current style. (I put juvenilia in quotes with the humble recognition that one day my present writing may very well be grouped into that class of earlier works.) Prior to Kingdoms, I was writing pieces of only modest scale, with angst-ridden subject-matter and far too many clichés. After Kingdoms, my sophistication with regard to structure, character and linguistic acrobatics started to reveal itself to the point where I was able to build a viable writing career on it. Kingdoms of Daaskmere falls dead centre – better than all that had come before it, but not quite ready for mainstream consumption. Enter Lulu.com.

As I compose this introduction, it’s been roughly ten years since I was in the thick of writing Kingdoms of Daaskmere. I confess to be having some misgivings about sending it into the world as a product of a self-publishing endeavour: I know there’s a stigma attached to this sort of offering and I can’t help but think of it as a bit of a compromise. But when I’m done thinking such thoughts, I remember the process. And I remember the pride I felt at receiving the enthusiastic praise of Captain Jacobs upon the work’s completion. And I wonder if perhaps there’s an audience for it out there, somewhere. I figure it’s worth a shot.

Many thanks to Lulu.com for coming to life on the web. Many more thanks to the friends and family who witnessed the protracted creation of this strange creature. And finally, a heartfelt Thank You to Moe, for his enduring faith.

June 2005, Toronto

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