“Death comes at the end of every road, he had always said, and now it came for him. In a land devoid of memory, one man wakes from death only to discover that it’s nothing he could have ever imagined. Within a realm of fear and suffering, demons and angry spirits feed off of the recently deceased. Pain and attachment to the material world torture those that do not understand why they remain earthbound, or why some of them seem to be lucid at all. Stalked by reapers, hated by the living, and betrayed by those he once loved, one man races against time to discover why he remains upon the earth and what it is that he is supposed to accomplish. The end approaches. Not just for him. For everyone.”

Way of the Wraith was written during a difficult period of my life.

I started to write the story as a meditative reflection upon death, during my predeployment training for Afghanistan. I continued to write Way of the Wraith when and where I found time. Portions of the book were penned in Afghanistan; where I had served as an infantry soldier within the Canadian Forces battle group. Other pieces were written several places within Canada, as well as in India, Cyprus and Dubai.

While I was serving in Afghanistan a family member was murdered back in the civilian world, my relationship with my girlfriend fell apart, and one of my friends was killed by an IED in the province of Kandahar. It was a difficult time as death, helplessness and change embraced me from all directions. The writing became a way for me to process what was happening and to cope with the many sudden changes.

In Afghanistan we were constantly under the threat of ambush and ultimately death. In fact, death was all around us. We would respond to the explosions that would rock friend and enemy alike. Occasionally we would come under attack. In one instance during a friendly fire machine gun incident I even had time to accept that I was about to die. My survival was confusing.

Sanity, for anyone, seemed to constituted an embrace of the warrior spirit. Those who did not surrender their life to a higher power also seemed to have had a more difficult time. There was a philosophy found amongst many of us that the Samurai would have called a willingness to die. This enabled us to patrol through hostile villages, over proven IED grounds, and through the opium fields that ultimately belonged to the Taliban without fear. This was no Hollywood adventure.

I would have been considered old for the infantry. I was 37 when I returned to Canada. Most of the other guys were in their early to mid twenties. Selfless young men –there were no women in my platoon- who had given up everything to serve their country. It was a matter of pride that I kept up with them, eventually seeming to win their respect. In return, these guys gave me more than they could ever know. Not only did they bring me home safely, they taught me many things about being a better man and what it meant to be a warrior. I was older, more reflective, and able to witness and meditate upon things that may have been less visible to many of them. These observations eventually found a home within Way of the Wraith.

I arrived safely back into society last May with an eagerness to reconstruct my life once more. I was thankful for a chance to start over again. By the beginning of July, however, I was being operated on to remove a cancerous tumour. I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. There seemed to be an uncertainty at the time if it had spread. A year later I undergo chemotherapy for a lump found in another area; my abdomen. The cancer had in fact spread. I sometimes wonder if the cancer is related to my service and the things I was exposed to. There seems to be a variety of opinions on the matter, though. For good or for bad the dark time of contemplation and writing continued.

Before my surgery I was strong and active. A year later, before the chemo started, I still have a hard time running. Squats and martial arts both seemed to be out of the question. “A cut nerve,” said one doctor.

This was the canvas that Way of the Wraith was painted upon.

Way of the Wraith was seldom shared with others, though. It was a dark secret. The guys overseas knew I journalled and would sit with my laptop when we were holed up in one strong point or another, but I was somewhat embarrassed by what exactly it was that I was writing. This thing was dark. It was pagan. Despite being fictional it was more honest in some ways than anything I had ever written. It showed my fears and hopes. It revealed my beliefs and my suspicions. It was graphic. It was violent. It was sexual. It laid bare to anyone who would read it the dark underbelly of my soul.

At some point my sister Sunni became aware of the project. I shared with her the earlier version and she loved it. She suggested; or maybe demanded, that I also share the story with others. She said that she really liked the tale and thought that others would as well.

I had been published in a Canadian criminology textbook and had several letters from Afghanistan printed in smaller newspapers. I had also written a blog for a year and a half about loss prevention with hundreds of readers from around the globe. Hunters of the Damned reflected my civilian career of arresting those committing criminal offenses on or in relation to the property of my retail civilian employer. At that time my employer had became aware of the blog. I was told that if I continued to write it I would be terminated. These stories had to do with the shadow side of the retail environment that involved junkies, organized gangs, drug abusing employees, weapon incidents, robberies, sexual assaults and prostitution. The stories did not belong to the public. The blog came down. That was before I went overseas.

So, before writing Way of the Wraith all of my writing experience had been related to non-fiction. Suddenly, I had this dark gothic fantasy unlike anything I had come across. Even if I did decide to share it, who would I share it with? This was some black stuff. Would anyone actually want to read it?

After all, as I had been told a thousand times before; people who died always went “to a better place.” The world found in Way of the Wraith was anything but.