The gym’s most obnoxious neocon who sparked the creative juices
The most obnoxious neocon I’ve ever met is someone whose name I never learned. I just overheard them talking about wanting a war.
I’ve lived my entire life in a right-wing conservative area. One where people act very Christian until they don’t. And that includes mass neoconservatism.
Nine years ago, I sat in the gym’s personal training office, waiting for my next client to arrive.
North Korea was in the news that year, and headlines flashed with Donald Trump’s feud at the time with Kim Jong-un.
There were always rumors of war then. And since I worked in a gym full of oldies—the average member’s age was at least 70—you don’t need to guess where these people stood.
If there was a war to be fought and won, they were all for it—regardless if these cats ever put their own combat boots on foreign soil. But then again, it’s easy to support war and intense violence when you’re not required to take part in it.
Chickenhawks, in other words.
“Think he (Trump) will do it?” one of them asked.
“I hope he does it,” replied the other, loud enough for the entire gym to hear.
I swear, some of these people actively look for someone to turn around and dare to contradict them.
Then came the moment. My client was running late, so I pulled out my laptop and started outlining a story.
The story that never saw the light of day
Despite my intense criticism of neocon Christians and even Christianity itself, I’m a fan of C.S. Lewis. At the time, I read through his Chronicles of Narnia series, and it inspired a lot of my unpublished work.
This one was no different. A young male protagonist who worked as a personal trainer gets drafted into a brewing global conflict. He can’t find a way out of the situation, and he’s having a rough time falling asleep that night—on the eve of combat training.
Then, he wakes up in another world. One that’s Narnia-like, but going through a conflict no different from the one he faced at home. A raven arrives and it gives him two choices: fight the war at home or the brewing one here.
Upon meeting a girl who’s friends with the raven, his choice is easy. Stick around and fight. But here’s the catch: the nation he woke up in is literally under attack—unlike America, which loves to start fights with opponents.
He even shares his view that the September 11th attacks were retaliatory, and not unprovoked.
Maybe it’s a work I’ll get to finish someday, especially as draft speculation heats up in the ongoing Iran war.
An unpublished work I never finished
I never put this work into the muck pile. It just sat there and I never had a chance to go back and give it a real ending.
I was too focused on my other books, which were precursors to much of what I have in The Rebel Lore Vault.
There was one about a draft conscription lottery as an inciting incident which turned into Wind Wielder. That manuscript also helped spawn my related Sentrys of Terrene trilogy—and yes, I spelled Sentrys this way on purpose.
Over the years, fragments of that idea splintered into other manuscripts—Tarja Titan, Braden Hawk, Liza Fury, and the early seeds of Cymraeg Tales. None resembled the original draft much anymore, but that same anti-war theme remained.
So, this portal fantasy—not in any way related to my serialized Witch of Thornvale portal fantasy—never saw the light of day. Even worse? The laptop I’d written it on is long gone, so I’ll be tapping into my memory bank if I’m giving this one another rodeo.
The work could be relevant to the times
Whether the draft returns or not — “all options on the table” being the latest news — fears persist. While I’ll project a nation divided like none other—I know which side I’d be on—it still wouldn’t stop many from putting their heads down and potentially meeting their fates.
Fates that someone else decided for them. Just like those forced to fight a losing battle in Vietnam all those years ago. It’s scary when your life is worth so little to your government that it has the power to tell you to go fight and die in a conflict its leaders started and will never fire a single gun in. That’s not what you call a free country.
It’s food for thought, and it’s why I’m at least adding this one to the queue. When I get to it is anyone’s guess. As for that member whose loud, obnoxious tone inspired the work: Thank you. You just spawned another vocal critic to your short-sighted worldview.
Some stories start as half-forgotten drafts on old laptops.
Others survive long enough to become entire worlds.
If you’d like to read the ones that did survive, they’re all waiting inside The Rebel Lore Vault.
