Crusade (Eden Book 2)

by Tony Monchinski

  I want to thank Dr. Michael Hardiman for his insight into schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Thanks also to Anastasia Katechis for her help in translating the Greek. Crusade wouldn’t be what it is without the attention to detail and amazing editing job of Louise Bohmer, whom I wish to thank immensely! To my wife, Myoungmee, and my two children, Tony Michael and Honalee, I declare all my love and gratitude for their inspiration. To you, the reader, I again offer my appreciation for your interest and support. I would love to hear from you, either on the forums (www.PermutedPress.com) or through tmonchinski@gmail.com.

  So, this is goodbye then. Goodbye from me the author to you the reader until the third and final installment in this trilogy (the only hint I’m giving is its set about twenty years after the events in Crusade). Goodbye from me to Tommy Arlin and his bogus ways. I now realize that my attraction to Arlin was based on my own insecurities and his B.S. His bullshit, because he talked a good game—about his love of zombies and the genre and left-wing politics—but he never walked the walk. If you ever meet Tommy you will find he is charming, even dashing. Tommy will talk circles around you about his love for humanity and the human species, but all he truly cares about is his latest debauch. And if you’re a woman, be especially careful.

  My own insecurities left me vulnerable to Arlin’s influence. Ever since I’d got it into my head that I wanted to be a writer then read about the Beats, I wondered, who would be Neil Cassady to my Jack Kerouac? With time and, I like to think, maturity, I left my attachment to the Beats behind. The myths didn’t and don’t make up for the men behind them. Kerouac spent his last years as an anti-Semitic drunk; Cassady criss-crossed the country but couldn’t take care of his own family; Burroughs killed his wife playing William Tell in Mexico and was a pedophile junkie who would travel to Tangiers to have sex with pre-pubescent boys. Today I am able to write for the sheer joy of it, and like I said above, the occasional email from a reader really does make my day.

  Arlin sent me a final missive, threatening legal action against my person should I take it upon myself to pen an Eden sequel. He stated he was working on his own sequel. One that combined zombies, Romanticism, Southern Gothic and time travel (What is he thinking?). Whatever. In his 1915 letter, DH Lawrence asked Bertrand Russell why he wouldn’t “own” his “perverted, mental blood-lust.” Beware, dear readers, of Tommy Arlin and what drives him, and should you meet him, listen to his words, yes, but more importantly, watch his actions. “Let us become strangers again,” Lawrence ended his letter, “I think it is better.” And to Tommy, if you are reading this, I ask much the same. We are history, Arlin.

  Tony Monchinski

  Peekskill, New York 2010