Dear Reader

If you’re reading this, then you must at least have a vague interest in either myself or my writing. If neither is the case and you’re just killing time, pretending to work, or looking busy in class, well I suppose you belong here, too. My name is Karon Alder, and I think I’ve always been a writer, even if I didn’t know it at the time. I grew up in a small place in a smaller town in the middle of nowhere. It was here I learned some of the most important lessons that I carried into my adult life: kindness is free, don’t dig for water under the outhouse, and no one will ever love you like your dog loves you.

I read my first chapter book at the age of four. I still have the battered copy of Jack London’s Call of the Wild my mother bought me in a second-hand shop sitting on a shelf above my desk. It was in that moment, bouncing along back roads and sticking to the electric blue leather seats of my mother’s station wagon, that I fell in love with literature, but it wasn’t where I began writing. I started my dreaming at about the age of six or seven, and the beginning of shows such as C.S.I. and American Idol, and naturally wanted to be a guitar-playing medical examiner—on tour for both the hotties and the bodies. Obviously, my imagination was too big for my britches. My father, noticing my inclinations and hoping to guide me toward the literary path he also walked, bought me a journal for my tenth birthday. Thus began my love of writing. I did not, however, begin my writing career at the same time. Instead, I began my adult life on a dare. I joined the Army at eighteen shortly after being issued the challenge that I would never make it—I sure showed them, huh? Eleven years later I still question whatever possessed me to do such a thing, but I suppose it worked out in the end. It allowed me to travel the world—as well as that unnamed planet, but that’s a story for another time—and opened a great many doors I never would have known about, but my greatest adventure is ongoing.

This adventure began with a sticky Saturday morning and a documentary on Netflix. Have you ever seen something truly amazing and instantly wished you could have it/be doing it? Of course you have, we all have. Well, I had that moment as the images of the Alaskan mountains rolled across my TV screen. I wanted it, Reader, I needed to be there. My first thoughts were about how much it would cost, I can’t leave my job, I have a house, responsibilities, blah, blah, blah. My second thought was, why not? I remember spilling my coffee in my lap as I sat bolt upright, although I didn’t notice it at the time. What was stopping me? Why did I feel these limitations were so permanent? I’ll tell you the secret, Reader. I put the limitations on myself. When you live, work, and breathe mainstream society it is considered the height of folly to even think about climbing out of the perfectly edged little box that society has crammed you into. “Why on earth would you ever want more than you have?” They ask, “Why can’t you be happy with what you have?” They wonder, “If it’s good enough for me then it has to be good enough for you,” and They consider the matter closed.

Let me tell you something else, Reader: it’s all a bunch of baloney.

As soon as I realized that, it was game over for mainstream. I quit my job. I sold my stuff. I packed my Jeep and a small trailer with everything I couldn’t live without. I drove four thousand miles to Anchorage, enrolled in the Creative Writing Program at SNHU, and got myself a new job. That was four years ago and I haven’t slowed down since. When I felt myself being drawn back into the mainstream, I left that too. I quit my job. I sold my stuff. I packed seven boxes with everything I couldn’t live without. I flew four thousand miles to Budapest, focused on my writing, and said screw the job. Now I work when I want, doing what I want, whenever and wherever I want.

I dare you to do the same.

Karon Alder

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