To our audience,

It is a privilege being the new Editor and Chief of Dark Myth Production Studios. When David Montoya and I first met, in high school, I had no idea I would ever become a writer—and editor, even less—for my creativity was focused on artistic creations. I worked with David on the idea of creating an independent comic book company, and joined him shortly after he had moved to Arkansas. Times were hard for me when this idea began due to medical conditions; shortly after I started working with David, I wound up moving to the state where I originated: Oklahoma. When I returned, I went back to what I had been around my entire life: oil-field welding.

This condition, which parted our ways, made me think in a different direction because I had anger and emotions no-one understood for what I dealt with wasn’t a matter of a physical obstacle, rather a neurological one: complex-partial seizures. When I began writing, I had no idea how to construct a story—understanding how a story is to start, how to narrate, how to tell verses show a story, and, of course, grammar—which led me toward college to becoming an English teacher; my realization of what I did not learn in grammar and understanding literature gave me a purpose to teach.

College was no picnic—and isn’t one now—for me since I am, by no means, a speed reader or typist (like my wife); with many credits in literature and creative writing, my understanding of literature has greatly improved in how to understand the structuring of stories based on knowing how to diagram pieces of fiction as though they are grammar—I won’t go into detail… you get the picture. Now, my wife and I met in college. We had three years of literature together; we covered classes of American literature, British literature, Horror, Novels and even Grammar. You might say we are the head and tail of the same coin because we have different perspectives of literature. My wife has read the square root of what I have finished because she is a reader: being a writer, I diagram the stories as I read to assure I not only understand what has been written, but to understand the mind of the writer to understand one’s purpose of vocabulary, one’s style, one’s perspective whether it be for or against the principle of the story being read—this list goes on.

Of all the authors I have read, one in particular has been a role-model for me—Fyodor Dostoevsky. The first of his works I read happened to be one of his hardest: Crime and Punishment. When I read this book, it wasn’t only his style which intrigued me, it was his reasoning for writing it: to demonstrate how a society destroys itself by forming socialism and communism. He showed me exactly how I wanted my stories to be structured to not only entertain my audience but to persuade them into understanding my perspective; I realized many of the most famous authors (Mark Twain, Ayn Rand, Shirley Jackson, Washington Irving, Ernest Hemingway, William Falkner and many others) wrote to persuade their audiences into seeing through the eyes of their characters so the pain and suffering could be felt in order to allow societies to realize how imperfect this world truly is, to realize there are problems to be solved through societies themselves rather than depending on governments to do the solving.

I look forward to reading what shall be edited to not only find what will be published through Dark Myth, but to help writers improve their talents—these authors I have mentioned went through rewrites to make their stories and novels some of the most famous works world wide.

Kyle D. Dobbs,

Editor and Chief of Dark Myth