MoreThan An Introduction

             The IKON trilogy began on 27 July 1988 as a short sketch entitled "The Portrait." I jotted the the first words down on paper on the first leg of a flight to Australia aboard TWA flight 175.  All I had in mind were a few paragraphs describing the old family portrait hanging in my basement. But before my writing was complete, it was obsolete.  The scope of the portrait's story had increased with each character until I had a mammoth undertaking worthy of the great Tolstoy.

 

             While "The Portrait" no longer worked as stand alone project, it did work well as an introduction to the three novels spanning Russian-American history from 1905 to 1931.  It's been over six years since I finished the last novel and for the first time in years I read all three with fresh eyes.  It was after I finished the introduction to the third book, "Slogans: Our Children, Our Future" that I realized the introduction's final paragraph was prophetic and quite eloquently described my writing style.

IKONs covers three generations and is worldwide in scope.  My method to tell the story was via a relay team.  Each chapter or a paragraph was devoted to a character carrying the plot forward. Both major and minor characters contributed to moving the story ahead a day, a month or a year.  This writing method may be confusing, but I was hoping my readers would grasp the rhythm and enjoy the story through multiple POVs. If nothing else, the last paragraph in the introduction would serve as a warning or preview of what was to come. 

 The Introduction ends with the following lines:  

Slowly the stories behind the portrait and the emotions they evoked were revealed like a puzzle with hundreds of pieces. Some pieces fit perfectly; others needed force. Some were clearly defined while others were so timeworn, that their murky contributions were barely legible. All the pieces were there. They just needed someone to put them together.

 

IKONS: The Puzzle

 

Substitute the interlocking puzzle pieces with literary characters and, like an old portrait, the story emerges. My hope is readers will find this method of story telling both educational and enjoyable.