Preceded By Chaos Vol. 0
…Preceded by Chaos is an illustrated short story. The protagonist, Mitchell Weaver, is a young Emergency Medicine doctor. Mitchell has entered a high stress, distinguished profession with the burden of a variety of particularly disturbing personal demons that he must battle every day in order to maintain the façade of sanity and control. The initial instalment of the series, Volume 0, introduces the reader to Mitchell at a point in his life where he has begun to realize that many of his prior indulgences and deficits are no longer compatible with his current life of responsibility.
About M. Wheeler
M. Wheeler held an eclectic series of jobs – including working as a studio engineer and a teacher –
before he entered medical school in his thirties. During his residency while living in New York City, he wrote his first two books which would eventually become the Preceded by Chaos series. Wheeler travels extensively for his job but currently lives in Miami.
https://precededbychaos.com/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/precededbychaos
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/PrecededByChaos/
Promoting a book, in effect promoting myself, is a very unnatural and weird endeavor. After infancy and toddlerhood, a time where you feel you are the center of the universe, most of us find the general societal interest in our personal story virtually nonexistent. I mean I can recall a period in my life, during my inaugural unaccompanied bowel movements, where not needing someone to wipe the leftover excreta from my backside commanded my mother to issue an all points public service announcement to all extended family members. Nowadays I can post a medical school graduation pic on FB and not get a single like. So I’m certainly grateful to anyone willing to suffer though reading the story of me. Thank you.
My story was a typical story. At least to me, my story never seemed atypical until I spoke about it aloud to friends and associates that hail from more refined parentage. The way I see it, I knew other children born to 16 year old single mothers. My grandfather being involved in some minor element of organized crime seemed normal to me. My father being a drug dealer and former heroine addict didn’t seem abnormal. I was born and lived in neighborhoods where all these things did not make me different from any of my peers. But during the later parts of my formative years, I also lived in neighborhoods where subjects concerning my background were deemed taboo and unmentionable. Regardless of my environment it all seemed pretty blasé to me.
Always looking for a better opportunity to provide for me, mom’s lack of job stability led to a good deal of relocation within Connecticut and a short stint in Southern California. During our travels, I wasn’t the picture of popularity. Being a chubby, quiet, introspective child, who never stayed in one school system for more than 2 years was less than an ideal scenario for accumulating invites to the local kids’ ice cream socials. Often I found my prepubescent self quarantined in my bedroom, either trapped inside my head with my thoughts or immersing myself into comic books. With almost an unhealthy penchant for being internally occupied, I never ran out of thoughts but when I ran out of comics I made my own. As I entered grade school, the format of my comics transformed to short stories and shoddily developed screenplays until one day writing took a back seat to the effects of the unbridled hormones of puberty. Like many, my high school years were a barely enjoyable series of poorly executed attempts at maturity where not much was accomplished academically or otherwise. Shortly after high school, my grandfather, my de facto father figure, died in jail. It was around this time that I would resume writing. The tone of my writing became decidedly darker, at times representing a part of my life that was once taboo to address but due to my grandfather’s passing, and my own independence, I then felt comfortable confronting in my writing.
Influenced by an illustrated form of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart”, it wouldn’t be until my college years that my first illustrated short story would be initiated.
My twenties were spent working full time and pursing my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. It was during this time where I developed and indefatigable work ethic. I never had less than 2 forms of employment and I worked every kind of job under the sun. My spectrum of employment ranged from a UPS dock loader, to furniture mover to bartender to scientific researcher and teacher’s assistant in a university Biology department and everything in between. I would have complained less while working so much if I would have known my work experience would serve to help me prepare for my medical career as well as my writing. But I didn’t know, so I complained nonstop while working, as well as before work and after clocking out. In my mid-late twenties is when I decided to go to medical school. 12 hours study days 7 days a week once again served to put my writing on hold, not to mention my income and social life. It wasn’t until my residency, during a trip to Amsterdam, that “Preceded by Chaos, Volume 0” was written. During my medical training, after having minimal exposure to people with this level of pedigree and intellect, I was astonished by just how normal my fellow doctors were. It was at this point during my career that the ideas for stories about my comrades began to consume my RAM that was once reserved for medical knowledge, and lay claim to my immediate attention that was typically occupied by issues related to patient care. So I guess my motivation to write had, in part, stemmed from my desire not kill someone through medical negligence and, in part, from my desire to tell a tale about the humanness of those who we at times think are beyond reproach.
“…Preceded by Chaos” is an illustrated short story series based on people and situations I had come across during my time in medicine. This book, Volume 0, is the introduction to a series. The story has a finite arc and the first volume introduces the reader to the story in the middle of the arc and all subsequent books move forward in time or back in time, relative to volume 0. Volume 0 is an important place to start because it introduces us to the main character, Mitchell Weaver, at a time where Mitchell is reaching a transition point between who he was and who he will be and the story ahead of him is as important as the story behind him.
Thank you for the opportunity to entertain you. I truly enjoyed writing “…Preceded by Chaos”.
Please visit the website, at www.precededbychaos.com, for free multimedia content and to learn more about the series. Like us on Face Book, at Preceded by Chaos, and follow us on Twitter, at #precededbychaos.
- Wheeler
