Breaking the Cycle: A Conversation with KL Wilks

On Extremes, Balance, and the Patterns We Mistake for Progress

The fire burned as though it knew the Pattern was watching, each flame a tongue, each ember an eye. Two chairs only, one for Elen, one for me. It is a curious thing to be questioned by a character I once thought I created. Tonight I wonder which of us belongs to the other. The Pattern watches too. I hear Glimlock’s laughter drifting from beyond the circle. My back chills with Nephrys’ presence, like frost pressed against the edge of the firelight. This Dispatch will catch and carry any of their extracurricular remarks.

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Elen: You’re launching your first novel at seventy. What took you so long?

Wilks: Pattern recognition takes time. I needed seven decades of watching the same cycles repeat—political, cultural, personal—before I understood what was really happening. Many writers set good against evil. I’m more interested in why we choose the same patterns that collapse, then dress the ruins up as progress.

Glimlock aside: He means you never learn until the Pattern drags you face-first across the floor. Trust me.

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Elen: “Most stories build on planets and empires. Yours does not. Why throw away anchors so many others cling to?”

Wilks: Because terrestrial metaphors limit thinking. When you’re trapped in worlds and civilizations, you’re stuck in their narrow quarrels. The Loom weaves Threads into the Weave, the fabric on which the Pattern of choice and consequence stretches across all whens and wheres. That’s not jargon. It’s the framework for how cycles repeat across realities.

Nephrys aside: He describes it as though he’s stood at the Spindle.
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Elen: What’s the central problem your cosmology faces?

Wilks: Extremism. Not ideology, extremism itself. The Pattern shows us that any extreme, no matter how noble its intent, burns hot, imposes rigid answers, and then collapses. We see it around us now.

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Elen: So there are no heroes?

Wilks: Heroes are less interesting than forces. Hargrum embodies one extreme, rigid order through control. But some argue Nephrys and the Loom lean toward the opposite, such deep flexibility that cause and effect rarely hold their line. To some eyes, that looks like Chaos.

Nephrys to Glimlock: Chaos? I call it adaptation. The Loom bends because the Weave must endure. Do not mistake resilience for weakness.
Glimlock: Told you he’d get under your skin.

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Elen: How does age shape this perspective?

Wilks: Extremes feel decisive. The young often rush toward them, but it is usually the old who ignite them as they focus on consolidating wealth or power before being pushed aside. Watching both sides of that equation long enough shows how the Pattern sustains itself.

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Elen: Why should a Reader pick up Loom in a crowded fantasy market?

Wilks: Exhaustion. Many Readers are tired of being told to choose sides in conflicts that never resolve. They’re living through their own Ouroboros moment, watching extremes consume everything. My work offers both a perspective for why this happens and a potential way out.

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Elen: The trilogy runs Loom to Forge to Sever. How does it grow?

Wilks: Loom sets the framework through family and inheritance. Forge shows how entire realities surrender to extremism. Sever asks whether the Pattern itself can evolve. Each book presses the question: what does it take to end the Cycle rather than just win (or lose) another round?

Nephrys aside: If his words hold, then he is as tangled as the knots he names.
Glimlock: Fair. But at least he tangles with intent. Most mortals just stumble into it.

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Elen: One last question. What do you want from your readers?

Wilks: I want them to see extremism as the trap, not the cure. Balance isn’t compromise. It is the only sustainable way forward. If they finish the trilogy with clearer eyes for the Cycles in their own lives, the Pattern has shifted.