If there’s anyone reading this blog who’s been following me since the old days at Dreams of the Shining Horizon, you can testify that I don’t post nearly as much here as I did there, at least during the heyday. There’s a reason for that.
I’ve been working on City of Dreams, an urban fantasy novel that I hope will be the first of a four-book series. The whole series takes place in the same setting as Dreams of the Boardwalk, and the central idea is that the Cities (and the towns, and the ocean, and…) all have dreams of their own. And of course, everything that dreams also has nightmares. As with us, the dreams of the cities are made up of their hopes and happy memories, while their nightmares are made up of their fears. The difference is that their dreams and nightmares are such vast things that they are actually worlds unto themselves, dimensions beside our own: the Dream and the Nightmare. The Dream is the dreaming place as it is truly meant to be, what it hopes to become. The Nightmare is what the dreaming place fears it might become. The Waking World, the Dream, and the Nightmare all influence each other; as the dreaming place grows toward the Dream or decays toward the Nightmare, the Dream or the Nightmare grows stronger. If the Dream or the Nightmare gains power, the Waking World is subtly influenced to become more like the other world.
This is why humans with the power to enter the other worlds – known as Dreamwalkers – always choose to align themselves with the Dream or the Nightmare. Those who align with The Dream are called the Oneiros, and the ones who align with The Nightmare are called the Mara. No, there are no neutrals. People who care that little never become Dreamwalkers in the first place.
Sarah Brannigan, the protagonist of Dreams of the Boardwalk, does not have the power to change the existing balance between Dream and Nightmare, Oneiros and Mara. Aislin Rourke, protagonist of City of Dreams? Does.
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The inspiration for this came to me while walking the beach at Coney Island. I was marveling at how much it had improved over the last few years, and I mused that it seemed like Coney Island was growing toward some platonic ideal of what Coney Island should be. That led me to the idea: what if there was some alternate world, right beside our own, where that platonic ideal existed: The Dream of Coney Island. And of course, a place that dreams will have nightmares, where everything is worse. And of course the Dream and the Nightmare are in constant conflict, trying to bring the real place closer to themselves. Thus was the idea for a whole series born.
Later books in the series will involve the characters leaving New York City and exploring the American Dream…and the American Nightmare. Not necessarily because they want to, but because the forces of Nightmare are on the move. Who knows? I may have to do some traveling in order to actually see what I’m writing about.
In the meantime, I’m starting to get a bit frustrated with how slowly it’s going. As far as I can tell, success as an indie author seems to be at least partly based on producing work frequently and regularly, and keeping the audience interested thereby. With that in mind, I wish I could produce a book and several short stories a year. Well, for that reason and because I want those books and short stories to exist somewhere outside of my own head. But we all have to work to keep body and soul together, and between job and commute, there’s not a lot of time or energy left. Especially when you consider that another thing success as an indie author requires is self-promotion, something that I’m not really good at, but which I’ve been picking up the pace on lately, as you may have noticed.
So with all of that in mind, I’ve come up with what may be a solution: starting soon, I’ll be posting excerpts from the first draft of City of Dreams. With any luck, that will provide enough material to keep this blog going on a more regular basis, and better yet, it may raise some interest. It might be a good thing to release a book after something other than months of radio silence and fading interest from whatever fans I may have.
Coming soon to this theatre.