This has got me all excited. I knew there would be some kind of blended, multi-disciplinarian environment that wasn’t a video game that could be the future of publishing. I think this is the first real inkling of it. And I think this is what I’m meant to do with my own fiction.

Gentleman Jack looked at The Professor like he was mad (something The Professor was quite used to). Concern etched itself into Jack’s face around his permanently devilish grin. “You’re having me on,” he said.

The Professor shook his head without diverting his gaze from the strangers slowly moving through the street market out at the end of the alley. Out of the corner of his eye, did he see that smile falter for a second?

“Well alright, then,” said Jack as he darted down the alley, fingertips touching the damp brick, “Let’s see what these morons are made of.” Jack pulled from his haversack a corked bottle, which he uncorked with his teeth and took a splash into his mouth as he pocketed the cork. He was not making an effort to be quiet now, in fact he started singing:

Oh, any ol’ whore
Is enough of a score
As long as I’m not choosy,
But watch out for Big Betty,
She’s round, lumpy and wetty,
A mountain of a floozy!

And with that last line Jack launched himself into the midst of the seven. Leon couldn’t believe what he was seeing: Jack was pulling the Drunken Master, one of the oldest if not one of the least unobtrusive tricks in the book. Jack ran directly into one of the strangers, holding his bottle out at arm’s length and pushing it into the mans’s chest, saying, “Here!” and simply letting go of it, a move which counted on the reflexes of the mark. This mark’s reflexes were good indeed, The Professor noted: the bottle had not dropped even an inch before the mark’s fingers closed about its neck. That was some speed. Jack continued to push into the mark like an obnoxious drunk, backpedaling him a couple steps. That distraction, The Professor knew, was all Jack needed to dip into the man’s belt purse.

And then, somehow, they were all gone.

Jack and the seven strangers: gone. The crowd moved on as usual. But wait! Resting on the ground, upside down, was Gentleman Jack’s top hat. Nobody picked it up, the crowd walked around it. Was it bait? Only one way to find out. Leon didn’t feel very smart now, as he had to simply walk out into the alley and expose himself by picking up Jack’s hat, but he didn’t know what else to do, so there was nothing but to do it and be done with it. He strode out like he owned the place, picked up Jack’s hat and inspected it as if it were a newly found treasure, and placed it atop his own head. He strolled on for a bit, then ducked into a different alley.

What the hell just happened to Jack?

When he was about halfway back to the gang’s hideout, he paused to examine Jack’s top hat. Tucked inside the headband were a number of hidden implements and weapons of Jack’s, including several small rolls of hide for messages. But there was another roll, this of vellum, actual paper. And it was sealed with a wax seal The Professor recognized.

Gentleman Jack and The Professor watched the seven identically-dressed strangers from the alleys which fed into the slum’s bazaar. As the strangers ogled the goods at various stalls, Jack and The Professor flitted along shaded, twisted veins of tiny streets which encircled the bazaar’s heart, walking the occasional wall and roofline like cats as they kept the recruiters in sight.

“Where do you think they’re heading?” asked Jack, who never could stand silence for very long. Twelve-year-olds aren’t known for patience. As they leaped from one rooftop to another over a deep alley, their cloaks flared out like wings. Landing in a crouch, Jack deftly caught his top hat as it tumbled forward from his curly head. It was way too big for him, of course, because no haberdasher makes top hats for little boys unless they are rich, and Gentleman Jack is the exact opposite of rich. He rolled and flipped it back on to his head with a flick of the wrist. It was a neat little trick he had picked up from a street performer. Gentleman Jack loved his flourishes, he did.

“Who knows, Jack?” said The Professor, as he used his middle finger to push up his handmade spectacles (he had ground the lenses and fit them into wire frames of his own design). Then he brushed his long hair out of his eyes.

But of course, he thought he knew, but what he didn’t know for sure was how he felt about it.

“Jack, my fine companion, if I were you, I’d start preparing to leave Oppia.”

“You can’t be serious?” said Jack, “But we’ve never… For how long?” They had followed the strangers another quarter of a mile, and were each peeking around the corners of a dank alley with a little rivulet of sewage coursing through it. At its opposite end, light and color shone into the dark alley, glaring off the damp and crooked brick walls. The strangers were trying to keep it low-key, but their cloaks were too big for the weather, collars too high, faces wrapped like masks, hats low, and the extremely weathered look of their gear all added up for Leon.

Known as The Professor, Leon was the fourteen-year-old pair of brains behind the Misfits, one of the strangest gangs ever to roam the above-ground slums of Oppia.

Leon pushed his homemade glasses up the bridge of his blade of a nose and said “If I’m right, I’d say, ‘forever.’”

As soon as the scholar-warrior idea surfaced, I knew the entire story had changed. What I didn’t know was the extent. Of course it’s more than I thought it would be, and really, how could it be any other way and still be called writing? The original protagonist in early versions of the treatment (abstract?) was the Dreamwalker girl, hence the title. Now, the main protagonist is a young man sent as part of a scientific team to investigate the Dreamwalkers.

These investigators are nothing like the nerdy scientist stereotype: they have much more in common with explorers or spies than “lab rats.” Where does the “raw material” for people like this come from? It can come from anywhere, from all classes, but the street-smart types tend to do well. They’ve had certain survival skills taught to them from the very beginning, which is of great help for this kind of work. Everything else they can learn in their training.

So it is with the protagonist (as yet unnamed) of this story. A street gang of kids is pressed into service for the Crown Library (I’m still calling it that for now). They know loyalty and brotherhood. It’s the binding force in their lives. The original loyalty they have for each other is nearly unshakable as they are transplanted into the scholar-warriors. They have a loyalty to the Crown Library, too, but their first loyalty nests within that like a curled, sleeping dragon. I can see that themes of loyalty, of brotherhood, of tribe, and family are going to dominate this story.

The other picture painted of loyalty and tribe will come from the Dreamwalkers, because, unlike the street kids who become investigators, the Dreamwalkers are in tightly knit clans or tribes. So we have non-blood-relative tribes and we have blood-relative tribes both. The utter lack of loyalty or tribe within political systems will be the counterbalance in all this. They’re going to be the antagonists. The antagonists view any system as useful so long as it supports them in their quests for power.

Libraries have always been  more than mere buildings filled with books, and for this story, especially so. In Dreamwalker, the protagonist character is one of a very special group of people who are the fantasy equivalent to investigative scientists. Think Lewis & Clark, but in chainmail, with swords & sorcery. Think one part research institute, one part spy agency. I might come up with some other name for them, later, but for now, this group is the Scholar-Warriors of the Crown Library. These Scholar-Warriors are sent on missions to investigate, catalog, and write about new and strange phenomena for the benefit and glory of their kingdom (the Crown).

These investigative missions are not just simple journeys to write down and sketch pictures—they’re often dangerous and require a bit of muscle as well as an unorthodox and penetrating intelligence. Missions are chosen by the head of the library (sometimes to satisfy the interests of the Crown). In the Dreamwalker story, several warrior-scholars are sent to investigate something which the Crown’s necromancers find disturbing: a powerful force in the spirit world which appears to be immune to the normal laws of necromancy. This will create some great story juice, since the findings of the Scholar-Warriors will put them at odds with both the Crown and the necromancers.

There is much to love about this idea:

• It keeps the magical characters from being point-of-view characters too often, which helps keep their magic more mysterious (I had previously conceived such an investigative character be one of the necromancers).
• It creates a central milieu vehicle for all manner of future stories, both short and long.
• I get to (gleefully, gleefully) include within the stories the writings of the scholars as they would have written their works, in their words, complete with footnotes and illustrations.
• The whole idea of a band of scholarly warriors having adventures like medieval field scientists is just too fucking cool.
• Their symbol is a sword laid into the crook of the pages of an open book. Their motto: Knowledge is the Mind of Power.

I love the way this story is coming together.

As soon as I flesh out the milieu more and come up with some characters, I’ll be able to set the characters loose within it and see what happens to them. Try my hand at a couple of short stories as well as continuing work on the first novel. The first order of business is to create the library itself: describe its setting, rules, history, and chief characters. Explain its relationship to Crown and Kingdom.

The dreamwalkers get their powers from the giant trees in which they live. The trees, called Dreamochs, carry within their trunks the ancestors of those living on, in, and around the tree. Each tribe or family has its one tree (when I say gigantic, I mean fuckin’ huge, like a trunk the size of a skyscraper). Like the way humans are used in the movies The Matrix, except all cool and fantasy-like, the undead (undead in a good way) bodies of the dreamwalkers ancestors within the tree are like a collective magical/dreamworld battery, from which magical energy is drawn.

Magic has to have limitations and rules in fantasy writing, or there’s nothing to contain and shape the characters and plot of your story. As Orson Scott Card says in his wonderful book, How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, magic has to have a price. By making the dreamwalkers’ magic like a “power grid,” the limitation is built-in: it cannot be used continuously or excessively, because it has to recharge. If it doesn’t recharge, then two consequences can result: the dreamwalker who is draining the system will weaken in the magic she is attempting to do, and/or the tree itself will begin to weaken and fail, thus endangering the past, present, and future of her entire tribe. If the tree dies, the tribe dies (not literally, but the loss is so catastrophic they may as well all be actually dead). If a dreamoch dies, it may not be able to stand. Such a towering tree falling would create considerable damage to those on it, in it, and around it.

Other thoughts/ideas:

• The dream world is an alternate reality, like shamanic cultures’ concepts of the astral plane or spirit world. Dreamwalkers see this world and move in it and the waking world simultaneously. The dream world is more malleable and frightening than the “real” world.
• There are creatures/things that exist in the dream world that don’t have a waking world counterpart. Beings who can see into the dreamworld can still see these. This is why cats jump up at “nothing.”
• A non-dreamwalker who is awake does not have a dream body visible in the dreamworld, or the dream body is asleep while the physical body is awake.
• Dream bodies can look dramatically different than waking world bodies, and even shapeshift. Shapeshifting is often how magic and combat are performed in the dream world. Under extreme situations (or if a dreamwalker is extremely powerful) this shapeshifting ability carries over the threshold to the waking body.
• Protecting the silver cord is the most important thing. If it is broken, the spirit is separated from the body forever.
• Possibly, each tribe/tree (they’re known by trees, and each tree has a name) has a totem animal such as crow, bear, wolf, stag, etc.

There’s a lot more to think about with this, but these are some of the basic ideas I’m toying with now.

In many ways, this blog is for me more than for readers. Right now, my ideas about the story are vague. I had a different conception of the story, previously, but I scrapped it. I was trying to take two different stories and make them the same story, which is sort of like trying to perform surgery to create conjoined twins instead of separate them.

This story began with a single idea, around which everything else is formed. That idea is of a people who live in an isolated woodland who can draw magic from and walk at will in the dream world. Most people cannot do this at all, or they can only do it on occasion. Dreamwalkers can do it whenever they want. This power comes to them from their ancestors, who are neither dead nor alive, but who exist in a terrifying and unique fashion. They are interred before they physically die into the living trunks of a unique species of tree, called Dreamochs, which are a form of giant black -leafed Oak and which grow to enormous size.

An entire family tribe live on or in a tree (yes, I know, inescapable comparisons to Lothlorien, etc., whatever), and all of its ancestors exist within in a peculiar symbiosis with the tree. The sentient minds of the ancestors within the tree are magical power source from which the currently living descendents can draw. The older a family line is, the more ancestors are interred within, the larger its tree grows, and their magic grows stronger.

Now, here’s a crazy thing: a big part of what I just wrote in the previous paragraph is completely new. I had never thought before of all the ancestors being in a single tree, and the descendents actually living on the tree, using it as a structure, bending it by magic into dwelling places and so forth. My previous conception was that each tree would contain exactly one ancestor, and that the trees were a little bigger than normal size (their trunks would have to be large enough to contain a human body within). Each family tribe would tend a grove of these trees, which they would hold as sacred and guard fiercely.

It hadn’t occurred to me until just now that all of the ancestors could be interred within one gargantuan, monolithic tree. So many astounding possibilities now open up with this one new twist, I can hardly contain myself! How would they survive winter? How do they feed and clothe themselves (if they live in a giant tree, how do they grow food or raise animals)? What amazing social mores and traditions would exist because of this?

Man, this is a lot to think about. And I haven’t even told you yet about the necromancers or the race of Bruin.

I’ve been reading John Crowley’s Ægypt Cycle, and no one writes a death scene better. I thought I would feel haunted forever reading Boney Rasmussen experiencing his own death in Love & Sleep, but now I’ve just read through the death of Dr. John Dee in Dæmonomania. I liked Boney’s death better (what an odd thing to say), because it seemed like how death might actually be, instead of some heavy-handed device in a story.

But the inexplicable shock at the end of Dee’s death, the confounding of narrator and narratee, disturbed and confounded me. It pulled a sincere “What the fuck?” right out of me, and I don’t often exclaim aloud when reading.

If you’ve never read Crowley, one thing you will simply not believe until you do is that every word on every page is perfect (though the book itself is not). There are no sloppy or hasty sentences. Every word is perfect in its place. I know my own word choices are not so meticulous. To find the exactly correct word that carries precisely the desired meaning, Crowley sends me to dictionary a few times for each book of his I devour.

In many ways, this blog has been a long time coming. It’s the first blog I’ve created in a while that has nothing to do with blogging and internet marketing. I’ve created this blog because I’m a writer. I always have been, but instead of writing fiction, I’ve been writing blog posts and information products. And all this time, the stories have stayed inside me. They have grown stronger and more insistent: they want out, and I can’t deny them any longer (not that I wanted to, mind you, but there is this practical little matter of food and shelter which must be paid for). I’m sure turning 40 or separating from my wife have nothing whatsoever to do with this {clears throat, rolls eyes}.

The name and domain of this blog relates to one particular story, which takes place in a world rich enough to be the setting for many stories. The stories I write are speculative fiction: mostly fantasy, but I’ve got at least one big juicy science fiction tale in me, as well. If you were expecting snobby MFA literary fiction, dah-ling, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. Move along, nothing to see here, except some magi and unusual creatures (did that tree just move?). So, on the one hand, Dreamwalkers are a particular invention of mine, a people in a story. On the other hand, when we read a fantastic tale of fantasy, we are all of us dream walkers: we submerge ourselves into another world. We surrender to the story. I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the middle of a great book, it’s like I’m not even here. I have a hard time “waking up.” I keep looking over my shoulder and seeing an alternate mileu in the corner of my eye while I supposedly operate in the “real” world.

I plan for this blog to be a public journal of my story notes as I work on this particular story, but I’m sure it will end up being more than that. Obervations about what I’m reading or about the genre ghetto of fantasy are sure to appear here as well. Other than that I make no promises and do not claim to know anything about writing or fantasy literature. I’m not here to please or impress anybody, but you’re more than welcome to hang out with me here if you like.