J.M. Getz

Excerpt from first chapter: Not the very first pages, but I wanted to include some dialogue. The first pages feature mostly philosophy, description, and action. Not much talking.

Scene: Introduces the setting, antagonist, and mentor character while also establishing tone and pace.

I turn my head and see a glaring light peeking out from a very upset looking conductor. I roll my eyes and sigh as I hear “Now arriving at our final stop for the day, all passengers must de-board.” from an electronic recording coming out of the speakers above our heads. 

“Oh, so now the princess decides to wake up, aye?” The pissed off conductor says in an English accent as he flings spittle in my face with each word. “Well you bett-uh listen here, lit-tle girl. That’s gonna be ten dollars for tha ride and another ten dollars for my time that you wasted.” The conductor says as he moves closer and closer into my space, letting off the distinct smell of old onions and cheese. 

I slowly start to slip out from underneath his stance and begin to back toward the door as I reach in my bag looking for loose bills. “Well, I'm really sorry, but I only have ten bucks, so that will have to do.” I say in a polite tone while reaching out my arm with my last ten dollars in the world. “Here you go sir. Thank you” I say as I set the bill down and then head quickly for the door. 

“Oi- hold up, I wasn't done with you!,” the man yells, as I begin to dart, dodge and duck my way through the crowded subway station. 

I turn around and hold my two middle fingers up to him and spin my way into the sea of people, where I can make my escape. That’s the thing about living in the city, though, isn’t it? Everyone is always thinking about how to make their big escape while everyone tries to take advantage of each other. But it isn’t all that bad. We do have thousands of restaurants that I can’t afford and tons of other expensive attractions to keep the upper class kids from feeling like regular people. But again, that aint me. 

After exiting the train station, I join the throng of people as we make our way home  from work or school. I notice how we all divide, spreading in our separate directions like threads in a spider web. In the crowd, things almost seem to stand still as if the constant movement of society’s matrix appears to stop when viewed from the inside. Just as the movement of society creates a sort of motionlessness, the lights of the city do anything but stand still as they pierce your psyche down to your core. Dancing lit-up advertisements reign over the whole cityscape of the lights coming from people’s businesses, apartments, parks, theaters, bars, etc... Meanwhile, zooming lights fly past you up and down the road nonstop, going through intersections lit up with more lights and driving on roads that are lined with…well, even more lights. After a while all of the lights grow blinding, so I tend to walk with my hood on and my head down. 

I walk until the lights become dimmer and fade away as I move from the city center to the neighborhoods, and then my neighborhood. Only this is no private school country club neighborhood with an HOA and a membership plan. No, this little gem that I call home is quite the opposite. I live in Lakeside, which may sound nice to you if you come from a good area and hear it, but it actually has a different meaning if you're from around here. Then you know that Lakeside has the highest murder rate per-capita in the entire country. And yes, the lake is famous- but famous for the amount of bodies retrieved from it. I don't want to become one of those bodies, so when I walk through my neighborhood I have to walk with my shoulders high, but not too high; with my face mean, but not to mean; with a mask on that says, ‘Don’t mess with me’! 

The consistent problem is that I’m really not this mean and rugged person. I’m actually fascinated by astronomy, biology, literature, mythology, and really everything else they teach in school. I love watching anime, creating artwork and cuddling with my cat, but these Lakesiders don't know that. I walk around incognito through the streets and usually only feel safe in the confines of my own home.

Before I can finish my thought, I receive a shove from the back that nearly pushes me to the ground as my heavy book bag slams up against the back of my head.

“Ow, what the heck-” I turn around and see a gigantic towering figure of a teenager with a barreling chest and wide shoulders staring at me with little beatty black eyes. Petra. My own personal torture, sent here to remind me of the harsh reality that Lakeside is. 

“What are you doing here, Aleksondra?” Petra snarls as I regain my footing. 

“Well, you know Pete, I'm just walking home from school, and if you wanted to start a conversation with a girl- that's not really the way to do it.”  I say while sharply.

“Why don't you just leave Lakeside, anyways, you spoiled brat?” As Petra speaks, he pushes me into one of his other two goons.

One guy, Billy Akers,  pushes me back to a different guy I'd never seen before, spitting out, “Yeah, why don't you just leave-brat?” I wonder how they can hate me so much when I don’t even know them.

The other guy catches me and reaffirms, “Nobody wants you here,” before shoving me to the ground and leaning over my body.

As the guys circle me, I look down at the ground and start to cry. 

Petra speaks again, “But you’re so spoiled  that you probably don't even realize that, do you?” Petra’s words cut through me like a knife. 

“I'm just trying to make it home, Pete. I thought we had outgrown all of this schoolyard bullying stuff,” I plea to the group.

“Oh really?” He laughs with his crew. “It doesn’t work that way, sweetheart.” 

Why do these guys hate me so much for being different? For going to a different school than them in a different neighborhood? Before I can really ponder the answer to this question, I catch a glimpse of Petra’s huge foot coming straight for my face. White shining stars of light flutter across my vision before I drop to the cement and everything goes dark as the picture of these terrible guys fade out of focus. I can still hear them talking back and forth as I play possum and remain down to give off the look of being unconscious. Hopefully they will leave me alone. 

“Now she looks just like her father!” Petra says in a cynical way to the others. 

“Yeah, cold, unconscious, and alone on the ground just the same as …” before he can finish, I hear Bapa's voice come crashing through. 

“Aleksondra, Is that you?” I can hear him yell in a booming tone as he gets closer to the group.  “Get away from her, you creeps!”

In a fluster he yells, “Hey, what the hell is going on here?” Directing his attention to the guys huddled around me.

Petra says, “Mind your own business old man before somebody else gets hurt.”.

“You're threatening me, buddy?” Bapa coughs out in a surprised tone. “I should teach you a lesson right here and now for  touching my granddaughter but I’m not catching charges for beating up a minor.”

My eyes are still closed as I am playing possum, but I can hear the shift in Petra’s voice and he moves from me to Bapa, ”What did you say, old man?” He says in a low and threatening tone. 

“You heard me, you little halfwit spawn of chucky, get the hell on before I call the cops on you. Or are you too dumb to understand that?” The boys just stare through Gramps as he stands in between me and the bullies. “Hmmm, let me try again then, you little terrors get back to the field before the other children of the corn see that you've gone missing,” Bapa always spoke with such confidence and charisma for someone his age. 

1.       Story Statement:

Unsuspecting teenager Aleks Sultanas, must reunite her ancient bloodline while uncovering a sinister alien plot that intrinsically connects our reality to the dream world and threatens the lives of all conscious beings in the universe.

2.       Antagonist/Antagonistic Force:

The main antagonist in this trilogy are the Annanuki race, a widespread ruling alien race that have systematically gained control over most conscious beings in the universe on two separate planes of existence ("dream world" and "waking world"). Each novel has its own separate manifestation of the Annanuki, whom, as the trilogy goes on become more and more menacing, powerful and high ranking.

The first major protagonist is Aleks’ childhood bully, Petra, who has been harassing her incessantly since the disappearance of her father at a young age. Petra, or “Pete”, and his cronies have been shamelessly bullying Aleks for over a decade when they take it to the next level by trying to eliminate the Sultanas bloodline. This attempt puts Aleks’ grandfather in a coma, nearly kills her, and functions as the first novel's main catalyst.

Later in the novel, when Aleks learns that Petra is an Annanuki spy who was sent to Earth to keep an eye on her family, the friction between the two heats up to a boiling point. Petra, and his associates represent the greed and deception that have plagued conscious life for some time now and progressively get more and more sinister as the story develops to the point where one may even compare them to Assef and his goons.

3.       Title Options:

• The Dreamer: Before I Wake
• Waiting for Waking
• Lost Diary of a Lucid Dreamer

4.       Comparable Titles:

• Silver Trilogy by Kerstin Gier (2015-2017)
  • The Silver trilogy is similar to my own trilogy in the sense that they both revolve around a young female protagonist who is dealing with consequential lucid dreaming that is intertwined with reality. The Silver trilogy has a more localized plot that deals with mundane teenage conflicts whereas my protagonist is wrapped up in an ancient conflict between good and evil that transcends Earth and implicates the whole Universe.

• Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)
  • Neuromancer is most widely known as being the inspiration for the Matrix trilogy. There are several parallels between my story and Neuromancer starting with the parallels between the "dream world" and the "matrix". When the protagonist in each story unlocks their mind in the matrix/dream world, they are able to completely control their reality. The limit of what they can do is only defined by the limit of their mind. There are also themes of artificial intelligence, free will, and totalitarian control in each story.

5.       Log Line:

As 14-year-old Aleks Sultanas tries to reunite her family and confront her overactive lucid dreaming, her ancient Greek bloodline is pulled into a battle for the control of all conscious beings in the universe through the capitalization of the dream world.

6.       Conflict:

•  Primary Dramatic Conflict:
  • The primary dramatic conflict in this series is the lost connection between the dream world and our waking lives, and how to restore the balance between the two worlds.
• Secondary Conflicts:
  • Aleks struggles to balance her home and school lives, causing a clash of two worlds in her own day-to-day. She struggles to feel worthy enough to fit in with girls at her private school and struggles to feel unprivileged enough to fit in with her neighbors in the rundown projects that her family can afford to live in.
• Core Wound:
  • Aleks’ core wound comes from the absence of her father who mysteriously left when she was four years old. The absence of her father forced Aleks and her mother into poverty and they still carry this scar along with them every day. As a child who has been seemingly abandoned, Aleks blames herself for everything and is prone to random mood swings and outbursts of emotion whenever her father is brought up. This wound begins to resolve when her father is reintroduced, however the scar that his absence left will seemingly always be present.

7.       Setting:

To sketch out all of the worlds, dreams, and places on Earth that Aleks finds herself in would take far too long for the purposes of this exercise. However, the story takes place in a vast setting, ranging from Aleks’ families run-down house in the undesirable south side suburb of Lakeside, to futuristic uptown cityscape, to distant planets with fantastical features. As the story switches back and forth between the waking world and the dream world, so do the settings switch back and forth between futuristic urban areas filled with poverty and filth, to utopian floating castles in the sky.

At its base level, this story draws a thematic conflict between nature and society. In this sense, when Aleks is in the world controlled by Annanuki, the environment is defined as dull, lifeless, and grey. Whenever Aleks is at her rebel camp and with her family, the environment is ethereal, decadent, and unique. These two sides of the story work to juxtapose one another and create an easily definable comparison of tone/mood throughout the novel.

At first, the distinction between reality and dreams are stark, and so are the differences in their descriptions. The industrial, lifeless city is contrasted by the imaginative world that beckons Aleks; just as the Annunaki are contrasted by the rebels who seek to destroy them. As the story progresses, however, the lines between dream and reality, between fact and fiction, become more and more increasingly blurred. The waking reality that she inhabits becomes more egalitarian and sophisticated while the dream world becomes more complex and complicated as the lines blur.