Commentary 01

There was always more to write in these stories, but either it wasn't appropriate to the story line or would slow down the pace. When you create a world (or several) there are always tons of details. And being the author, you have complete control (mostly) about what happens. Of course, the closer you follow your intuition, and the more you have read of others' styles, the better your communication and story will wind up.

Using the sections of the book (which the blog is not as yet updated to include):

1. Haven't you had falling dreams?  Some say they wind up on the floor, but for me it was always that sensation of landing when I woke up. Of course, when our main character takes out a pen and paper to write down his inspiration, this is perhaps a  suggestion that he is vivid-dreaming, not just being blind effect of them as so many of have been taught.

I wrote this about the sweat, as I had just gotten over a round of fever myself. And you don't want to fully wake up, so you just change your shirt and get back into the muggy bed - all in the dark - so you don't lose your sleep. Besides, for a guy, changing sheets is a chore.

2. Being in a hospital is more an occurrence for me than I need to get into. Apparently he is in a private room, or at least no one is in any bed there. We never really know, well not when we are talking about the main character.

Now we know for sure that our main guy is dissecting his dreams.

This all comes from a point I read in Serge Kahili King's "Mastering Your Hidden Self", where he describes dreams as just an alternate reality. Death in any one dream is just where you don't come back, since you are already in another dream. Lester Levenson used to make this point as well, that there was little difference between dreaming and waking, except that they were usually quite different realities.

And this is the main premise for this book. You never really find out if our main character, Joe, ever "wakes up" to "reality". But he does get a handle on what's happening and winds up winning what he wants...

3. Here we are introduced to our "Factors". Of course, I reveal their names later. We don't know if they are good or back guys at this point, only that they are having trouble with one of their subjects. We are given a hint that their Prefect has them in some sort of academic setting as grad students.

4. Here's Joe's friend Jack. Oddly, in the Prequel, Jack is a Doctor. And I didn't realize this is the way the story was written until I was finished and editing it. So that makes the Prequel actually raise more questions than it answers. Which was the point. Now, mirrors on the wall of the hospital room aren't all that common, unless in the bathroom. So this oddity again makes for luxurious surroundings Joe finds himself in. Also, a mirror at that point is a good, quick element to tell us more about this main character.

5. Just took a break here to let you in on everything that was happening, more or less. A straight talk to the audience from the main character. The original working title was "A funny thing happened on my way to enlightenment." This was because it's a funny state, and a moving target. A person can achieve it and then move out of it and back, whatever they want. This is one of the points being explored in this piece of fiction.

What Joe looks like is more or less like me, only shorter. But red hair (mine's more gray these days) and green eyes is a nice combination. Mark Twain referred to his boyhood color as auburn, which is a more handsome-sounding color than "red".

Here we introduce the kahuna-kapua, which literally means (so I'm told) the "shaman keeper of the secret". Shaman and kapua roughly mean the same thing. And he is typically mystic in this section, bringing up the first principle of Huna, "The world is what you think it is." And this has everything to do with dreams, of course.