A Story is Born...

Welcome to my first blog post! Great to have you here!

Just in case you haven't looked at the other pages in my website, I am going to give a brief overview as to how this story came about before we jump in. This blog is not meant to be a 'how to' on writing, outlines or formatting discussions. If however, you have questions relating to writing, no worries, I will be happy to address and answer all that I can.  

The purpose of this blog will be to introduce my story to you. I'd like you to meet the 'friends and foes in my head', visit different lands, and join me in following the different characters on their journeys.

So how did this story come about? Well, it came to me in a dream close to 20 years ago now. I can still remember the first time I saw the main characters. I remember what they wore, what they said, and where they were. This story became a repetitive dream. There were always new characters, new scenes and locations, new plots; and yet, the story-lines that already existed continued and evolved further. This story would linger for months, then disappear. And then, without warning, it came back! I don't know how or why, but it would pick-up where it left off, repeating certain events with more detail, as well as new convoluted beginnings.   

"Thru Eyes of REM..." is a fantasy series and purely a work of fiction. The books in this series are referred to as 'Narratives'. I chose to call these books narratives simply because of my writing style. When I first started to write, the only way it made sense to me was to give some of the characters their own voice and allow them to tell us what was going on, what they were feeling and simply their point of view. Once I finished the first book, I googled 'how to write a novel', strange, I know. The reason for that was because it dawned on me that there may be some standard formatting involved. In fact, I remember reading a suggestion that you should first write an outline before beginning your book. Well, I may have done things backwards, but I had so much in my head, I never even thought of putting together an outline, I just sat down and wrote. But here is something else I read after finishing the first book. I read that there are different writing styles and that most books are not written in the first person. Well, guess what I did? That's right, I wrote in the first person, and that's not all. I read it is also not recommended to write with multiple points of view as the readers may get confused. So, I not only wrote first person, allowing one character to tell you the story, I wrote in first person, multiple narrative points of view, so the first book is narrated by five people. I even thought (for a minute) of revising the entire book to third person, but the meaning of it all just got lost. So first person with multiple narrative points of view it is. You will either love it or just not. I myself have never read a book written this way, so I love it!

The series title "Thru Eyes of REM...", this, for me, was as plain as the nose on one's face. The Home Page of this website describes REM sleep, so I won't rewrite it here. But it is fitting, as this story was created in a dream. If you get a chance, it is quite an interesting read.

Now on to the name--'The First Narrative' MARTINKA; yes the name is similar to my first name, Martina. Good idea to discuss that 'elephant in the room' right now. Question--when you go to sleep and dream, are you not in your dreams? Well, that's how this came about. In that dream, I was her, the protagonist, the main character. Of course, I had no idea that this dream would evolve and become what it has for me. Back then, it was just a dream, nothing more. But interestingly, in that dream, her name was Martinka and her nickname was Tink. Ok, if you are a language arts teach by chance, this next analogy may have a specific name...to give you an idea--let's use the name Nicholas. So, Martina is to Nicholas, as Martinka is to Nicky, as Tink is to Nick, got it? In my dream, her real name was Martinka, which was my 'child' name, but she is mostly referred to as Tink, which is a nickname taken from Martinka. There are some similarities between, say, my background and hers, maybe some physical similarities as well. But in the end, the character is fictitious. 

So for now, until my next blog, I leave you with this...we are about to enter a world of fantasy; vampires, witches and fairies, oh my, lol. The next blog will introduce our protagonist; who she is, what kind of life she's had leading up to the first chapter, and what she dreams of.