Welcome to the Author's Note of my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel. Current word count: 66,184/50,000 (Does not include this note) This year I am continuing my Dark System trilogy. For a brief recap please see this post. For full pdf's (unedited) of the first two books please click here. (Full books carry an advisory warning) Navigation: Start | Previous Dark System: Author's Note It all started with a dream. In the dream I was on a practically abandoned beach, only a few people were there, and they were looking for something. In the middle of the beach stood a large pipe with a fan attatched. Maybe the fan had a purpose, maybe not, but it was there. And it was unusual. In the dream my perspective shifted, and I knew that I was looking through the non-functioning eyes of a blind man. He turned, to 'gaze' out over the water, and saw them. People coming out of the water, but instead of the auras that he was used to seeing there were blindingly white skulls. I remember the feeling of absolute terror that overcame the blind man who's eyes I was looking out from. In those early days the piece was not Dark System, it was a single piece, Dark Planet. But things happen in threes. I remember the farmhouse, and I remember the dead cows. I remember the hunger of those yellow forms moving through the house, collecting souls for their dark purposes. The setting was vastly different, but the evil felt the same. It was the same hunger that those from the beach had expressed. Another dream had revealed another piece of the puzzle, and it was then that I knew that I had a trilogy that needed told. Once I had acknowledged to myself that the story was deeper than just a single volume the dreams stopped. But I always knew, even as I wrote, that the story would not let me waiver from the way that it was supposed to be told. It took me nearly three years to write this trilogy. It was the piece that kept calling me back, and yet I found myself procrastinating many times. Each book had its own challenges (though not unique), and for the most part those challenges were different than the challenges that the trilogy as a whole presented. To me, the biggest challenge was keeping true to the story as it had been shown me while filling in the missing parts of the puzzle. Not that the story would let me go astray. There was more than once that I had to let go of the attachments that I had developed, and allow the story to progress as it wanted. The second major challenge was trying to tell the story from so many varied viewpoints. Over the course of the trilogy there are 14 Main Characters. Each one is important in his or her own way, and to remove a single one would allow the house of cards to collapse. One of the more interesting challenges, though not major, was the continuity of the books. The timeline overlaps in a strange way, so while a person can jump from book 1 to 3 without a gap in the timeline, they will have missed the overlapping events of book 2. The more appropriate way to view the work is instead of a time 'line' it's a time 'Y'. Two completely different casts of characters encounter vastly different circumstances in the first two books, then finally meet in the third. Of course with the timing being what it is, it makes it necessary to reiterate the events of the other books so that the reader can grasp the tenuous connections that don't fully weave together until the end. The challenges of the individual books always seemed to be the same. Forcing a slow pace, and allowing the tension to build, rather than jumping straight into the action. That cause me to get bored as I wanted to unleash the story. But as the ending approached each time, and beloved characters faced death I stalled, not wanting to send them to the horrors that awaited. Now with the story told, and those characters lucky enough to have survived well on their way away from that cursed place, I feel an emptiness. I hope that you have enjoyed reading the tale as much as I did writing it. Thank You for Reading.