Spoiler Alert: This article reveals plot details. If you aren't familiar with the work yet, you should probably stop reading now.
In our real world, we usually don’t. But what about in a dream world, which is inherently irrational?
In the episode “Élodie’s Curse”, Miray and Dian get to the bottom of this question.
The Plot
In this dream journey, Miray visits her aunt and uncle in a French country house. Dian is with her.
The cosy visit ends abruptly when a ghost appears by the lake during dinner. The haunting continues into the night with a loud rumbling that shakes the building to its foundations.
Are ghosts at work? Dian and Miray go searching and soon find a hot trail which puts them in mortal danger.
The Setting
This episode crystallised out of a single scene that I had in mind from the start: an old house, it’s night time, a thunderstorm is raging, and inside a haunting begins.
As a setting, I chose a country house somewhere in France in the early summer of 1936. The house shows its eventful history right from the beginning. It has an unusual tower, a large clock on the roof and strange rooms.
The Characters
Naturally, Dian and Miray are there. This time, as they discover to their own surprise, as an engaged couple. It shows that in the dream worlds, they involuntarily slip into a backstory they themselves do not know. They are forced to improvise.
I hid a small Easter egg in the names of the three housemaids: Agnès, Denise and Paule. Anyone interested in home computers from the late 1980s will know them. They are the French name variants of the three custom chips in the Commodore Amiga.
The Dream World
Dian learns an essential trait about the mechanics of the dream worlds in this episode. He notices a burn mark on Miray’s upper arm. This stems from a burn Miray sustained in a previous dream journey.
From this, Dian concludes that injuries sustained in the dream world are permanent. And fatal injuries? Well, they might actually be fatal.
What have I learnt?
The origin of this episode was – as mentioned – a short scene. The difficulty lay in crafting an exciting plot around this scene.
I needed several attempts, going from a counterfeit money press in the cellar, to a romantic tragedy in a boarding school, to the story that is now published.
What I learnt from this: It is easier (for me) if I think about the plot first.
Revision
I also completely revised this episode to adapt it to the writing style I acquired during the third episode.
However, there were quite a few other changes in version 2.
New scenes brought Dian and Miray closer together. In this episode, it is clearly visible that the two protagonists harmonise perfectly with each other. But also that Miray immediately blocks any thought of a relationship that goes beyond a friendship of convenience.
I also completely reworked the showdown. It leaves Laurent alive and gives Uncle Henri a better chance to get out of the affair.
Therefore, I also like to refer to the current version as the Director’s Cut.
Spoiler Alert: This article reveals plot details. If you aren't familiar with the work yet, you should probably stop reading now.
The first episode of a series is always something special. The main characters are unfamiliar, as is the story. Everything has to come together first. To make matters more difficult, the first pages must already hook the reader. Otherwise, the book quickly ends up with the other tsundoku, possibly forever.
With the episode “Tear of the Desert”, I made my debut as an amateur author. A short crime novel of about 8,300 words. What you can’t see in the story is over two years of preparatory work that I had already put into the overall concept of Infinisomnia, character development, polishing the writing style, and the overarching plot.
This first episode also offered a unique opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.
But first things first…
The Plot
Car mechanic Dian falls asleep on the sofa at home after an exhausting day, and wakes up in the cubicle of a train toilet. He doesn’t know how he got there or why everyone is suddenly calling him Lacombe. In a compartment, he meets Miray, a traveller who is also trapped in this bizarre dream.
They find out that there is a thief on the train who is fleeing with a stolen diamond. No one knows what he looks like. Suspicion quickly falls on a fellow passenger. But is he really the thief they are looking for, or does the mysterious Miray merely want to deflect suspicion from herself?
The Setting
The episode is set on the Orient Express in March 1909. Originally, I planned a completely different location for Dian and Miray’s first meeting; the Orient Express only played a supporting role. But I liked the setting so much that I dedicated the entire first episode to it. It already shows the full potential of dream travel to different eras and places, which will accompany us in the coming episodes.
Besides, what could better symbolise the first journey than that famous luxury train?
The Protagonists
For this project, I took a classic as a model, namely the Sherlock Holmes short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They are about arguably the most famous fictional detective Holmes and his loyal companion and chronicler, Dr Watson.
I find the division brilliant. Watson serves as the narrator of their shared adventures; the stories are (with a few exceptions) written from his own perspective. Watson is no genius, nowhere near as much as Holmes, but he is friendly, open, and reliable – a character the reader can easily identify with. Holmes is the central figure of the novels, yet he always remains somewhat mysterious, closed-off, and stubborn.
I borrowed this constellation, modernised it, and spiced it up with a bit of humour and romance.
Dian takes on the role of Dr Watson. He is the narrator, a sympathetic, self-deprecating, occasionally somewhat naive young man. He provides a good figure for identification.
Miray corresponds to Holmes. She is smart, persistent, cheeky, but also closed-off and mysterious.
In contrast to the Holmes stories, which can basically be read in any order, the image of Miray will evolve. The all-too-perfect façade from the first episode will soon get its first cracks.
And the special feature I mentioned at the beginning?
In this first episode, not only the reader but also Dian meets his future companion for the first time. An ideal time to sow seeds of doubt: is Miray really the heroine hunting the thief alongside Dian? Or is she merely using Dian to deflect suspicion from herself?
The Dream World
In this episode, Dian learns the basic mechanics of travelling to the dream worlds. He reaches them in his sleep. They feel like a dream, yet completely real.
And waking up? That only happens once an adventure has been completed and a green circle appears on the wrist.
What have I learnt?
Hmm… what did I learn in the first short novel that I actually published?
I would say I learnt to narrate an entire short novel from beginning to end.
Linguistically, I actually thought it was quite good at first. Then I read numerous writing guides and wrote two more episodes before realising in hindsight that a good novel needs more than stringing together pleasant-sounding and grammatically correct sentences.
The first episode is now available in a completely revised “Version 2”. The writing style already fits better with the later episodes. I also improved various scenes, for example, the one where Miray and Dian break out of the compartment. In the original draft, Dian pretended to faint and Miray called for help. But this trick is so old that probably even a conducteur from 1909 would have seen right through it. The new trick is more creative and lets Dian shine in his capacity as a mechanic.
Afterwards, I treated this new version to professional editing. The truly excellent feedback is sitting on my hard drive waiting to be incorporated. Then there will even be a third version of this first episode.
I was surprised that many readers consider Dian to be the central hero of the story. After all, this constellation worked for Holmes and Watson too; one doesn’t talk about “Dr Watson and the detective”, but about “Holmes and his chronicler”. I finally found the explanation for this in a writing guide: readers automatically consider the first person in the novel to be the hero or heroine.
Well, beginner’s mistake. 😂
One idea was that our two adventurers wouldn’t just wake up in the dream worlds just like that. I invented a device, the so-called Ecom, which allowed a controlled journey into the dream worlds. Later I scrapped the idea again. It was far too technical, took up too much room in the stories and shifted the genre more towards science fiction than I liked.
Besides, I wasn’t sure which narrative perspective to choose, so in this story I tried the third-person limited narrator.
The following text was meant to serve as a prelude to the actual series. It is a flashback that was supposed to familiarise the reader with the two protagonists and explain the beginning of the first episode.
Milk Money
He was most afraid of Mondays. Not that Dian liked the other days of the week much better when he had to go to lessons, but on Mondays he always got the money from his mother that the primary school collected for the coming week’s milk. This presented him with a huge problem, almost unsolvable for an eight-year-old child.
He sought his way out by hiding well. In the schoolyard stood a play castle in a giant sandpit. It had three floors and a slide. The bottom floor was low and the entrance so narrow that you could only get in by crawling. Inside it was dirty and smelled strange. Nobody played in this place voluntarily. For Dian, it was therefore the perfect refuge. During breaks, he would immediately run to the castle, crawl into the hiding place, sit on a small board opposite the entrance and watch the schoolyard through a knothole.
His archenemy Batty would never find him here, he hoped. Batty was a pupil in the fourth year. Nobody could say who gave him this nickname, but all the children called him that. He was the main character in their nightmares. Every Monday he walked across the schoolyard and collected the milk money, although not on behalf of the school, but for himself. If you didn’t hand over the money voluntarily, he would help it along, which eventually earned him this name. Dian’s mother had once explained to him that Batty didn’t have it easy at home and that was why he was so mean. That didn’t make being beaten up by him any more pleasant.
On this Monday, too, Dian sat in his hiding place monitoring the schoolyard when he heard a voice from the entrance.
“What are you doing there?”
Startled, he turned around and looked into the face of a girl he guessed to be his age. She had light blonde, shoulder-length hair and wore a white coat. She was probably new at the school, because he hadn’t noticed her in the schoolyard before.
“Hiding from Batty,” he answered.
“Who is Batty?”
Dian peered through the knothole. “He’s the big boy over there who’s just taking Anni’s bag of gummy bears.”
The girl looked out over the schoolyard and saw a very burly, chubby boy who was about ten years old and looked like trouble. He was currently stuffing a handful of gummy bears into his mouth whilst looking out for his next victim.
The girl looked back into the hut. “How long do you want to hide from him for?”
Dian shrugged his shoulders. “Until next year, maybe. Then he’ll change schools.”
She sighed, crawled into the hut and sat down next to him on the bench.
“Why don’t you fight back?” she asked.
“He’s much stronger than me.”
“And why don’t you run away from him?”
“He’s faster than me too.”
Her ice-blue eyes looked at him with a mixture of pity and despair. Then she slowly shook her head.
“I bet you have something he doesn’t have.”
“Yes, my milk money.”
“That’s not what I mean!”
She poked her index finger into his forehead.
“I bet you’ve got brains up there! And Batty looks like his mum still has to tie his shoes for him every morning.”
The girl looked around. The play castle was built directly on the sandpit and had no floor of its own. A few leaves lay around in the sand. In one corner lay a few crumpled tissues, cigarette butts, and the shards of a broken beer bottle. In the other corner, something was buried in the sand. She pulled at it and held an old skipping rope in her hand.
“Do you know what? I’m going to help you,” she said, grinning. Then she explained her plan to him.
Break time was already half over, and Batty was still hungry. He was on the lookout for that weakling who had milk money and sometimes a cereal bar on him every Monday, but he couldn’t find him anywhere. He was tired of always having to look for his victims. It would be much easier if they brought the things to him voluntarily and then let him beat them up afterwards.
Suddenly, he saw his next target standing next to the play castle. “Gotcha!” he shouted triumphantly and started running.
When he reached the castle, the boy was still standing there. He was trembling with fear, but he didn’t run away. The girl next to him was new here, Batty suspected, because she had her arms crossed and didn’t seem to be afraid. If she thought he wouldn’t beat up girls, she was in for a surprise.
He stood menacingly in front of Dian and made himself look broad. “Go on, give me the money!” he demanded loudly.
Dian took a deep breath and shouted with a trembling voice, “No!”
Batty snorted. “Do you think I won’t beat you up right in front of your girlfriend?”
The answer came from the girl: “Do you think I’m just going to watch you do it?”
“You keep out of this!” barked Batty, pointing his finger at her like a gun.
“Why? Are you scared of me?” she asked, grinning.
Batty’s face turned dark red. He wasn’t used to getting backchat. He had to assert himself, command respect.
“I’ll beat you both to a pulp,” he panted, taking a step towards the two children.
“Now!” shouted the girl.
Dian had kept his right hand hidden behind his back the whole time. In it, he held sand, which he now hurled into Batty’s face. This stopped his attack immediately. He screamed with rage and began rubbing the grains out of his eyes.
The girl pulled on the end of the skipping rope she was holding in her hand. She had previously knotted a large loop into the rope and buried it in the sand. When the provoked bully took a step forward, he stepped right into the trap. The loop pulled tight and wrapped around his legs like a snare. Swiftly, the girl tied her end of the rope to the castle.
“You little shits!” panted Batty. He tried to walk towards them, but stumbled over his bound feet and fell flat on his stomach into the sand. He tried to stand up but got more and more entangled in the snare. Finally, he thrashed about like a giant fish that had just been pulled ashore.
The girl crouched down next to him. “Listen here, Batty,” she said with calm words, “today was just for fun. If you beat up other children again or take something from them, I will come and truly hurt you.”
She took Dian by the hand. Together they ran to the fence at the other end of the schoolyard and watched Batty from a safe distance. He had meanwhile stood up and was trying to undo the snare, but the rope tied to the castle pulled taut and tightened it again. His screams of rage echoed across the entire schoolyard.
“You see,” said the girl, “strength alone doesn’t help if you don’t have any brains.”
Dian nodded. “Do you think he’ll be even meaner now?”
“I don’t think so. I’m sure he’ll leave you alone from today on. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Dian. And you?”
“My name is Miray.”
The school bell rang.
“I have to get back to class now, Miray.”
She nodded. Dian stood up, waved goodbye to her once more and then walked to the school building. When he turned around to look back at her just before the door, she had already disappeared.
Dian hoped to see Miray again the next day, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. She didn’t come on Wednesday either, nor the following week, nor ever again after that. By the time he moved from primary school to secondary school, this episode from his life already seemed to be forgotten.
Dian wakes up in a different time, in an unfamiliar place, living a life that isn’t his own. Returning home? Impossible. First, he must complete a task. And then there’s this woman – trapped in the same world, mysterious and unpredictable.
Welcome to my new project: Infinisomnia
Infinisomnia is a series of coherent short novels. The stories are free, libre and open source.
You have Taken Up Writing now?
Yes! A few years ago, I discovered writing for myself.
It started as a little experiment. I wanted to find out if I could tell stories. And sure enough, it worked! But not only that, I was even captivated by my new passion. I couldn’t stop coming up with exciting plots and polishing sentences until they shone.
I also realized that there’s not that much difference between writing program code and writing stories. Both require a good concept, structure, stamina, creative solutions, and a healthy dose of perfectionism. And if a section doesn’t work as it should, there’s even a bit of debugging involved. 😄
Infinisomnia is the result of almost two years of writing exercises and work on the overall concept. Three stories are already finished, and more will follow. I’m very excited to see where this journey will take me.
What Kind of Stories are they?
My short novels are a mixture of crime, adventure and time travel.
They are designed to be fun to read and to offer a little escape from everyday life. That’s why the novelettes deliberately contain little action and drama, but still offer suspense, plot twists and a little bit of situation comedy.
Each story is about 8,000 words long on average, which makes it take about 40 minutes to read. I publish them irregularly, but try to write three to four stories a year.
Free and Open Source?
Of course! You can read the stories in full on the website or download them as an ePUB file for your eBook reader. There is no paywall and no copy protection.
The source code for the stories is available at Codefloe.
Social Media?
You can follow the project on the following channels:
If there is a new story, you will definitely find out about it there first.