Dreams to Reality: Darkness Awakening

Darkness Awakening is the title of the first installment of the current incarnation of the Dreams to Reality series. Events in this installment take place between December 22, 2007 and January 21, 2008. "Darkness Awakening" is also the first installment of the first volume of the series, '''"Dawn of the Solstice." '''As of October 18, 2010, the installment is in the earliest stages of being written, with the overall story of the installment currently being ironed out. Author Michael Fackler hopes to have no less than one full chapter of "Darkness Awakening" written by the end of 2010, with the complete installment being released on the internet sometime in 2011.

Development
Since 2004, author Michael Fackler knew that the series that Dreams to Reality had become was much bigger than the parameters he had set up in the web series. As a result, the web series was scrapped after only 30 episodes were published to the internet, despite the series launching what was supposed to be a 65-episode story arc beginning with episode 25 and promoting the launch of a spin-off series, which was originally announced to be starting in 2003 but was later pushed back to 2004, then to 2005, and then canceled altogether with the cancelation of its parent series. Upon making the decision to end the web series and start the entire storyline of the series over again, Fackler began to tinker with the timeline, shifting the events that occurred in the web series into a future a year and a half away from where he now planned to start the series, even if the setting of the web series was May 2000 and the web series' setting was moved to January 2004.

It would take two years before any real attempt to restart the series would get off the ground in any kind of way, and in 2006, the series was restarted for the first time since the web series was canceled in 2004. However, lack of time on the author's part led to a quick demise of this short-lived revival, and a new beginning to the series was begun in 2008, which is when the series adopted its current timeline, with the series beginning in late 2007 and early 2008. Once again, life got in the way of this revival becoming successful, as well, and it wasn't until 2010 that a serious look at the series was able to be taken again.

By this point, the storyline to the series barely resembles anything the web series ever came up with, and very little besides the main characters remain of the web series in the current series. Some aspects of the web series, which took place in late May 2000, which by the current timeline translates to May 2009, will appear in the current form, though most of what's going to be adapted into the current series from the web series will be introduced earlier than May 2009, while much of the web series' material has since been dropped or completely altered in the current continuity. The web series is now considered to be "quasi-canon" to the series continuity as a whole, but does offer a historical view on how the series has evolved over time.

Summary
"A small Midwestern town in Ohio and a mid-sized city in southwestern Florida have little in common with one another, but such is not the case when it comes to the towns of Eagle Creek, Ohio, and Coral Beach, Florida. The two towns have an incredible amount of connections to one another, and always have for as long as either town has existed. In the present day, the primary link between the towns is the multi-billion dollar corporation, Park Enterprises, which was founded in Raven Hill, Ohio, in 1985 by Lawrence Bennett. Eagle Creek's close proximity to Raven Hill allowed for Park Enterprises to quickly become Eagle Creek's largest employer within five years, which at the the time saved the town from economic ruin. The quick success of Park Enterprises led to the formation of a satellite branch in Coral Beach, Florida, in 1989, which is where the high-tech firm really took off, becoming a multi-billion dollar company almost overnight. Many employees of Park Enterprises have worked at both the Ohio and Florida branches during their tenure with the company, and many have family members living in either state, allowing for many connections between people in Eagle Creek and people in Coral Beach.

In the past, however, the connections between the towns were not so optimistic. For as long as Coral Beach has existed, it has been the home of the Coralian Jewels, a group of supernatural jewels that have mystical powers capable of destroying an entire town if tampered with. The jewels' unstable power has been used numerous times in both Coral Beach and Eagle Creek over the past 150 years by an evil entity known as the Coralian Avatar, or Corali'Ixoth, in an attempt to destroy the towns and scatter the jewels to the far reaches of the planet. This would break the spell of the Aurora Knights of Skylantis that keeps Corali'Ixoth bound to the Coralian Jewels' present location, which is typically in the Coralian Statue in Coral Beach. However, the Aurora Knights of Skylantis, as well as Corali'Ixoth's arch-rival, Siluri'Ixoth--the Silurian Avatar--have always succeeded in ending Corali'Ixoth's plans and ended the curse's effects on either town five different times sicne 1862, most recently in 1947.

In 2007, however, the Coralian Jewels' power is disturbed for the first time in sixty years in a seemingly random act of violence that serves as the catalyst that will plunge the world into chaos over the next five years, starting exactly at the moment of the winter solstice. The citizens of Coral Beach and Eagle Creek do not realize it at the time, but at the moment of the winter solstice in 2007, Corali'Ixoth returned in the form of a fifteen-year-old drug dealer, who immediately comes up with an elaborate plot to wipe out his future enemies before they can rise up and destroy him. However, Corali'Ixoth's plans are much more insidious than anyone would have ever thought, as he goes about using the people around him like game pieces, while allowing for a supernatural storm to grow in Coral Beach and the townsfolk in Eagle Creek reeling from the disappearance of one of their own.

As 2008 arrives in Eagle Creek and Coral Beach, it is quickly becoming apparent that there will be a hard road ahead for a lot of people in the new year... and the four years after that do not look very promising either...."