The Dakota Project
A trilogy with a large cast of characters, exploring themes of mental health, deception, grief, all with a dystopian backdrop.
Read the synopsis of the first book in the trilogy!
Kimberly Keith lived life almost perfectly. In 2019, she was filthy rich, the most respected person in the state and would be getting married soon. But her life is completely destroyed when she wakes up one morning in an operating room. She is quickly told that everything that she thought happened in her life never happened. None of the people she knew ever existed. Nothing in her life was real. Kimberly is told that she is a man-made in the society in 2239. What is a man-made? A man-made is a person who has no birth mother or father. In the technology of the age, they are contracted by the ‘creators.’ Each man-made is given a past life, which is almost like a dream. The man-mades live through their past life, under the impression that it is their real life, only to wake up to discover that they are man-mades. Each man-made is given a different past life and, depending on their past life, the government takes notes on how they react and fit into society. Kimberly Keith is given a completely different name: Dawn. She is suddenly adopted by a poor family: the Wood family, and is now living in a ghetto. She was twenty-five in 2019 and now is sixteen again. She is forced to live in society and cope with her loss of the people who never lived. Man-mades, our protagonist discovers, are just a pawn in their game of chess. She quickly realizes that man-mades are discriminated against, as opposed to civils, those with birthparents. Dawn goes through life haunted by her past, coping with her present, and fearful of her future. Join Dawn in her adventure adapting to a completely opposite life, with her friends, enemies, love interests, and, where she discovers the origins and secrets of man-mades.
Where did this story come from?
I remember the exact moment that sparked the idea for this trilogy. I was fifteen years old and watching the movie 1408 for the first time. This movie, based on the Stephen King short story, is about a man who spends the night in a haunted hotel room, where the room has a mind of its own. There’s a moment in the movie (spoiler alert) when the protagonist escapes the hotel room and lives his normal life for about two weeks, only to realize that he had been in the room the whole time. The room was tricking him, manipulating his perception. This part of the movie shocked me, because I was thoroughly convinced that he had escaped. That scene replayed in my mind even as I went to bed that night. It got me thinking, how do we know that anything around us is real? Do we have any proof of reality? What if all of our memories are fabricated?
That night, I sat down and wrote the first pages of The Dakota Project’s first installment.
At this point in my life, I was under the impression that longer books were the most impressive. So, my first draft was a little over 800 pages. It took me two years to write. While I now know that this book definitely did not need to be 800 pages, there’s still a long story to tell. Since my first draft, I’ve cut it down about a hundred pages, and perhaps more needs to go. This novel needs to go through some rounds of editing, and perhaps some rewriting, because I am a much, much more developed storyteller now than I was at 15 years old. But I know that this is an incredible story, so I will take the time to work with it and make it perfect.
Since writing the first installment, I’ve also written the second and third books in this trilogy, both coming in at 600 pages. These two books are even better than the first. I could really see my writing improve with each installment—better pacing, character growth, plot points. I am extremely happy with the way the story unfolds, and I know that, with some editing, it will turn out to be a masterpiece.
Check out an excerpt from the novel below!
