I Like Dreaming....

So the subject for the week is daydreaming and whether or not daydreams shape the stories we tell.

The answer for me is no.

That's not the whole answer, however.

My wife used to tell me her dreams every day when we got together after work or when we were riding into work together (one car, two jobs. The math is easy.). I always listened because they were always interesting.

I did not share my dreams with her, because, frankly, I seldom if ever remembered them. Her tales did, however, inspire a few of my more vivid horror yarns. She pointed out a few times that I DO dream, but that for me the dream state is most likely occurring when I'm writing and lost in the moment. It doesn't happen every time I settle in to write, but it does happen that I lose all track of time and forget that there is a world behind the tale I'm forming. I've had a few occasions when someone talking to me when I was writing didn't merely annoy me, but startled me halfway to a heart attack. Seriously. I was not prepared for interruptions. (Happens a lot less these days, since I have an office with a door and I keep it closed.)

One of the things I have always loved to do when I have the time and the spare change for fuel is to hop in the car and head off for a destination a few hours from home. The reason is simple enough: I can get on the road, listen to music and let my mind drift a bit. Not too much, because, you know, I'm driving, but enough to let me go where the music takes me.

My SEVEN FORGES series, started that way. So did the novels POSSESSIONS, SUBJECT SEVEN and the SERENITY FALLS trilogy. They were inspired by music, long drives and the ability to simply let my mind wander through a few dozen random associations.

Not quite daydreaming. Not full on fantasies in my head, just notions that drift in and out and slowly form a pattern. I never write notes for these things. I just let them happen.

In the credit where it's due department, by the way, is the following. I wrote a novella called LITTLE BOY BLUE featuring my recurring antihero Jonathan Crowley. The story isn't overly long and a lot of people have praised it. The thing that bothers most of them is the beastie that shows up, which is also the source of the story's name. That particular imp from hell came straight from my wife's imagination. The entire sequence with the actual encounter with Little Boy Blue was recited to me by her when she woke up one morning. She smiled when she told me abut and told me it was mine to use for a story. I used it, of course, because it was a properly creepy sequence and because some of her nightmares were just right for sharing.

That cover, by the way, was illustrated by Alex McVey, one of the best genre artists out there. Good stuff. We'll be doing some work together soon (along with Charles R. Rutledge) that should leave a few psychic scars. Heh heh heh.