My special guest today is online friend and fellow Samhain Publishing author, Maria Zannini. Her futuristic fantasy title Touch of Fire comes out in paperback on 28 April. Only a few days to wait!
Over to Maria…
Shelley always has the most interesting topics on her blog and I was sweating bullets trying to figure out what I could write about so I wouldn’t get sharp-beaked kiwis thrown at me like live hand grenades. *g*
My interests run the whole gamut of weird, but something I rarely talk about is dreams, or in this case, the stuff of dreams and how they are unique to each of us.
I tend to remember my dreams in vivid detail, as if I were recalling a movie moment by moment. That’s fine if it was a good dream, the kind you don’t want to wake up from. Not so pleasant if they were nightmares, the ones that chill you long after you wake.
Unlike most ‘normal’ people I have two peculiar traits when I dream. My dreams are always in gray with only one item in the dream manifesting itself in color.
The other quirk is that I take on the pov of every person or object in the dream.
I know what they know in intimate detail.
The really weird part is when I take on the pov of an inanimate object. There are no feelings involved, but rather a rudimentary understanding of what I am and what my purpose is.
It’s surreal.
Which I suppose describes dreams perfectly.
I’ve written stories based on dreams, but there is still one dream that haunts me and begs to be written. In the dream there is a young woman, not more than twenty and she’s at a family picnic. The setting is noisy and she’s surrounded by her loved ones, laughing and playing. Then she gazes across the park and sees a very old man giving her a long mournful look.
She’s drawn to him for some reason. She doesn’t know if it’s pity or something else, but she feels compelled to invite him over to the picnic.
I remember analyzing this dream while I was having it because I couldn’t understand why I was having such a strong attachment to this very elderly man. Then I popped into his pov and immediately understood the connection.
This young girl and this old man were soul mates in a previous life, but he was born too soon and she was born too late and they missed each other by several decades. I instantly felt his profound grief. He had lived his whole life looking for her, never realizing until that day that they had been born too far apart in time.
Meanwhile the young woman was just trying to be kind. She didn’t understand the strange compulsion she had to care for this man, and I, as the dreamer couldn’t tell her. It was something she had to discover on her own.
As the dream drew to its conclusion, she looked into his brilliant blue eyes (the only thing in the entire dream that was in color) and realized who he was. She broke down into tears and couldn’t stop crying. As I woke up, I found my face wet as well.
I think about that dream a lot. The romantic in me wants desperately to give them their ‘happy ever after.’ Maybe someday, I’ll write the ending they deserve.
Have your dreams influenced your writing? Is there a dream that still haunts you? And why do you think it does?
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Visit Maria at her website, blog or follow her on Twitter.
Read an excerpt of TOUCH OF FIRE.
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TOUCH OF FIRE hits bookstores on April 28.
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Okay, it’s safe now, Shelley. That crazy woman is gone. Thanks for having me over!
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April 25th, 2009 at 5:28 am · Link
Hi Shelley, and Maria!
Dreams, eh? I don’t know, I don’t often remember them, and even when I do, they never seem very interesting. I wish I could do more with them.
April 25th, 2009 at 5:54 am · Link
JK, I’ll bet you have a very down to earth mindset. My hubby says the same thing. I think his brain is so set on the here and now that he shuts off his subconscious as soon as he wakes.
For a long time he swore he never dreamed–which of course is impossible. We all dream, but some of us can remember our dreams better than others.
April 25th, 2009 at 8:32 am · Link
Ohhh, do write that dream into a book! Very interesting. I’m a dreamer, also. Very vivid and I remember most of them.
April 25th, 2009 at 5:19 pm · Link
Dreams are great to intice writing! I have a friend who dreams entire stories. I wish I could do that.
April 25th, 2009 at 6:01 pm · Link
Hi Debra! My dreams aren’t nearly as lucid as they were when I was younger, but the emotions they elicit are still powerful. That particular dream is at least ten years old. I keep thinking it could be a novella or short story. Thanks for stopping by!
April 25th, 2009 at 6:04 pm · Link
Hi Kaye! In my youth, I used to dream in installments! If for some reason my dream got interrupted that night, it usually managed to come back two or three nights after that until it reached its conclusion.
I’m not sure what that says about me. Maybe I don’t like unfinished business. LOL!
April 25th, 2009 at 10:57 pm · Link
LOL – you’re very welcome, Maria. I’ve just returned home from my overnight jaunt as described in thursday’s TT. I had a great time.
I’m always very envious when people talk about their dreams because I never have any that I remember. The ones that I generally do remember are of the nightmare variety. Those, I’d rather forget!!
April 26th, 2009 at 2:24 am · Link
More years ago than I care to remember, I used CPR seriously for the first time. The non-active participant was a young woman who had boarded our ship in the afternoon and had drunk whiskey in the crew’s quarters before taking a high dose of phenobarbital. An asthmatic, it paralyzed her respiratory centre and it was three quarters of an hour before the ambulance arrived. We kept her “alive” (Her lips had gone from blue to red again and we could feel the echoes of the pulse we created with the heart massage) until the paramedics took over and transported her to hospital in the early hours of the morning.
Our ship sailed before dawn and was eleven days at sea before the next port and I assumed we’d saved her life until the police came on bard and told us she’d died in the ambulance (The paramedics had done what we couldn’t do-recognized death),
She was not particularly pretty, just one of those people who seem one hundred percent alive and her face has stayed with me over the years, not as it was in the end, but as she was the first time I saw her coming up the gangplank.
Every time I did the first aid refresher course (every two years) she came back in my dreams and I fought again for her life, knowing that I would fail.
Even now, she sometimes drops in to remind me of that long ago night.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:55 am · Link
Hi Amy! Oh man, what an experience to haunt you. I’m not surprised she comes back to visit.
God bless you for trying to help her.
April 26th, 2009 at 3:58 am · Link
Shelley! You’re back.
Well, I didn’t break any of the glassware and I put your books back where they came from.
I did steal a piece of cheese from your fridge. I was actually looking for those upside down tomatoes your husband planted. LOL
Thanks for having me over!
April 27th, 2009 at 2:18 am · Link
Maria your soul mates dream gave me the shivers! That one is definitely begging to be told!
April 27th, 2009 at 9:44 am · Link
Hi Christina! I should write it, shouldn’t I? It’s been with me a long time. Maybe I need to give those two some peace.