Myth, the Universe, and Everything

The best thing about breakfast is that it puts reality back together. Nutritionists may say that it's the most important meal of the day due to dietary reasons, but nope, that's not it. There is nothing like a good breakfast for taking the reality of your dreams and quieting them down until they phase into the day you're about to face.

I may have mentioned this before: when I was growing up, my mother always used to admonish my sister and me not to tell our bad dreams before breakfast. I found out later that this is a Cherokee "superstition" (read: disenfranchised religion/myth), so how my mother came by it, we'll never know. (She was sure she'd grown up with it as well, until her sisters cast away that notion by not having the faintest idea what she was talking about.) Whether there's actual bad luck associated with telling bad dreams before eating, or whether it's just good sense, breakfast does manage to take the realm of dreams and pack it up nicely. It actually works in the middle of the night as well, though thankfully I haven't had to try eating to quell dreams at 3 a.m. lately.

Last night's adventures, however, involved the most recent Serenity: Better Days comic (which I won't spoil if you haven't read it), a terminator, the under-store levels of Target, a warren of high school gym lockers and classrooms (still underground), and a VW bug with no back end and no actual seat for the driver (or passenger--there was only room for one!) to sit in.

Breakfast (apple pie and orange juice) was a complete mercy.

I had more disastrous dreams last night, though they had nothing to do with the Greece and Turkey trip, and probably something to do with the fact that I couldn't get Heroes to play yesterday. (I missed the first half of Monday's episode because I had a business call about a new gig, about which I will talk later when I have permission to make it final.) There was some disaster going on that we superpowered people (I was one of them in this particular dream--I'm not always) had to stop from destroying... well, who knows? It was very urgent, and I, from the New Haven area, knew I had to do my part to keep my area safe... And then I found out that whatever the disaster was, it was taking place on Long Island. Miles wise, Long Island is not that far from Shoreline Connecticut, if you have a fast boat, the ability to fly, or supernatural swimming speed. In my dream, I had none of these, so I'd just spent a very long time preparing for a disaster that I could do nothing to stop.

I hope when I finish Regaining Home that my dreams go back to the ones where I actually sleep.

Speaking of, I killed a character today. This wasn't even one of the characters I'm particularly fond of, but the death scene actually made me cry. This is not an indication of how well it will work on other people, but yay! Crying for death is good! (And even better, I now have one less character to keep track of in a novel that I accidentally overpopulated, something that has been a flaw of mine since childhood.)

For those keeping track with me:

94,773 / 100,000 (94.8%)

Last night I dreamed not only a novel, but a whole novel series. (Granted, I believe it was heavily influenced by Trevis Powell's upcoming novel No Hero, the amount I've been playing Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords, and being in the middle of writing my second novel for White Silver Publishing. Usually when I dream a novel it's just a stand alone, and it typically has a firmer plot.)

This is my second novel dream this year, and as soon as I woke up I took down notes on everything I remembered, which involved one scene where one of the main characters stole a bunch of diamonds from the top of a merry-go-round. This, of course, is not particularly relevant to the rest of the story. The main concept behind the novels, in theory, is that the Veil between this world and another one, probably heavily influenced by magic, is extremely weak, and certain individuals see and interact with both at the same time. The overlay between the worlds is really interesting to me, as it seemed to work so that if someone was injured by warriors from behind the Veil, they would probably end up being treated both at a modern hospital and by a Veil healer, but the modern hospital workers wouldn't be able to see the wounds created behind the Veil, leaving the person completely at the mercy of Veil healing techniques and without the benefit of modern technology. I imagine that this overlap would be really difficult to make come across well, as the person interacting with both realities would be acting in both; whether they were predominantly interacting with one or the other, their body and actions would be clear in both realities. So would they be considered insane? Or would their body be able to handle dual activity, so that while acting behind the Veil, they would also be acting in the real world with responses that made sense? Possibly, people who didn't perceive the Veil would be tricked by the Veil's own properties into believing that the person was acting appropriately, even when they were not...

At any rate, the dream was quite bizarre while simultaneously being strangely coherent. The notes are interesting, and mostly, unsurprisingly for me, character centric. (Notably in the dream, I was also wandering around, doing research for these very novels that were going on simultaneously in the dream.)

**

In other news, I stopped by a local book/card/candy store to find out if they might carry my novel, and I was told to come back Monday morning and see the buyer. They apparently really like to carry local authors, which I find quite exciting! I'll take them a flyer in the morning, and possibly pop over to the major independent bookstore in Shoreline Connecticut (R. J. Julia's) and see if they'll consider carrying Into the Reach as well.

**

Currently Reading: Tales of the Last War, as I haven't finished it yet.
Currently Playing: Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords, which promises to take me longer than the fifty odd hours I normally spend on X-box RPGs...