Life in progress

Category Archives: Dreams


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They Like Me. They Really Like Me!

I have a big announcement. Another one of my stories has been accepted for a new anthology by Transmundane Press!!

You might remember back in January when I had my big health scare. I went into a restaurant and started to write a story and found I couldn’t spell. This is that story! Apparently I did a good job of spelling after all.

This exciting new anthology is all about dreams, nightmares, visions and hallucinations. My contribution is the story of Jacob, a man whose dreams prove to be precognitive. Here’s a short excerpt.

SNOOZE

 

“I’ve never been much of a dreamer.”

No, I can’t say that, I thought as I looked in the mirror and straightened my tie. She’ll assume I’m talking about my hopes for the future.

I couldn’t afford to fuck up this date. At best, I was in a position to have the relationship to end all relationships. At the least, I’d save her life. The tricky part would be not coming across as a nutcase. Something I wasn’t totally convinced of myself.

 

~~* * *~~

“Jacob?” She approached me with an outstretched hand and I plastered a surprised look onto my face. The dating site I’d “found” her through was this newfangled deal where the guy’s photo was visible to the lady, but the woman’s face was a mystery. It was meant to ensure true love or some such crap. That I’d actually managed to choose her was proof enough for me that she was the woman of my dreams. We were fated to meet.

“You must be Susan,” I said as I shook her hand. She took the lead toward the restaurant’s door, confident in her ultra-high heels and black raincoat. Susan looked every bit the reporter—light on the makeup under black-framed glasses. I’d have taken bets there was a notepad and pen in her purse, even if I didn’t already know what her job was.

“I feel like I have an advantage over you,” she said as she settled into her side of the booth in the Japanese restaurant. “The website told me everything about you, but it said they told you next to nothing about me.”

The urge was great to “guess,” but she’d think I’d been stalking her somehow.

“They gave me a few of your interests,” I said. “I know you like to write.”

“But I bet they didn’t tell you I’m an investigative journalist.”

I raised my eyebrows, hoping for the second time she wouldn’t see through me. “Really?” I said. “That must be exciting.”

She shrugged. “It has its moments. And you? What does Jacob do for a living?”

“I’m a … I used to be an elementary school teacher.”

“Used to?”

“Yeah. I got kicked out of school for missing too many days.”

Because I slept in. Because I had to find out what was going to happen to you.

 

 

Here’s the anthology’s official back-cover description.

A parallel dimension exists below the surface of reality.

Its doors swing open every time we sleep, allowing us passage into the land of DREAMS, a plane rich with exotic fantasy and limitless bliss. Within this wonder world, however, lurk dark corridors and terrible creatures—some unfortunate travelers never escape the NIGHTMARES waiting in the shadows.

Many have tried bridging our worlds. Seekers and wise men have meditated for VISIONS and ingested intoxicants for HALLUCINATIONS in hopes that the veil between our realms will thin, allowing access to all the thrills, joys, and horrors beyond our senses.

TRANSCENDENT is an open gate, a gangway linking our realm to the shimmering sphere where nothing is certain and anything is possible.

It’s gonna be a good one! The release is set for this fall. I’ll keep you up to speed on the launch and all the goodies that will be available.

Thanks for reading!


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Be dreamin’

If I’m going to piggyback illegally on the A to Z Challenge, I may as well go all the way with no theme, no rules (including grammar) for my titles … no nothin’, damnit! I’m such a rebel.

I dreamed a lot last night. In one, I had to justify something I’d explained inaccurately in another dream from another time. Seriously, I could write a book about the weird things that come into my head when I’m sleeping.

My weirdest one last night was that Melania Trump is only 2’4″ tall. And I have no idea what the significance of that is. Theories, anyone?

Thanks to everyone for supporting my effort to write ‘coz I have to. You’re all very bad influences and I love you for it. ❤


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It’s Alive!

My book–the one I’ve been saying I was going to publish for four years now (didn’t believe me, did you?)–is finally here!

It’s a story I spent months obsessing over, traveled for, went to outrageous lengths for–I sat in the Kingston Via Rail station, taking notes for the description of it; drove around the city looking for the perfect setting for the house in which the story takes place and then I parked my car there and walked halfway back to town to see what it would be like. I stayed in different lodgings – the university where my characters went to school, the house that inspired the one in the book, and a small motel near the train station. I even had a chance to interview a magician. I’ll be posting that interview soon.

But most of all I had a lot of fun writing The Magician’s Curse and its sequel. And I’m almost finished writing the third book. Not sure if there will be more: I’ve toyed with the idea of a prequel.

For now though, I can finally share part of this world I’ve lived in by myself for almost six years. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. Magic and romance await.

On Kindle:
Amazon US
Amazon Canada
Amazon UK
Amazon Australia
and Amazon where ever else you are in the world, as well as
Kobo worldwide.
The paperback is now available here on Amazon.com.

And I promise to stop the constant spamming now. 🙂


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#SoCS – In Desperation

Last night I had a dream–scratch that, a nightmare–that Donald Trump was my doctor.
Highlights:
-where did you buy your license to practice?
-no, I don’t need a pelvic exam today, thanks
-the question I had but didn’t want to ask: if you become president, won’t you have to move to the U.S. and give up your practice?
After the appointment he walked me out to my car and planted a kiss on my lips to say goodbye. Needless to say, this one’s going to haunt me for a while.
Bleh.

I’ve been battling a headache all day. The above quote is copied and pasted from my personal Facebook page – and yes, it’s a true story. I’m blaming the headache on that. Or the weather or something.

In desperation to find an excuse: okay, it’s not really desperation. But I’ve been contemplating all the stress in my life and all I have to do (read: all the things I’ve put upon myself) and much of it, I think, is due to desperation.

I haven’t had an income, other than my paper route and I’m not even doing that anymore, in the last sixteen years. Desperate as I am for a career, I’m taking editing courses. Hoping to get some freelance jobs, though maybe not until the new year. I’m desperately trying to finish the editing on my other novel, so I can get that published. I’m desperate for the sanity to be able to do all these things… so I’m planning to do NaNoWriMo this year. Yes, just what I need – to force myself to write 1,667 words a day for a month.

Writing it out, I can see much of my desperation is due to money, or lack thereof. But not necessarily just now. I need to secure my future. If my kids ever decide to move out and I lose the money I receive from the government to look after them, with their disabilities, I’ll have nothing at this rate.

I really didn’t want to make this a rant, nor a pity party. Maybe I should have asked ol’ Donnie for some money to keep quiet about our doctor/patient relationship when I had the chance.

socsbadge2016-17

This super scary nightmare post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click the following link to see how you, too, can join in the fun! https://lindaghill.com/2016/10/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-2916/


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#SoCS – Dreaming

Ow, ow, ow, it hurts! Do you ever wake up and say that? Happened to me this morning – my head, all my joints, my stomach… I felt like someone had beaten me up in my sleep. It was probably due to the fact that I actually slept for about six hours in a row and then another one. I’m not used to laying down that long. But you gotta wonder if you are getting beaten up, you know? Especially after a dream like the one I had yesterday. I wrote about it on my Facebook page yesterday. When I’m finished this post I’ll copy and paste it here:

I just had a dream in which my son’s white cat (who never comes near me) came in from outside covered in snow. While I was drying him off, he turned into an East Indian man who wouldn’t leave the bathroom while I was trying to pee, then he turned the bathroom into the setting of a music video complete with a full band. They played a song and he sang – in the song he was trying to talk me into killing myself. Then I woke up. This is why I don’t do naps during the day.

Or maybe it was like a Friday the 13th hangover. I didn’t have a lot of bad luck yesterday – just a bit. I was worried for a while last night after I spilled 10mg of Alex’s heart meds on the floor and the dog licked it up. It’s meant to slow down Alex’s heart rate. Luckily the puppy doesn’t seem to have had any ill effects. He’s happily chewing a rawhide bone by my side. But back to Friday the 13th. I used to view it with fear. Now, not so much. It’s just a number, right? Why should Saturday the 14th be any better or worse? Except the hangover thing – possibly caused by the ultimate relaxation that comes from being tense all day the day before? Have you ever experienced such a thing? It’d be interesting to study the phenomenon…

I think my Tylenol is wearing off. Time for another couple. Ta ta.

SoCS badge 2015

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Click the link and see how you, too, can join in! https://lindaghill.com/2016/05/13/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-1416/


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SoCS – Poles and Double Negatives

Maybe I was dreaming of my prompt this morning but when I dreamed this morning it was of the poles changing direction. I dreamed of the end of the world. The water in my house didn’t work, the sewers were running backwards as was a natural spring in my house that reversed and became muddy and the electricity went out. Several times I think I woke a little (because Alex was coughing) but I drifted back each time into the dream, knowing I was dreaming but unable to stop it. I don’t remember if I was awake to imagine the end of the world but I stood with my children and told them I loved them as the world imploded…

And so then I was thinking I should tell Alex’s dad that he’s still sick but I may send him to school on Monday regardless since he doesn’t seem contagious, which led me to think of the word “irregardless” which shouldn’t be a word. Should it? Spell check likes it. But it makes no sense. To “irregard,” one would think, would be a negative meaning “not to regard” and so putting a “less” on the end turns “irregardless” into a double negative meaning to regard. So sending Alex to school regarding his cough would be senseless… (Yes, Doobster, I looked up the Webster’s definition of “irregardless” but the looking up of it was ruining the flow of my writing which is why I didn’t copy and paste it.)

And so this is an account, really, of my morning so far. Not really stream of consciousness thought (though it was at the time) but I have written this unedited and as it came back to me, which is kind of a double negative in and of itself.

The good news is, if you have made it to the end of this post, at least the world hasn’t ended yet. Hooray!

This post is part of SoCS. Join in today! https://lindaghill.com/2015/01/09/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-january-1015/

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions


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Have Any Good Dreams To Share?

I’ve been having a lot of weird dreams lately. Building things has been a prevalent theme, as well as organizing. It’s like I’ve been working in my sleep, and so I wake up feeling like I’ve had no rest. It doesn’t help that for the past week I’ve woken every morning between 1:30 and 4:30, at least once, and haven’t been able to go back to sleep. My mind becomes occupied with all the things I’m reminded I need to do in my waking life by my dreams and sleep eludes.

Every night when I get into bed I hope for a nice dream. One of the ones I sometimes have in which I’m madly in love with someone who loves me back, or I’m laughing or simply happy, hanging out in a shop with Johnny Depp, who is buying me anything I want. (Yes, I’ve actually had that dream. 😀 )

Dreams–good ones–can keep us going every bit as much as the bad ones can weigh us down.

What is your favourite dream?


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Deconstructing a Dream

I must remember this next time I’m writing a dream sequence.

Just before I woke up this morning, I dreamed I was ordering breakfast. I was in a bus station, standing at a tall counter looking up at a very sparse menu. Not knowing what else to have, I asked for toast and marmalade. The curious thing was, when I asked for the marmalade I knew the person behind the counter would have a hard time with the word and I remember having the time, as I was saying the sentence I used to order the food, to change my order to make it simpler for the clerk. All those thoughts went through my mind sequentially, much like they do when I’m awake only I was hyper aware of them and they were so fast! I decided what I wanted, thought I shouldn’t say it and why, all in the space of time it took me to say “toast with jam.”

It’s amazing what the human brain is capable of. I know I have the capacity while awake to have a thought, form a sentence in my head, and think to myself I shouldn’t say it, even as I’m either saying it or changing it mid-sentence. And yet while I’m awake the process seems so sluggish… perhaps why I sometimes say things I know I shouldn’t; I don’t have the mental capacity all the time to change once I’ve started, or stop in the first place.

I wonder if a study has ever been done to see if we’re more likely to put our collective foot in our mouth if we’re tired. Food for thought… preferably not toe jam…


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It’s Been a Day … And a Half

My day started with a nightmare and a strange noise at 1:30am. The dream terrified me, the noise that I woke up to paralysed me for about five minutes. It sounded similar to my tormentor, Giggling Bob, only closer: Giggling Bob is in a box on the opposite side of the house to my bedroom. Other than not being quite the same noise, it wasn’t Bob’s usual time of 3:14. The conclusion can only be that Bob has invited a friend into the house.

So after five terror-stricken minutes, I picked up my cell phone and called my best friend John, who luckily is working nights this weekend. I wouldn’t have called him otherwise, knowing how precious sleep is. Being the nice guy he is, he talked me down from my panic to the level where I was able to put on pants and get up to check that all the doors were locked. They weren’t – the garage door was open. But after a quick trip around the house to make sure the kids and I were alone (with John still on the line) I went back to bed and, after a full hour of being on the phone, went back to sleep.

To properly explain the next part of my story, I must back up a bit. Last week I scratched the roof of my mouth. It’s been so resistant to healing, and so painful, that I decided to fast today to give it a break. Knowing that the kids would be going with their dad tonight, I wasn’t worried about being hungry well into the evening – I could go to bed early. I’m exhausted anyway from my adventure of the wee hours of the morning. Two proverbial birds with one stone and all that.

Can you hear the scratching of a record needle? Of course you can. My ex texted me to say he wasn’t coming.

In the meantime, I had a doctor’s appointment for my shoulder (which has been hurting since January) so I thought, why not ask him to take his handy-dandy light thingie and shine it in my mouth to see what’s wrong in there. One prescription later, I’m now the proud owner of something I didn’t know existed – steroid-laced dental paste.

Dry your palette with a paper towel, the pharmacist said, (eww) and then put the paste on your thumb and spread it on the roof of your mouth. But don’t try to rub it in. It has to stay there. Just a layer of paste for at least half an hour. And don’t lick it.

….

Do you have any idea what happens to your mouth when you can’t allow your tongue to touch the roof, and you’re thinking about it? You drool. Try to swallow without touching your tongue to your palette. Go ahead. Do it now.

See what I mean? Now sit like that for half an hour.

Now it’s 10:40pm on the same day I woke up terrified. I’m exhausted, waiting for Alex’s feeding pump to finish doing its thing, I’m starving, I’m drooling, and I still haven’t figured out if I have yet another possessed toy in the house to terrorize me in the middle of the night.

If I do find the toy though… it’s going home in my ex’s trunk the next time he picks up the kids. WITH Giggling Bob.


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Just Do It! – Stream of Consciousness Saturday (Do/Don’t)

Just do it. Such simple advice – so why is it so difficult to follow sometimes? I can have a million things I have to do, but when faced with them, I’ll often say, well, maybe I’ll just have a cup of tea first. Or maybe I’ll check my stats, or do this sudoku, or the worse one of all, maybe I’ll just have a bite to eat. Then before I know it, the day has run out and I’ve done nothing but gained weight and the satisfaction of having completed a puzzle.

It’s like the dream I was having last night. I was trying to go somewhere in a hurry, but every time I started to run, my rhythm somehow went off and I veered off into a circle. Don’t ask me how this makes any sense, but I can tell you it was extremely frustrating. At one point I even tried to sing a song, in order to run to the beat of it, but my feet just wouldn’t cooperate with my head. In the end I didn’t make it to where I needed to go.

Just like real life.

Why, oh why do we procrastinate? I’ll think about it while I boil the kettle.

 

This post is part of SoCS. Find this week’s prompt here: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-514/ and join in!

 

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The Rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people will come and read your post! The way to ping back, is to just copy and paste the URL of my post somewhere on your post. Then your URL will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. For example, in your post you can copy and past the following: “This post is part of SoCS: (https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-514/)” The most recent comments will be found at the top.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. Have fun!