dreams

2 – M i l l i o n – S i t e s – l i n k i n g – t o – y o u r – F a c e

Hello, I’m Norma Chan, Tak-Lam, S.B.S., J.P., Chief Executive, Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). I have a publishing business worth 47.1m USD for you to handle with me. I need you to assist me in executing this project from Hong Kong to your county.

READ MORE >

Craft Notes / 7 Comments
March 14th, 2012 / 11:09 am

Dreams dreaming drone drum ho hum

Look at these cute golden retriever puppies. They’re probably dreaming. That’s cute. I like that.

But this post is not about golden retriever puppies.

Yeah, so last night, I had a dream. I died, but it wasn’t bad. I went to some version of afterlife. I went down an elevator (cliche, anyone?). Someone tried to escape by jumping out at sub-level 8. I don’t know what happened to that person. I think he looked like Mike Kitchell crossed with Adam Jameson. And when I got out of the elevator, I definitely wasn’t in heaven.

READ MORE >

Craft Notes / 9 Comments
October 13th, 2011 / 11:58 am

FEAR THAT MAKES THE HEART BEAT FAST

mother of tears

I had a vivid nightmare—it involved a member of my nuclear family turned into a little person with a suction cup mouth.  The mouth had tiny teeth around the inner rim.  The family member was coming to hurt me and grab me with its little hands.  I thought Why did he ever buy the new mouth? because I knew that installing that on his face was what had changed everything.  And I had to go up a narrow tower staircase and close a trap door behind me.

I woke up raining sweat.  I was literally vibrating.  The feeling of authentic fear was also a kind of exhilaration.  Related to the feeling of having escaped.

(Is there a word, perhaps a German word, for the vertigo one feels when waking up from a dream and realizing it wasn’t real?  That is, the terrible disappointment of waking from a dream of finding millions of gold doubloons buried just under the dirt of your back yard and realizing you’re still broke—or the glorious relief of waking from a nightmare of losing limbs or being humiliated, only to realize it never happened—or the guilty rush of waking from a dream of murder to think: WhoaI got away with it.  Because I’ve had all of those.)

I realized I hadn’t had that feeling in a long time—hadn’t had a nightmare that felt so real it scared me.  I saw my heart beating fast through the skin of my chest.  People pay money for that feeling.  Then I realized I hadn’t been scared, genuinely scared like with a quickened heart rate, by a book or a film in recent memory.

Do you lose that susceptibility as you age (and read/watch more)?  Because I know it happened to me more often as a young reader.   Off the top of my head I tried to make a list of Shit that Actually Scared Me:

READ MORE >

Film & Random / 42 Comments
May 27th, 2010 / 10:51 am

INTERVIEW WITH PAUL TREMBLAY ABOUT SLEEP

slumberland

I met Paul Tremblay at last year’s ReaderCon, and then I read his novel The Little Sleep, a noir about a detective with narcolepsy.  His condition causes him to hallucinate and to confuse dreams with reality, which makes his investigations really difficult and his reliability as a narrator uncertain at best.  I really dug it.  Now there’s a sequel, No Sleep Till Wonderland, just out, so I asked Paul some sleep-related questions…

READ MORE >

Author Spotlight / 11 Comments
February 2nd, 2010 / 3:48 pm