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Many have asked me what is the meaning of Christmas to me, given I’m not a religious guy. I’ve searched for a really good answer to that question, and I think I’ve found it: fun …and a sense of rebirth. I love it that for even the one small window of time many in the world try to put forward their best feet. While many seem to hate the slog through the retail market, I love it that people actually put forth the energy to give others gifts.

So what that they could do it the other 364 days of the year…I just don’t care. The mere fact that we’re actually trying to do it at all, in December, is good enough for me.

I mean, what drives people to want to do this?

I’m sure there are any number of reasons, but I’d like to think that it’s because there’s some kind of energy—good, deep-inside-the-soul energy—that wants to “do good” for and to others. I’ve read and experienced that when we do good toward another, it actually makes us feel good…betters our health. And I believe it. It’s easy to get caught up in all the minutiae of daily living and all, but, you know, for one day—one window of time at the end of every year—people actually try to give back.

I also see Christmas as a reset. A rebirth. The new year brings, well…a new year. This causes many to rethink their lives (even if this is the only time), and try to rework issues that need reworking. I like that. Hopefully just a little bit of both of these concepts will continue throughout the year, but if we get them for even one small part of the year, I say it’s all good.

People can celebrate Christmas however they wish—it doesn’t bother me. I enjoy that people seem a little brighter, more cheerful, more anticipative. Religion can ascribe their symbology to Christmas, and the secular their symbols, but it’s all symbols.

And there’s something else. If we want world peace, it starts with each and every individual on this planet. It starts with you, and it starts with me. Bringing any kind of good to the forefront of our lives betters the rest of the race. Let’s keep that in mind and keep some of that with us throughout the rest of the new year.

So, let’s not duel over any so-called right or wrong way to celebrate a cheerful time of season, let’s just enjoy it with each other…in all our myriad of ways. Rejoice that we can do so.

Then tear into some really cool presents!

I just finished this book yesterday, after having wanted to read it for quite a few years.  Across Time And Death, A Mother’s Search For Her Past Life Children, and which was written by Jenny Cockell. Later, in 2000, a made-for-TV movie was made, based on the book, called Yesterday’s Children.

I came across the topic years ago while watching one of those shows that talked about reincarnation. Then, while writing one of my manuscripts, I incorporated Jenny and Mary’s mention. Jenny grew up with memories of another life, a hard life, and one in which she’d died young and had an intense concern about the continued welfare of her children. This person Jenny Cockell was (in that early 1900s life), was Mary Sutton (née Hand). As Jenny grew into an adult, she retained those memories…of dying in a hospital, her life in Ireland, waiting for someone at a wooden jetty, memory of fear and love and angst. Those memories—dreams, even—also wreaked havoc on her current life’s body and mind. Curiously (and not at all surprising), she mentioned how her current life’s fits of depressions departed, once she found all her dreams and memories to be true: that she had lived another life, remembered the home, roads, and other events…and had actually tracked down most of her children from that life!

That is perhaps the one thing that makes this so unique from many other discussions of people relating previous lives.

Something I don’t recall a lot talked about in the shows was Jenny’s psychic abilities and her elevated intellect (she’s a member of Mensa). I think I’d heard them mentioned in passing, but the book mentions more about them, well, mainly her psychic abilities.

I also wondered about how her current-life’s family felt about all this, and, later in the book, she did discuss this. That they’d all talked discussed it and came to an understanding that Jenny didn’t love or care about her current family any less than her previous life’s family—just that this was something she simply had to do. It was a sustaining drive within her, something she simply could not ignore any more than, say, breathing. And if all that Jenny says is true (which I do believe to be true), it was and is that very same drive that—literally—gave her life in this existence.

Perhaps there’s a reason why we don’t all recall our other lives, hmmm?

I don’t read a lot of “reincarnation books,” because I already believe in it. But I’d heard so much about this story over the years, and Jenny’s proof so compelling, it just grabbed my interest—much like the later telling of James Leininger’s lives (see my blog). Jenny Cockell has written several other books, of which she talks about future lives, and that I find particularly interesting. I’m always on the look out for any “thinking outside the box,” and with most reincarnation documentation it is concerned with “past” lives (I believe in “simultaneous lives”) I like it when someone puts an entirely different spin on things.

And, as I discussed in my Soul Survivor blog, it’s simply hard to ignore the evidence presented, though (like I again previously posted) there will always be detractors of one kind of another.

Which is more farfetched?  That reincarnation exists…or that the mind can “make stuff up,” and do so, in so troublingly accurate a manner?

Well, I was supposed to have attended the Mile Hi Con today, but ended up unable to effectively fight off a cold. Sure, I could sit around a talk like the next person, but getting on the road to Denver might have been, well, adventurous, to say the least. So, I’m forced to sit at home, rather than attend the convention. My apologies to those at Mile Hi Con for being unable to make it.

 To that end, I thought, huh—why not blog about my perspectives on the topic? So, here it is. It’s kinda long, but was intended to have been an hour panel.

 First off, my credentials: I’ve been writing fiction for a while, and have a book, Sleepwalkers, that is exactly about this topic. I write about the supernatural (an order of existence beyond that scientifically visible) and the paranormal (experiences that lack scientific explanation), but in a more “real-life” way. I try to bend and warp and twist concepts and give new perspectives to things, like UFOs, ghosts, murder. Dreams. I’ve been interviewed on local and Internet radio, and presented at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in Colorado Springs.

 I love messing around with reality in my writing, and dreams and the dream structure provide an excellent medium for that. And I’m talking about more than just documenting a dream word-for-word in a story. I mean giving a freaky, or off-center structure (subtly or not-so subtly) to your work. Analyze your dreams not only for content, but how they’re structured. How they give you the images you experience. How their images flow from one “scene” into the next. How they made you feel. How they gave you a different perspective into something.

 But, perhaps even before you can do this, you must also define what you view as reality…and what you view as the dream, or unconscious, world. Do you feel one is more real (or important) than the other? One influences the other—and in what direction (i.e., does reality influence dreams, do dreams influence reality—or is it a two-way street)?

 How do you want dreams and reality to interact with each other? Do you want it to be all “spooky,” and whatnot, or do you want it to not be immediately recognizable that you’re “in” a dream? Again, it can be both, or some other version. The creation of the story will dictate its own creation. I tend to write in a more organic way, not dealing much with initial outlines (though I outline the hell out of things afterward!), so I write as the story moves through me. I allow the story to dictate its own rhythms. Allow the dreams to do the same.  See what they’re trying to show you. How they’re showing whatever information they have to show. And depending upon the author’s superpower at writing, a structure will emerge.

 In presenting a different point of view for a story, you do so for readers, and this, I feel, can actually lead to an expansion of consciousness. It allows others to see things differently. Opens and broadens perspectives, opens minds.

 Dare I say, give a new point of view on life itself?

 And in the end, if you do this skillfully enough, you don’t even have to answer the dreaded and oft-clichéd question:  was it a dream? You can leave it up to each reader for themselves to define that answer, based upon their own beliefs and interpretation. Sure, you can throw hints as which way you predominantly lean, but I say, keep the readers guessing—just a little. Some might disagree with me, here, but I think it all depends on author ability and the story itself. There are no hard rules for writing any story, except it should be engaging at some level.

 There were some prepared questions the Mi Hi Con moderators had, to help keep things rolling if things got slow, and I have my answers below:

 1) How dreams can be used as a resource/inspiration and making surreal sequences work in a story.

 Just like anything else. You dream of standing before the wide old ocean, sensing “unknowns” deep in the water, and create a story about underwater UFO-USOs or of another life as a slave who’d been sent overboard with ankle weights. But, what is inspiration? Where does it come from? What does any writer take away from any form of “inspiration”? Is it the content or the medium? Both? As mentioned above, you can use both the content and structure of a dream to add more meat to a story.

 And, again, use dreams more than just as a mere relation of unconscious or flight-of-fancy events. Structure it into a story…use it as a different way to relate/view your story. Example: Where the Wild Things Are. The book and the movie: study how the story was delivered (as well as how the movie was delivered, which is far different than the book—it was far more creepy and dark, for one thing) and how it was different than some other way of delivering a story idea.

 Do you think visually? Write your story visually? Are your dreams more visually presented? Emotive? Conceptual? How are your dreams presented to you, and use that structure as a storytelling method.

 2) Do you use dreams in your stories as foreshadowing, to offer psychological insights into the character, or in some other way?

 Yes to all. I use dreams not only as content, but also as structure. In one of my manuscripts I did lots of foreshadowing with visions of a barren landscape and messed-up family life, to name some examples. And I made them seem creepily realistic, so—to a point—the readers wouldn’t know if what I was showing was real or “imagined.” And is “imagined” any less real of an issue than the everyday world?

 Dreams are more than content—look at them as methods of storytelling.

3) Do you get inspiration from your own dreams for stories? Examples?

I’ve included dreams into my writing—in Sleepwalkers, I’ve included several, like the dark figure in the deep, dark barn, and the ocean and backpack dreams—but so far I have not had a dream, as in a go-to-sleep-and-wake-up-the-next-morning kinda thing, where I write up a story from that. I seem to get my inspiration during the day, I guess you could say. But as one begins to look deeply into dreams...what are they, anyway? I’ve had conscious dreams. I’ve been totally awake in my dreams. Does that shoot down the paradigm we’ve been discussing, because everyone’s assuming sleeping, unconscious dreams? I think dreams are an unconscious life we tap into, asleep or awake, so I use that as my baseline.

 4) How might dreams be misused in a story?

Just like anything else an author might misuse. Overuse? Heavy-handed foreshadowing. The old “And then s/he woke up.” You don’t want readers to feel cheated in that “everything was made up,” which is actually kinda ironic, cause we’re most likely talking fiction here, where everything is made up! But if you’re going to use dreams, make them real, an honest-to-goodness part of the story that’s not meant to be sneezed at. Make dreams—the unconscious realm—as important and needed to the story as anything else, so that without these elements...you simply do not have the story. This is where an author’s “superpowers” come into play.
 

5) Can dreams be overused in a story?  How?

Pretty much like anything else. It’s a method for story delivery as well as content. Like anything overused, be it a word or phrase, in this case it could be a specific [recurring] dream, on overused dream structure that worked great once, but not 20 times, or any other “overuse” issue. Writers need to subtly work in the dream like anything else in a story. Make it part of a story. See above response.

6) How do you avoid cliché within your dream sequences?

Cliché: Something that has become overly familiar or commonplace.
Part of being aware of what is cliché is reading more. Seeing what is already out there. 
Think of new ways of presenting a dream, and give the reader some credit (i.e., don’t have to constantly hit him/her across the face with “the dream ended, and...”; you just go to the next scene).
7) What writing techniques do you use to differentiate dream sequences from ordinary introspection?
I try to write “weird” anyway, so, depending on what I’m trying to do...write “weirder”? Every situation is unique. I don’t have any cookie-cutter guidance. It depends on the story itself. Do you want the dream sequence to stand out, or be more interwoven into the story? If you want it to stand out, find some way to do so. Otherwise write it more like the bulk of your story so readers can’t really figure out if it’s one or the other until later.
In one manuscript, I had written out dream sequences like a mini (TV) script. Formatted it on the page as a TV script. Well, my agent found that distracting and asked that I reconsider that, and I did. It was far better the way I rewrote it, more creepier. I kept the dream-sequence angle, but wrote it out as regular book text.
In writing like a dream, one could go [more] heavy on the imagery and emotion, since in dreams everything has more intensity. Even to the point of absurdity.
Lean on the incongruous...in a subtle way.
Many times I don’t try to make them all that different, because I write weird to begin with and want to play around with what’s supposed to be real and what’s supposed to be fake. But many times I’ll actually try to write a dream sequence just like it was real life (in my story), because I’m messing with perceptions to begin with, then throw something in there to make someone question whether or not the dream is real. Sometimes I’ll just throw in a dream, in all its weirdness, right in there and make no bones about it. It depends on the story.

8 ) Are there things to avoid when writing dreams into stories?  Can you make a dream sequence too strange or surreal?

Again—and these are good questions—but, it all depends on the story and an author’s ability. You have to create something that people can follow, which is also a personal preference (one person’s bane is another’s boon). I feel it’s okay to write something a little oblique that is difficult to follow, if it suits the story and is brief. If most readers are like me, they won’t drop a book just because they don’t understand one or two things in a book. But, if you write the entire book like that, then you got issues!

9) Aside from the film version of The Wizard of Oz, can you name an entire story that’s effectively a dream, or is that just a cop out? [Spoiler alert: Next–or Total Recall?]

For me, this goes back to what the author’s and reader’s beliefs about dreams are. Do they both feel dreams are a “cop out”? My sense is that if a writer does feel dreams are not real, not important, they’re not going to spend much time and energy on them. But if readers feel that, and the writer doesn’t, then it’s the writer’s job to effectively keep the story from becoming a perceived “cop out.” Cop outs depend upon a lot of things: beliefs about dreams, how compelling is the story, w/o regard to whether parts of a story are dreams, and how good of a writer is the author.
I don’t consider myself all that well-read, so little is coming to mind about entire stories being dreams, but I offer these samples as dream-related in structure and content:
Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Convenant the “Unbeliever” series?
Kevin Brockmeier, The Brief History of the Dead?
Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five?

Again, apologies I was unable to attend the panel today, but feel free to post a comment or ask a question and I’ll do my best to get back to each one. Thanks for stopping by!

I don’t think so.

Many would like to think there is. Oh, you know, secret handshake, follow all these specific (5! 10! 20! Et cetera!) steps, and, voila!, your manuscript (ms) will be published!

Now, I don’t want to do anyone a disservice out there who’s teaching these courses, but from what I’ve noticed over the years, it doesn’t always matter if a book is, you know—good. And, no, I’m not going to give examples. We’ve all seen them. What seems to matter—really matter—is if that book somehow (<fill in the blank>) grabs the money behind the ms. And following that, as Mitch Albom put it in an article in October 2009’s Writer’s Digest (and got me back into this blog topic), readers just want to read. It’s the publishers and writers who “…make more of fiction and nonfiction, memoir versus novel, than the average reader does.”

Manuscripts (mss) (I’m going to go out on a limb and say), don’t always have to be grammatically perfect. Fit each and every of the 5! 10! and 20! steps it takes to GET PUBLISHED. What it takes, is having something the Money Peeps feel they can make money off of, ergo, people buying it.

(Just wanting to read….)

Now, I’m sure I’ve probably pissed off some folks, but that’s not my intent—but it is my opinion.

This also does not mean writers should not do their damnedest to write and present their best mss, Or that agents and editors should not scarf up only the best mss. It does not—and it should not—be the case. But it should be something that those in “control” can earn some dough off of.

So, should a writer “have” to do anything in writing a ms? Do a certain pacing, have a certain something on every page?

They should give the story, the gestalt effort, their best shot. And if the writing stinks, then the story damn-well better grab ya…and vice versa.

Do. Their. Best.

There’s no harm and it should be a given that writers do their best, but sometimes their best isn’t good enough. Sometimes books fail. Writers fail. And that’s just the way it is. I don’t think it is solely based upon whether or not a book is perfect crafted or edited or any other “perfectly.” Sometimes the magic works…and sometimes it don’t.

Note:  I will be attending the Mile Hi Con Saturday, October 24. I’ll be participating on a Using Dreams In Your Writing panel at 10 a.m., in the Mesa Verde B room, at Hyatt Regency – Tech Center, 7800 E. Tufts Avenue, Denver, CO. I also hope to be setting up a book signing for Sleepwalkers. Hope to see you there!

My ba-rain hurts!

I grew up on Monty Python in the late sixties and early seventies, and besides all the naked breasts I remember from the show, I simply adored their comedy! Loved their deadpan humor, their outright silliness, their surreal animation. I’ve only just yesterday realized that October 5th marked their 40th anniversary of their broadcast on BBC. Having grown up in the Adirondacks of upstate New York, and only able to get the reception of 2 1/2 television channels, I quite fell into Monty Python by accident from a Canadian channel (I think it the half-channel…).

Oh, how I miss This-isn’t-an-argument sketch.

Doug and Dinsdale Piranha brothers.

The Inquisition.

The Funniest Joke In The World.

The Lumberjacks.

And who could forget about Spam!-Spam!-Spam!-Spam!

They were ground breaking, and I didn’t even know it.  I loved their stream-of-consciousness approach…about how they merged from one sketch to another in dream-like fashion. The naked girls. The absurdity!

So, there is an IFC.com Monty Python, Almost the Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut), and a CNN article that brought it to my attention. Take a peek.

So, happy birthday, Monty Python! I continue to quote your comedy throughout my life!

I recently read some blogs about the slighting of Science Fiction/Fantasy authors, on Carol Berg’ site.

I feel their pain.

I have a self published book.  Guess what kind of glazed-over eyes I get?

Oh, SF/F peeps don’t know the half of it!

The way I see it is…there are bullies everywhere. It doesn’t matter that these are in the literary world. It’s everywhere. Government, sports, the media (“We report hard news, not them-there fluffy Sunday supp stuff….”). Yeah, publishing. For some reason or reasons, perhaps because of improper diaper-to-potty training or standing before too many chalk boards before a rough second-grade class because they couldn’t do long division (or whatever grade that is), there are those out there who feel the need to trounce others.

The defense?

A thick skin.

There are always going to be bullies. And it’s okay to get pissed. Just don’t let it get to you. Keep doing what you’re doing.

Writing.

If you’re publishing SF/F and people are buying it, guess what—someone likes your work. Someone’s buying your books. Frankly, and besides blogging fodder, when it comes right down to it, who gives a shit, right? At least you have published work. I write stuff that publishers find difficult to pigeonhole, hence am still looking for publishers. And I don’t say any of this to dismiss nor demean your concerns or feelings toward the issue. Your feelings are totally justified. And as I stated earlier, I really do feel your pain.

One of my unsold (yet agented) manuscripts is a UFO novel. Yeah, let’s talk about how the SF community feels about UFOs….

Continue to fight the good fight, my friends!