Some time last night after I hit the switch and the sack, Amazon
approved my upload of Dreamhealer to the Kindle store and
KU. So it's ready to rock--
go get it! I'll have a trade paperback edition
in a week or so, unless Amazon decides to arm-wrestle me over it,
like they did with Firejammer.
Unlike most fiction these days, the cover is a from-scratch
painting that represents a scene from the book itself. (It's Larry
healing a man's falling nightmare--falling from 90,000 feet. See
Chapter 1.)
This one was a long time coming. Part of it was starting a novel
in the middle of a move that included renovating two houses 850
miles apart.I'm sure part of it was just starting a novel at age
64. Part of it was the...peculiar... nature of some of the
background concepts. There is tension between witches and
lightworkers. I worked some of that tension into the plot. I bought
a whole book on the "etheric double" as understood by Theosophists.
I read and reread a lot of material from the late Colin Wilson. Oh,
and material about tiger moms, phantom pregnancies, Elk Grove
Village, steampunk mechas, the bicameral mind theory of human
evolution, and more. Way more. (I actually explored Elk
Grove Village back in 2017 and chose the street where Larry the
Dreamhealer lives.) Of course, I invented as much as I borrowed,
especially regarding the Elemental Cycles of the Canidae and the
quantum computational substrate underlying dreams. Researching the
background is the fun part of creating a novel. The writing itself
is butt-kicking hard work.
I was going to summarize the plot here, but there's always the
problem of spoilers. So I'll be brief: Larry gets on the wrong side
of what turns out to be the Architect of All Nightmares. He finds
his true love, who has a thing for chainsaws. The spirit of
Isambard Kingdom Brunel builds one helluva mecha. Dogs. Dogs
everywhere. Talking dogs. Dogs who eat the creatures that create
nightmares. Fights, more fights, a skeletal flying saucer,
searching for calculus class, imaginary friends...hey, what more do
you want? Whatever it is, it's probably in there somewhere.
Go get it. Have fun. Write a review. Tell your friends.
And...thanks.