Dear Friends,
As a child, do you ever remember dreaming? I don’t, but I recall sleepwalking. As I sleepwalked, I remember mumbling about “half a blue, half a blue, blue, blue.” Strange, but in context, it made perfect sense. I’d been working on a mosaic with little pieces, some halves. Thus, what I mumbled as I sleep-walked.
We 
don’t remember every dream or understand its origin. The ones we do remember can be influential.
As an adult, I know I’ve awakened after dreaming and remember the dreams. Sometimes the dreams are vivid. Like the one that led me to create my Louisa’s Vineyard Series, which takes place in a vineyard. Funny thing, the day before, I was visiting vineyards in Temecula, California, enjoyed a couple of wine-tastings, and toured the vineyards. I asked oodles of questions. I always ask questions.
In a past life, I was a journalist. Journalists make their living by asking questions and getting answers. Sometimes, the questions are high stakes questions that can influence or affect people. I wrote some of those stories for newspapers, as well as private companies.
The Louisa’s Vineyard dream gave me a full complement of people, their identities, and their personalities. They were not like the people I’d met at the vineyards. Although my characters were conjured from my sleeping brain, I came to know them well. I’ve now created four books based on that dream!
My guest author for my “Books I Love” feature this time is Jane Rohde, whose suspenseful romance, Not Exactly Strangers, includes the theme of lucid dreaming. (Lucid dreaming is considered possible when a person who’s dreaming is aware of the dream, as if they’re awake.)
Reading her book prompted my thoughts about dreaming. I found her book original, an “I couldn’t put it down” book. More on that after I let Jane tell you about lucid dreaming and her reasons for writing the book. Read on for her answers to my questions:
What caused you to write about lucid dreams? Have you had them? Do you believe this could happen?
I have always found dreaming to be very compelling. I have had lucid dreams, but never one in which I dreamed with another person. My best friend for most of our lives is a shaman. Things happen around her that I absolutely cannot explain. I believe lucid dreaming such as I describe can happen.
Your plot is intriguing – how did you research or know about the security firm businesses? the political people?
My dad was an attorney. He focused on imports and exports. His hard and fast rules were: It had to be legal on at least one side. And no drugs. Potential customers were occasionally displeased with his rules in the course of trying to procure import or export papers. And he always traveled with a bodyguard.
He knew many politicians, and the grey side of politics was often a subject of discussion in our house. I was 13 the year Kennedy was elected. Because I was very interested in the campaigning and the electoral process, my dad, who always “knew a guy”, arranged for me to watch the back room of one polling location, after the polls closed. What I saw was a table with maybe a dozen women filling out ballots. I have no idea for whom they were “voting” but as a very black and white young person, I was outraged. I kept my mouth closed in the moment. When I told my dad what I had seen, he told me, ”The US interferes in elections in other countries. What makes you believe we don’t do it at home? Even you can’t be that naive.”
Was it difficult to create a Happily Ever After for the characters, who are skeptics and, especially for Logan, who is hardened by life experiences?
Yes. My writing process is that characters talk to me and tell me their story. This is the first time I was worried about the outcome of a book. When I tried to take over the story to bring about the Happily Ever After, Meg and Logan simply stopped talking to me. When I stopped trying to manipulate the story, things went fine. Writing this book was a lesson in “just sit down, listen, and take notes.”
ABOUT – NOT EXACTLY STRANGERS
Tropes: An enemies to lovers story with a paranormal twist
What if you had a dream about Mr. Hot and Sexy,
and recognized him the next morning
while you were getting coffee?
What if he had the same dream?
What if the two of you meet after having had dream sex?
DETAILS –
A Reclusive Author
Meg Summers has a successful career as an author. What she doesn’t have is a social life. Growing up as the daughter of a single mother made her leery of romance. She prefers sitting in PJs on her couch with her laptop in her lap, safely avoiding entanglements.
When Meg’s research for an article on lucid dreaming lands her in a lucid dream with Logan, she believes the incredibly sexy guy in her bed is just a figment of her own mind.
An Embittered Ex-Soldier
Logan Masters, owner of Masters Security, provides security and protection for politicos as well as the rich and famous. He thinks of himself as a no-relationship guy, and only dates model types who know the score.
Logan dreams of Meg on the same night. The sex feels real, but dreams feel real, and Logan isn’t into all that woo-woo stuff. He’s sure it was just a really enjoyable dream.
They Meet For Real, And They SIZZLE!
They try to resist the primal pull they both feel for each other. But when US Senator Cavanaugh, a client of Masters Security, hires Meg to ghostwrite his memoir and is then murdered, Meg and Logan are thrown together into a web of lies and deceit as they hunt for a killer.
Shelley’s Review of Not Exactly Strangers
“Not Exactly Strangers” is a tease! Can two people dream about each other, and actually meet in real life? (That’s the premise with lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is aware that they’re dreaming.)
Then the story gets scary as the characters are threatened by mysterious mercenaries. And lives are at stake!
As a reader, I wished for the protagonists’ survival. Even though the premise of lucid dreaming seems unreal, they become very real. The plot twists keep on coming and the characters truly deserve the happily ever after, which you’re not sure until the very end they’ll get.
Highly Recommended. A fun and scary read.
For more information about Not Exactly Strangers: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F6M1FTPF
PROGRESS ON BOOK 4
Keeping you in the loop!
I’m about halfway complete with writing Book 4. Louisa and Will experience a life-changing situation and Sophie and Joe have a very unusual wedding.
I’ve spent hours researching exotic places for Sophie and Joe to honeymoon. Wait until you see where they’re going! Woo hoo! I want to travel there, too!
Contact me if you have ideas for the title! shelley@shelleysommers.com
