I Dreamed a Dream

I am nine years old. I'm with my family traveling through the woods on the way to a visit. There are boys in the woods trying to set snares and trip wires to stop our car, but it doesn't work. We make it to the house where we are to visit without incident. We are met by the people who live there. Among them is a boy a little older than me. I'm not certain of his name, but I do know he is very nice.

It has grown late. I'm confused at this point about whether the house belongs to my family or the boy's, but that's unimportant. I'm sneaking around, investigating things. I'm eavesdropping on some grownups. They're planning something of evil intent, but I'm not quite sure what it is. I'm in danger. The boy is there, and he pulls me under the bed to hide.

I must get back to my family's room before I'm discovered. I run through the house. I get into the bathroom that leads to my family's bedroom. The door is locked behind me. Spock is there. He is our guard. I run through and jump into bed with my sisters just before the men upon whom I was spying burst into our room. I hide under the covers, hoping no one will notice that I'm still trying to catch my breath and that I'm not wearing my pajamas. Spock did not detain them for long.

I'm not sure what happens after that. Everything fades away.

And that is how Espionage began. Sometimes I have what I call "story dreams." They don't always make sense, sometimes they're incredibly incoherent, but what they all have in common is intrigue. They present me with something that's the inkling of a story, and they won't let me go.

This was one of those dreams. It was actually a more developed story dream experience than most. Shortly thereafter, I had a plot, characters, title, and cover all there inside my head. As is usual with story dreams, I tried to incorporate as many elements from the dream itself into the story as I could. But not Spock. That would be weird. It was even weird for him to be in the dream at all. I don't even like Star Trek.

Vannie has a lot of me in her. She is her own character for sure, but she springboards from me. And the sole reason she is nine is because of the dream. Kate is quieter and less obnoxious like my middle sister. Mandie's tendency to repeat what people say is drawn from an early phase of my youngest sister's when we could get her to say anything. One of my sisters, when reading it, even asked me if the girls were based on us.

The boy in the dream is Kyle. I feel certain he had a name in my dream, but even immediately after waking, I could not remember what it was. I just knew he was nice, he was a gentleman, and he had dark hair, all attributes that Kyle shares. I made sure to include the part where he saves me from being discovered.

Journeying through the woods for a visit, eavesdropping on bad guys, sneaking through a dark house at night, fear of being discovered...these are all things that are woven into Espionage. It's so interesting to watch a dream become a book. I love seeing how different the book is, but yet how so many dream elements managed to be incorporated. Espionage is definitely a favorite story dream story.

Speaking of dreams, I had one a few weeks ago where I was teaching school in a minivan and my older brother and I had to prevent our half-brother Gollum from going on a murderous rampage and killing the kids, and we were trying to remember how Edmund Pevensie had calmed him down in "the book." I want that one to become a book one day. It ought to be interesting.