Talking with an Agent about My Writing

I had a strange but lovely dream last night. We were all at some sort of get-together for Chapter Book Challenge members. Jill Corcoran from Jill Corcoran Literary Agency was there and called many of us into another room. She then proceeded, one by one, to tell us what she thought of our books. She really liked them all, and offered to agent for four ChaBooCha members. Those members were Kelly McDonald, Melissa Gijsbers, Cecilia Clark and Becky Chevalier. For some reason, the books of mine she went over were actually two of my non-fiction books. She said they were marketable and well-written.

She mentioned a funny misspelling that was the kind you get with auto-correct (which was the only thing she found wrong in one of the books) - the word "testicles" used where it should have been "tentacles." Since these were my non-fiction books, I highly doubt I have either of those words in them, but I will do a "find word" search on my manuscripts today, just in case my subconscious was trying to warn me.

She was holding one of my manuscripts in book form, with a cover and all. I know I have not published this book yet, and definitely not in the hard back form that it was in within the dream, but I have taken note of the cover in the dream because it was pretty cool. It also meant that she went out of her way to find copies of my books. she actually went out of her way to find copies of all of our manuscripts so she could surprise us. In some cases, she asked our significant others for the manuscripts.

She didn't offer to represent me based on these two books as these two books of mine are already, mostly, published on the web, and she knew I planned to self-publish them. She offered to look at some of my fiction manuscripts though.

The strange bit was that I then woke up, making it possible for me to remember the dream and the great feeling I had at the time. I never wake up at this particular time of night and there was nothing going on in my house to cause me to wake. I think my subconscious mind just really knew I needed that good feeling about my writing to last for a little while.

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Family Reunion

The strange dream I had last night had to do with a family reunion.

In the dream, I was at a family reunion (on my mother's side). It was somewhere in the USA. My grandmother was there. (She died many years ago.) I had forgotten to bring a camera with me, so I had no way of taking photos of my kids with their rarely-seen relatives. My grandmother had brought her camera but didn't know how it worked, so she asked me if I could take some photos for her.

I started taking some random photos, many of which turned out really beautifully. Then I heard that my cousin Dana's wife was in labor at the hospital. Another cousin (one I don't remember having) told me he would drive me to the hospital so I could take photos of the new baby and congratulate the parents.

When we got to the hospital, we entered into a section that was mostly dark. One person was there. I don't know if he was a doctor or a lab assistant, but he gave us directions. We turned to leave, then turned to thank him for the directions but he had already disappeared. He'd told us to change into scrubs, and where to find the scrubs, before we entered the other part of the hospital, so we did.

I got lost and separated from my cousin on the way up to the room, but eventually found it. While lost, I kept wandering into parts of the hospital that were dark, abandoned run down and generally creepy.

Eventually, I found the right floor and entered the maternity ward. I was given directions to the waiting room when I told them I was there for Brandy. (When I asked who I was there to see, I said "Brandy," and the person who came into my mind was not my cousin's wife but another friend of mine named Brandy, and for a brief instant, I thought I had named the wrong person before remembering that they are both named Brandy.)

And, while I waited, I decided I needed to pee, but visitors weren't allowed to use the bathrooms, so I had to wait.

Then I woke up.

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The Love of My Son

I had another strange dream last night.

I was sitting with my five year old son Cameron, on bleachers around a stage. A travelling troupe were performing a play. One of the troupe members sat down beside me, but he didn't look well. Eventually, he slumped over into a more prone position.

As the play finished, the man told me he was very unwell. He said he'd been cursed. He then said that the only thing he needed to cure him and remove the curse was a kiss from a kind-hearted woman. He said, "Help me, please."

I didn't know what to think. I didn't believe in curses, but something about what he said rang true. He was obviously in a lot of pain and whatever was wrong with him had the feel of something otherworldly.

Cameron stood up and took my hand, trying to pull me away. "Don't go near him, Mommy. He's evil."

I looked at Cameron and said, "Don't be silly. He's not evil. He's just a man in pain, and he needs my help," I said.

"No, Mommy. He's a bad man, and he will hurt you. Stay away from him," Cameron said.

One of the actors, a young man who had been on the stage earlier, started running towards us, yelling, "Don't go near him! You're in danger! Get away from him!"

Startled, I took a step back and turned to face the cursed man to see if we were really in danger, but before I had fully turned, the man's arms wrapped around me and he pulled me into an unwilling kiss. I felt my energy leaving me and my skin began to wrinkle and thin with age.

When he let go of me, I was a frail, old woman, and I was in a lot of pain. I slumped down on the bleachers and lay there, without the energy or strength to move.

The man who had attacked me looked even younger than he had before. Instead of a man of about 45, he now looked like he was in his twenties.

The young  man who'd warned me reached us. He said, "I'm so sorry I wasn't in time. He's my father. He made a deal with a demon to stay forever young, but the demon tricked him and gave the gift with the condition that he had to consume the life essence of women in order to stay young, otherwise he would become very sick. I've been trying to keep him from hurting others, but sometimes he gets away. The only cure for this is a kiss of true love."

Cameron was stroking my face. "Mommy, the bad man hurt you," he said.

The young man, watching Cameron for a moment, then said, "You have a cure right in front of you. Your son. He loves you, and a kiss from him, because he loves you so purely, will cure you."

"No," I rasped out, my voice raspy and my breath wheezy. "I won't risk him. There is no guarantee that it will work. And what if it has the same effect that your father's kiss has? What if a kiss from my son just transfers his life essence to me while taking it from him? No."

But, despite my protests, Cameron leaned over and gently kissed my cheek. I was instantly healed, and the young man's father changed into a very old man, with very little strength.

"I am pleased that you are all right. I will make sure that my father cannot harm anyone else," the young man assured us as he carried his father away.

Cameron took my hand and we walked home. I wondered, along the way, how he had known that the man was evil.

Then I woke up.

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Lost in a town that doesn't exist

I don't remember too many details from last nights dream so I will try and summarize it.

I was driving on my motor scooter. (I haven't had a motor scooter since I was a teenager.) I was on a busy main road trying to get to the freeway. I was in California at the time, not too far from where I grew up and I knew where I was going, but somehow I missed the freeway exit. I drove too far along the road I was on and it slowly became a smaller road. I realized I had gone too far and decided to turn around, but when I did that, I found that I was on a very small village road, in a town center and surrounded by buildings. The main road I had been on not only had disappeared, but the road I was on no longer extended back in the way I had come.

I asked people for directions, but the directions they gave me didn't make sense, and when I tried to follow their directions, I wound up in worse neighborhoods, where the people wanted to hurt me. I always wound up back in the same place, in the center of a small village-type town, no matter which way I went or how I tried to get back out.

I entered the library and talked to the librarian, finding out that she had arrived here the same way I had - TWENTY YEARS AGO! She had never been able to find her way out, so she had made a life there. I went back outside and spoke to a policeman and found out he had a similar story.

I began to panic. Remaining there was not an option. I had family that I needed to get back to. I loved my husband and children and refused to accept that I would never see them again. Through my fearful tears, I continued to search for a way out.

Then I woke up.

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The Biggest Loser, Snow and a Strange Friendship

Last night's dream was, as usual, very strange. It didn't have the movie-like quality that most of my dreams have as it moved from one thing to another without much sense.

It started off with me in a classroom. I was sitting at one of those school chairs with the built-in desk. There were other girls in the chairs in the classroom too, and the class was inside a gym. The instructor was Bob Harper. We were all girls who had lost a lot of weight but were either having trouble keeping it off or having trouble losing those last few pounds. He was giving us advice on how to do it.

A snow storm started up outside, and, at that point, we were no longer in a gym but inside a cabin. The snow fell quickly and became many feet deep very quickly. Bob told everyone that he had some skis outside, and we could all ski down to safety. (We were in a cabin high up on a mountain.) He said it wouldn't be safe to take his car.

The rest of the girls were quick to put their coats on and get the skis. They all skied away, one by one, until there was one pair of skis left. I put the last pair on, but realized that it wouldn't leave a pair for Bob. I tried to shuffle, still in the skis, back to the door to ask him how he intended to get to safety, but I fell over and the skis snapped in two. I took the ski off and stepped out on the snow without it and found that I sunk into the soft snow up to my waist.

Bob came out with a husky by his side. He told me that he had a sled that his dog could pull. Once I got down the mountain, I could send his dog back up after him with the sled. I thought that maybe that would be too much work for his dog, but he insisted and started packing some stuff on the sled.

The husky came over to me and started nudging my hand for attention, so I stroked its soft fur and cooed at it a little. (Yes, I am one of those people who gets all gooey over animals.)

I told Bob that I didn't know how to use one of these sleds that used dogs to pull it. He told me that I'd be fine. His dog had done this many times and she knew what to do. I was still worried about what would happen to him in the meantime and I had the feeling I was going to crash on my way down the mountain.

Then a large 4 x 4 truck showed up. It was my cousins Suzie and Margie. My sister Leaetta was with them. They had known where I was and that I would need a way off the mountain , so they came in a vehicle that would be able to get me down the mountain safely. We offered Bob and his dog a ride down the mountain too and he accepted.

The scene switched to another day and I was at a hospital checking on a friend who had gone in for an elective surgery. On my way out, I ran into Bob. He was in a wheelchair. He'd been in a skiing accident, ironically. He needed help getting the wheelchair out of the building as the elevators were out of order and the only way to get downstairs was to use the stairs. I helped him.

He offered to pay me to be his companion, which, according to him, meant to be his friend and help him get around while he was stuck in a wheelchair. I told him I would like to help, but I needed someone to watch my kids while my husband was at work. He told me he could arrange it, so, I called up Robert (my husband) and told him what was going on.

Later, outside the hospital, we ran into some business colleagues of Bob's. They were kind of rude to him. They asked if I had lost a lot of weight like those on Bob's show "The Biggest Loser." I told them I had lost over 145 pounds. They told Bob, as if I wasn't even standing there, that he should make the media think he was dating me. They said it would be good for his career, even if it wasn't for real. I told them that I was married, so it would probably be a bad move for his career if people thought he was dating me. Bob agreed and told them they were idiots.

I helped him get his wheelchair down some more stairs and then I woke up.



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A World Of Dinosaurs

I dreamed about an apocalyptic world brought about by the resurfacing of dinosaurs.

In my dream last night, there weren't as many people left in the world, and those who were left, remained indoors and in hiding. When dinosaurs were near, they had to stay very quiet so as not to be heard by the dinosaurs.

There were dinosaurs of all types, triceratops, stegosaurus, tyranosaurus rex, brontosaurus and others. They roamed the world freely, destroying buildings and whole cities without blinking an eye.

They reacted to spotting a human in the way that humans would sometimes react to seeing a spider; they would run over and try to stomp the human to death. If they heard humans or other sounds coming from within houses or buildings, they destroyed the building in a fierce rage.

I was in a home in the country, living quietly with my children and my husband. We had an underground shelter with a hidden entrance that we could use in an emergency. We grew our own vegetables and had chickens in a chicken coup for eggs and occasionally chicken to eat.

But we needed fruit. The kids were going to become deficient in vitamin C, and it would take too long for the fruit trees we planted to grow. One of us needed to go out and find some cans of food with fruit that might be leftover in empty houses or no-longer-used stores.

I convinced my husband that he needed to be the one staying home to protect the children in case something happened while I was away, and that I would go find food for us. He didn't like it, but he eventually saw my reasoning was sound.

I packed a backpack with some necessities and set out. I had traveled far when a man came running by me. He turned to me as he ran by and yelled, "Run!"

I immediately felt the rumbling, ground-shaking sensation that told me a dinosaur was coming. I ran and soon had passed him by. The kids, my husband and I had been training for speed for quite some time now, so very few could outrun any of us.

He pointed toward a small dotting of houses in the distance. We both found cover in a small group of very dense trees and waited. When not one dinosaur but two, both triceratops, ran by, we waited longer. The tirceratops slowed and looked around. We held our breath. The tirceratops seemed to lose interest in the chase and wandered off. We waited more. After a long time had passed, we traveled together to the houses in the distance.

When we got to the houses, we found there were two groups of people. One group appeared to be people very much like me, parents with children, who hoped for a better future to be found someday but were just trying to survive for now.

The other group was mostly men. They had lots of weapons and they drank a lot. I didn't like the lustful way some of them looked at me and decided to join the other group until it was safe to move on, find some food and get back to my family. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. I didn't get a choice.

A large group of dinosaurs showed up, as if policing the area. The ground shook with their arrival, and they were bulldozing over several random houses using their bodies. The group of people like me ran back to their safe house, and one of the men from the other group grabbed me and pulled me with them to their safe house.

While we waited, trying to stay quiet, one of them grabbed my butt. I grabbed his hand and twisted it up and backward so that his wrist was pulled almost out of its socket. I whispered forcefully to him that he should never touch me. He whimpered and backed away as I let his arm go.

I heard two men discussing the things they'd like to do with me, things that were disgusting and would not bear repeating. I knew I had to get away. I decided I'd rather be stomped to death by a dinosaur.

One of them tried to grab me as I slipped out the door. I kicked him in the nuts and went out as he crumpled to the ground. There were no dinosaurs nearby, so I continued away from the small formation of houses and back into the fields and open stretches of land I had been traveling before.

I rose up a small hill and looked back at the houses. I could see the dinosaurs moving about next to the houses still. I wasn't sure how I had gotten out without being seen by them. I watched as two of the dinosaurs started ramming themselves against some houses. People ran out of one. Most of them were crushed to death, but a few made it to the other safe house, the one I had gotten away from. The dinosaurs saw them go there and followed to attack that house.

After watching the destruction that occurred there, I didn't think anyone could be left alive. I was about to move on, but I remembered the children I had seen. What if one of those small children had somehow survived the attack? I couldn't leave without checking for survivors.

I waited throughout the night until the last dinosaur had moved on and no dinosaurs were left in sight for miles around. Then I headed back to the now-ruined houses. I searched the rubble. I found body after body. I wanted to vomit when I found the body of a toddler, but after a while, and after finding dead body after dead body, it was as if my mind shut down for a bit and I just continued searching, immune to the crushed bodies all around me and to the smell that was filling my nostrils with decay and rot.

I finally stood, ready to give up, and that's when I heard the cry. It was the cry of a baby, a new baby. I recognized the sound. It was the cry babies make until they are about three months old. I followed the sound and found a fridge on its side. I opened it and inside it had been emptied out and a girl of about four was laying down, huddled and holding a baby that looked like it was two or three weeks old. They would have suffocated in the airtight fridge if I hadn't returned to look for survivors. I guessed that there parents had thought that would be better for them than being stomped to death.

The little girl was frightened. The baby was dressed in pink and wrapped in a pink blanet, so I assumed it was girl too. I told her the toddler she was safe and asked her to stay where she was, holding the baby, while I found some food. I dug through the debris again, this time to find food. I found two cans of infant formula and a couple of unbroken baby bottles after a while. I continued searching until I found some bottled water and the cans of fruit that I had originally come out to find. I packed everything away in my backpack after making up a bottle for the baby. I fed the baby and then continued on my way home, bringing the toddler and the baby with me.

I woke up from the dream before I arrived back home, but I had the feeling before I woke that we would make it.



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Dangerous Acid

Weird dream again last night.

I dreamed that I was entering a building that was a charity. The charity provided books for children all over the world. A friend of mine ran it and I was dropping off some new books for her. When I got inside, there were masked men there. They were trying to break into the safe. I turned to run away and they chased me.

One of them knocked over a large barrel in his attempt to grab me. This barrel was full of an acid that would burn through anything (except for , apparently concrete, as the road it was pouring out onto after running through the building, didn't burn). I have no idea why there was a barrel of acid in the charity building.

The acid kept pouring and pouring. The men burned up horribly, the acid making them dissolve, but I didn't have to see it happen because they were still inside the building and I had run outside. I heard them scream though.

The acid kept pouring. I grabbed some bricks that were sitting in the gutter of the road and used them to bash against a fire hydrant until it burst open. Water was the only thing that would neutralize this acid, and the water that poured from the fire hydrant made a line of safety through the acid. Unfortunately, it wasn't on the side I was on but on the opposite side and I would have to go through acid to get to the safety it had created, so it didn't help.

I ran again. At one point, I realized the acid was behind me and in front of me. I was trapped. I saw a large metal crate and climbed up on top of it. I climbed up and the acid surrounded the crate. The crate didn't burn though, so, although I was surrounded by the acid, I was safe from being dissolved.

I sat there for ages. The acid looked like it was drying up, but I knew about this acid and I knew that, even dry, it was still there. I still needed water to neutralize it.

I began to worry that people walking on nearby roads would come upon this road and walk onto it, not realizing the acid was there. First, their shoes would start to melt and dissolve, and maybe that would give them time to get away, especially if I was there to explain what was happening and warn them.

A man walked up and turned to go down the street I was on. I warned him, but he didn't pay attention. Then after a step or two, he noticed the soles of his shoes sticking to the ground and he could tell they were melting. He yelped and ran back off the road. (For some reason, the acid had run out on the road I was on and had not spread to the roads next to it.)

This happened with another man who had been determined to come help me down off of the crate. Finally, one of them called the police, who then called the fire brigade. A fire engine showed up and the hose was brought out and water was streamed all over the road to neutralize the acid. I was safe.

That's when I woke up.


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The Neighbor's House

We have recently moved to a new house on a street that is newly built with all new homes. We applied for the 5 bedroom home but a different family got it and we got to move into the 4 bedroom home. The family had six children living at home with them, like us. I met the mother and she seemed really nice, and I like the idea that there is someone living just a few houses away from me who knows what it is like to raise a large family. But I haven't really had the chance to visit with her much or to get to know her much yet.

Last night, I dreamed that I saw my cat go into her house, so I went over to warn the family not to feed him, no matter how much he begged, because he was starting to get chubby. They were having a barbecue at the time, and she offered me a burger. Although these burgers were full of fat and completely off my nutritious eating plan, I accepted anyway and we chatted while I ate.

She showed me around her home and I was commenting on the changes the builders had made to her home when they enlarged it. That's when I tripped and fell, and then I woke up from the dream.

It was an odd thing to dream about, but maybe my subconcious is telling me to go get to know my neighbor better.


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Connor's Dream

My four year old Connor told me he had a "really good fighting dream" last night. He went on to say that he and his 5 year old sister Bella were fighting bad guys and they were winning. But the "Bella got hit by a jet."

Connor rarely remembers his dreams well enough to talk to me about them, so I decided I would share it here.

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Relatives & Aliens

Last night, I dreamed that the whole world had been taken over by aliens. The aliens looked human except for their glowing red eyes and the fact that they were all, every single one of them, muscular and tall. Most of humanity had been massacred when the aliens first arrived on the planet and there was only a small population of us left. We constituted the resistance, and we battled in skirmishes all over to try and evict the aliens from our planet. Robert and I were a team, fighting for freedom and protecting our children.

Our very small community of survivors got together for regular meetings. During one of the meetings, I noticed a couple of men who were taller than my 6'8" tall husband. Looking up so I could see their faces, I realized that they both looked like they could be Robert's brothers. They were younger than Robert, but other than that, they were very similar in looks to each other and to him. Seeing them was like seeing glimpses of Robert when he was younger. I spoke to them, but although they were American, they weren't very friendly. I was certain that they must be relatives of his, even if very distant relatives.

The meeting broke up and Robert and I had to take our kids home through rough terrain. We were climbing down into a drainage ditch in order to cross it and climb up the other side when I woke from my dream.

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