My first self-published story, a longish short story, Gothic Romance, The White Umbrella has been getting great response at a weedly read-aloud. Audiences have enjoyed the mystery, questions, and twists. In particular, the natural conversation between old childhood friends re-united.
I like to give a glimpse behind the stories once they are published. As I have told many people, in the past two plus years, a good portion of my short stories have come from lucid dreaming. I have many lucid dreams, but frequently they are non-consective and chaotic in order. Last May one of my first dream stories were published, Maerchen: Prince of Gold and Greed. When I awoke from this dream, I saw a very linear plot with events in a clear sequential order, and a very clear genre.
The White Umbrella is not the second dream story I have written, by any means. However, the characters are among the most recognizable. When I awoke from this dream with a clearly defined linear plot, it also had a clearly defined genre. With an old decaying house which uncertain noises at the center of it, I knew it was a Gothic Romance at the center of it. Are readers curious to know more about how this house and characters came to be in my dream? Continue reading to glimpse a peak behind the curtain. The main character of Gothic Romance is nearly always the old house. This one is a 1920s brick box mansion, straight out of my own life. In my 20s, my church owned nearly this exact house, and I stayed there on some weekend retreats, work days, and other events. The house in my dream had a slightly diffrent layout. In the story, there is a drawing room in the front, and a bathroom between it and the dining room, making the layout slightly larger than the one I Remember. However, the characters in my dream were from much earlier in my life. They were, in fact, children from my neighborhood, just like the protagonist. In fact, my father said if people from our community read this story it would be too obvious and reveal private things about the main character. That is to say the backstory of the two main characters are true to my life. He really did live up the street at the top of the hill from me, but not in a big brick mansion.
Next door to him was a good friend of his, who went to school with me, except his family was Asian. In our lives, the Asian friend and I went to the same school, and the boy next door went to the rival school. There is another character in the story based on another girl from my childhood, but she was not in this cluster of relationships at all. I am not sure why she appeared in my dream, but her older sister who I looked up to as a girl recently passed away last summer, and it was a loss I felt deeply.
In my real life, all of the girls were given invitations to Sadie-Hawkins dances first year of high school at a driving club. If we attended, we were invited back subsequent years. My mother suggested I invite this boy from up the street, who I had a secret crush on, and I was frustrated by the suggestion and incredibly insecure. Instead I opted not to attend the dance altogether, and in fact, I was not part of the country club social scene.
I did return home, and try to connect with him, and he did avoid responding to my calls. I did run into him and his girlfriend in the market. The dream did not surprise me in the themes or emotions that were present. However, the specific events never took place in my life, and was entirely a dream construct. If you have not had a chance to pick up your copy, it is avaliable at many of your favorite retailiers:
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