My mother, the Werewolf Tamer

I've mentioned the utter strangeness and entertainment value I get from my dreams before on this blog. I usually enjoy them a lot, unless they are truly horrific, in which case I spend a couple of days out-of-sorts and trying to forget them.

Painkillers seem to give me even stranger than usual dreams though, although the last couple have been strange in a very amusing way.

 It's pretty jumbled, in the way the interesting ones always are, but the basic plot boiled down to the last home I lived in with my parent, with said parents, myself, and Norman Reedus, wandering around the back yard. No idea how Mr Reedus got there, and to my intense disappointment no motorbike or crossbow was involved.
At some point it turned out I was a werewolf, or werewolf-in-training, which the parents took remarkably calmly. Except... my mom was convinced I was going to dig up the garden, and my dad wanted me to sniff out some critter that had been coming over the back wall at nights and wandering around the place.

So there I am, suddenly in desperate need of Nair, or a 6-bladed razor with a lot of replacement blades, my dad is asking "Can you smell it? What is it? Is it dangerous?", Norman is dipping a toe in the swimming pool, and mom is tapping me on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and telling me not to even think about going near her rose-bushes.
This little monster may need therapy.


So I mentioned this during our Skype chat this afternoon.

Mom: You were a what?
Dad: Did she say werewolf?
Me:  Yes. Werewolf. And you kept spanking me on the nose with the newspaper because you thought I was going to dig in the garden.
Dad: Bwahahahahah!
Mom: Well, of course I would!
Me: You wouldn't be upset that I was a mythological hairy beastie? Because you took this very calmly.
Dad: *Incoherent snorting*
Mom: You know very well what I'd say to you if you turned into a werewolf! (side note : No. No, I really wouldn't know. I would, however be hiding the silver and anything that could be used as a weapon.) And if you touched my rose-bushes you'd regret it.
Me: Mom, you realise hitting a werewolf with a newspaper is probably not a good idea?
Dad: *hiccuping in background*
Mom: I don't CARE! If it touches my garden, it'd better watch out. Nobody messes with my garden.
Dad: Exactly. *pause* So what was I trying to get you to smell? Do you know?

And that folks, is one of the many reasons I adore my family.

Dream time

Dreams have always had a big impact on my writing. During my interview over at Indie Book Blog  in March, I mentioned that WolfSong started off as a dream about a group of soldiers riding into a village, and finding it full of bodies.

The whole book pretty much took off from there; I woke up wondering about this group and what happened to them. Strangely enough, I've had dreams - standalone episodes and re-runs - about the Crescent since I was about fifteen or so. I look forward to them; it's like my subconscious has decided to chill out with a big bowl of popcorn and the latest action/fantasy installment.

If you're wondering about the movie/t.v. reference above, that's because of how I view the whole dreaming thing - entertainment my subconscious produces for my personal enjoyment. I tend to remember most of them, although I admit there are a couple I try very hard to forget.

Dreams are where my snarky side really gets its boots on: I went through a five or six year patch where I'd suddenly dream about the guy I was currently dating wearing a pink tutu and army boots. Can you say passion killer?
A few relationships later, the tutu dreams stopped - thankfully, since I was starting to contemplate a life of severe abstinence at that point. (The worst was one were the chap concerned was a 6 foot five red-head. Not.A.Good.Look.)

I'm never sure what I'm going to get when I do get to sleep - I tend to suffer from insomnia on and off, so an actual eight hours of sleep is both rare and appreciated. But the couple of hours I do snatch here and there are always filled with dreams, and 90% of the time I'm fully aware I'm dreaming. If I don't enjoy it, I try to switch the channel, so to speak - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Some of the best ones are where I get to eat nice food. My favorites by far are where I can fly.

Apparently, having all five sense active in dreamland is fairly uncommon. I wouldn't know - I've always been able to taste, smell, and feel in them. Sometimes I body-hop; first I'm one person in the scene, then I'm another. I have no idea how common that is either, but it's definitely interesting.

It really is kind of like channel surfing: sometimes it's fantasy, sometimes comedy. On a couple of nasty occasions I get full blown horror, and spend the rest of the day feeling grumpy and out of sorts even if  I've managed to forget the details, which can take a lot of doing.
My subconscious doesn't seem to go for romance much, although every now and then it flips to the porn channel (usually spoilt by part of me going "I don't think that's actually physically possible without breaking something"). For some reason those are usually interrupted by either the phone or the doorbell ringing. Sometimes that's a good thing.
I'm still waiting for a good western to pitch up though, and if I get the same recurring dream too many times I get bored, even with the ones that scared the hell out of me the first couple of times. They tend to go like this:

Subconscious : Spiders! LOTS of SPIDERS.
Me : Oh, jeez! Again? Seriously? Give it up.
Subconscious: HAIRY spiders!!
Me : I could always try shaving them..
Subconscious: Oh, piss off. I'm sulking now, and for that, you get to stay awake for another three hours. Go write your blog..
Me : Oh, bugger.

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You can find WolfSong on Amazon, Sony  e-bookstore, Nook and Smashwords. Basement Blues is on Amazon and Smashwords.