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Daniel Draym

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in Belgium

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April 2020

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After a pernicious career in the darkest arts, Daniel Draym spends his decrepit final years dreaming wistful fantasies of world domination in the crypts of his inaccessible Antarctic citadel. His only regret is that the end days are arriving through no agency of his own. Savouring a tumbler of vintage bile, he dips his quill in an inkwell filled with the blood of the last Sumatran rhino. He’s about to cover reams of priceless vellum, scrubbed clean with pumice stones by underpaid minions, with his near-illegible scrawl. An inevitable sequel is in the making.

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Humanity never came closer to general enlightenment than in May 1964. It all started with an immigrant. Make a note, class. People breaking free from [...]

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Published on June 19, 2021 01:38

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Daniel Draym’s books

Average rating: 4.47 · 15 ratings · 7 reviews · 3 distinct works

	Dream Whisperer (The Fleming Chronicles, #1) 4.50 avg rating — 14 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Droomfluisteraar really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dream Whisperer: First Book in the Fleming Chronicles 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Dream Whisperer (The Fleming Chronicles, #1)

by Daniel Draym (Goodreads Author)

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Daniel Draym said: " Of course, I'm not going to review my own book. That would be silly. If I wasn't happy with it, I wouldn't have gone through all of the trouble publishing it. Let it be understood that it's a great novel and be done with it.

I'd rather tell you a bit Of course, I'm not going to review my own book. That would be silly. If I wasn't happy with it, I wouldn't have gone through all of the trouble publishing it. Let it be understood that it's a great novel and be done with it.

I'd rather tell you a bit about what to expect from this novel. I wanted to write an action-driven page-turner situated at the beginning of the 20th century -- just before, during, and right after the Great War. Why precisely in that period? Because it's been a major turning point in European and indeed world history. The war marked the end of an era and defined much of the world we are living in today. It was the end of the boisterous fin-de-siècle period, which we now call with some nostalgic longing the 'Belle Epoque'. That 'Beautiful Period' wasn't all that beautiful, except if you were wealthy, but it certainly was a lot better than what came next. The Great War introduced mechanised mass slaughter on an unprecedented scale; it was the final gasp of the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and Tsarist Russia; it fundamentally redrew the map of Europe; it propelled the USA to the front stage as a world leader. The unfairness of the Versailles Treaty was the direct cause for the next world conflict. For Great Britain, it was the beginning of the end of its world empire. Sure enough, the British Empire would drag on for another thirty years -- and it would even grow a little bigger after the war -- but involving British subjects from faraway places in this essentially European conflict paved the way for demands for self-rule and outright independence in the 'colonies'.

That context is important. That's why I went to great lengths to get the historical facts straight in my fantasy novel. I also used that apparent veracity to blur the lines between what is fact and fiction in the novel. I love it when readers wonder whether something is true or a part of my febrile imagination and start doing some research of their own. I also enjoyed putting historical facts into new contexts. One of the recurring themes in the novel is that the historical canon cannot be trusted. Official history books need to be treated with suspicion because all too often they are tools for propaganda and obfuscation rather than the product of objective, hard science. History is purposefully used to create artificial national identities and nationalistic pride, two elements that have been eagerly used by politicians and rulers of all times to serve their nefarious purposes. We are living in times where powerful politicians openly deny that 'truth' exists. They claim the right to impose their version of it, even if that version manifestly clashes with the facts. That attitude finds an echo in my novel. In Dream Whisperer, the general public is completely unaware of the existence of non-human species on Earth and their impact on human history. The authorities are doing their utmost to keep it that way and use official history as a cover-up.

So why did I choose to write a fantasy novel? If historical facts are so dear to me, why didn't I just write historical fiction? The short answer is: Because I wanted to have fun. I'm not personally attracted to novels that cling all too closely to dreary reality. Then I'd rather prefer to read non-fiction. I love authors who use reality as a springboard and then add their very own magic. Authors like Marquez, Llosa, Rushdie, and Murakami. I like 'magic' realism more than either realism or pure fantasy.

In Dream Whisperer, I use a few characters I borrowed from other authors. The main villain is an avatar of H.P. Lovecraft's Outer God Nyarlathotep. I am aware Lovecraft was a racist, but he did redefine the face of horror fiction. Lovecraftian horror doesn't primarily rely on the dreadfulness of its monsters but the nihilistic realisation that humans aren't the crowning glory and purpose of Creation. We are mere motes of dust in a hostile universe, about to be wiped off the face of the Earth in the blink of an eye. The precarity of human existence is one of the themes in Dream Whisperer. The Outer Gods are long gone, but they will return, and that will signify the end of mankind. I also used Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's smarter brother. He's the éminence grise who pulls all the strings of British politics behind the scenes. I made him into an ambivalent character, utterly devoted to the British Empire to the detriment of everything else. He's both likeable and monstrous. These borrowings from other authors are of course homages -- the pulp fiction genre is a delightful guilty pleasure that has given me many hours of entertainment -- but Dream Whisperer is by no means fan fiction. I didn't imitate either Lovecraft's or Conan Doyle's writing styles, and Dream Whisperer isn't a copy of their universes.

I imagined a world where all familiar creatures of mythology, legend, and folktale do exist. They reached Earth in the wake of the Outer Gods who crashed through millions of layered parallel universes to establish themselves for a period on Earth and then left again. As mankind developed, these creatures presented themselves to us as gods, and we gullibly believed them. Until Elizabethan times. Then we began to see them not as gods but as competitors for living space and natural resources. The Industrial Revolution and the exponential growth of the human population further increased tensions with the other races. Queen Elizabeth I created a secret service that was specifically tasked with keeping an eye on all non-human species. In Dream Whisperer, the person who heads that service, Fleming, is the eleventh in his family line to do so.

Fleming is a quarter-elf. One of his grandfathers married an elf, which of course raised quite a few eyebrows. It makes him the ultimate outsider -- neither elf nor fully human. To save the world, Fleming leads a band that consists of other outsiders: Rebecca Mumm, a young French biologist spurned by male chauvinist academia; Ove Eliassen, a retired Swedish professor specialised in mythology and esoterics who has a strained relationship with his deeply religious family; Ormger Lagergren, another professor, who struggles with his sexuality; Morris Selman Wheeling, an unsuccessful artist who practices magic. This colourful quilt of characters allowed me to weave thematic threads through the action-packed story that are relevant in the world we are living in today: religious belief systems, racism, feminism, the relevance of science, colonialism, ecological sustainability, and many others.

I hope you will have as much fun reading Dream Whisperer as I enjoyed writing it. Up until now, the novel has only attracted favourable reviews. You can find them on my author's website, www.danieldraym.com. I invite you to have a look. I'm also posting weekly blogs that give background info about Dream Whisperer and there's a free-to-read new short story each month.

The sequel to Dream Whisperer is in the making. I've almost finished the first draft, which means there's still a lot of work to be done. I can reveal it plays in the problematic early aftermath of the Great War. The story revisits several familiar characters from the previous novel and introduces a weird and wonderful host of new ones. ...more "

Oct 24, 2020 12:08PM · see review

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Daniel Draym is now friends with Jeanine
Nov 10, 2025 10:32AM · like
Daniel Draym is now following Johan Klein Haneveld Author of Plastic vriend
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Daniel Draym made a comment on Johan Haneveld’s review of Droomfluisteraar " Bedankt, Johan, voor deze fijne recensie. "
Nov 07, 2025 10:20AM · see review
Daniel Draym and 4 other people liked Johan Haneveld's review of Droomfluisteraar: "7,5 Dit boek heeft alles - en dan bedoel ik ook: alles! - een personage uit Sherlock Holmes, een hommage aan James Bond (een personage heet Fleming en zijn opdrachtgever wordt aangeduid als M.), Kaiju-achtige monsters (waaronder een reusachtige zeest" Read more of this review »
Nov 07, 2025 10:20AM · see review