Today I posted the following comment on my Facebook fanpage: "After nearly forty years, I have come to the conclusion that I no longer have nightmares, only new story ideas."

This is rather interesting since a great number of stories I have written or have wanted to write have come about during my unconscious state. As a child, I used to have a recurring nightmare that there was a plane crash at the end of the road where I grew up. I would always walk into the burning woods and find the charred fuselage of a commercial jet and would pass by multiple seats standing up with charred bodies strapped into them. At the age I was, it was terrifying. Hell, today it would be terrifying. However, the image stayed in my mind for years. Eventually, it became the story in my book, "Twenty" titled "Perchance to Dream." In fact, nearly the complete dream was brought about as a dream Laret had as he marched through the woods to find the same scene.

Recently I had a dream that terrified me to no end and is now in the beginning stages of a short story tentatively titled "Blind Faith" which will eventually go into a book called "Tales From Velleity" which is similar in structure and genre to "Twenty." I have created some foreshadowing to this new book in a mention of Velleity Island in the description of Anthony Hamilton in "Ghosts Don't Die." It is my hope that I can eventually find a way to link every one of my books in some way.

The thing here is that I really love it when I find a great story and am inspired by something I never expected to be. Whether it is my tattoo artist or a promiscuous teen that walks past or even a bar I go into to catch a quick beer, I love finding my thoughts become words on paper that I find very real.

In short: My nightmares become my written reality and I love it when they come to me in such a great fashion.