GUEST POST:
Since my novels are all about dreams – specifically the heroine’s ability to see into other people’s dreams – it might seem odd, but I very rarely remember my own dreams. Pretty much never, in fact. And on the rare occasions that I do, they don’t seem to have much to do with what’s going on in my waking life. And I’ve never, as far as I can remember, had a dream that corresponds to any of the well-known dream-interpretation imagery. Curiously, my mother’s told me the same thing – she doesn’t dream either, or at least doesn’t remember them. But talking more generally about dreams, I’ve got a couple of beliefs. One goes along with the traditional dream imagery and interpretation – that there are certain patterns that we all share, and that come out in our dreams. The idea of finding yourself naked at an event (a test, a big speech, etc) is one of those. It seems to me that it’s too common for there not to be at least some truth to it - that when it happens to you in a dream, it means you’re afraid or feel unprepared for something coming up in your life (in the first novel, Dream Student, Sara’s roommate has just such a dream about an exam she’s dreading).
The other thing I think about dreams, which actually doesn’t come up in the novels, is the idea of mixing up different parts of your life. A couple of the rare dreams I do remember involved people who in real life never met – classmates from high school mixing with friends from graduate school, for example. I’m not sure there’s any deeper meaning to it – my theory is that it’s just the brain doing “housekeeping” while unconscious.
In the novels, most of the dreams Sara sees are a lot more literal than what an “average” dream would be. The in-story explanation is that Sara’s subconscious is tuning into dreams she can actually understand, and that help her figure out what’s going on. But there are certainly some cryptic dreams that she sees as well, including one with Sean Connery, another with man-sized ants playing softball, and a third with a giant hand reaching down to pluck people up with huge metal tweezers, for example. I think that the thing that really drew me to write about a character who could see other people’s dreams is the combination of the familiar and the bizarre – a glimpse into the minds of her friends and family, but a somewhat distorted, funhouse-mirror glimpse.
J.J. DiBenedetto is the author of the Dream series. You can read more about the books at www.writingdreams.net.
THE BOOKS:
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| BOOK ONE |
In
the first book, in the winter of 1989-90, Sara is a junior in college, planning
on going to medical school. She's a hard worker, shy, no boyfriend, and
perfectly ordinary. But she begins to have strange dreams. She's
not even a character in these dreams - she sees a strange, creepy man
assaulting a teenaged girl, the same dream every night. She doesn't
know the man or the girl, but then she sees the girl's picture in the newspaper
- she was raped and murdered, her body found on the side of the road.
That's when she realizes, the dreams were the killer's dreams, and she was
seeing into his mind. At the same time, Sara begins seeing
other, random dreams of the people around her, friends and others in her
dorm.
While
this is going on, she's met a guy - a fellow student, Brian, whose dream she's
also seen. He was dreaming of her, and has a major crush on her,
and Sara takes the initiative and goes for it with him. Over the
course of the book, her relationship with Brian gets very serious very
quickly. With the help of Brian, and also her roommate and best friend
Beth, Sara plays detective, using the clues from her dreams, and old-fashioned
legwork, to figure out who the killer is. It turns out he's a former
teacher at the college, Dr. Walters. At the climax of the book, Sara and
friends figure out where he lives, and go to his house. There, they
rescue another teenager who Dr. Walters is about to murder. In a final
confrontation with Dr. Walters, Sara and Brian are both injured, but Sara keeps
Dr. Walters talking until the police arrive and arrest him, saving the
day. Six months later, Sara sees one last dream - Brian is dreaming about
proposing to her.
BLURB FROM BOOK ONE:
BLURB FROM BOOK ONE:
What
would you do if you could see other people’s dreams? If you could watch their hidden fantasies and
uncover their deepest, darkest secrets…without them ever knowing?
Sara
Barnes is about to find out. She thought
that all she had to worry about was final exams, Christmas shopping and
deciding whether she likes the cute freshman in the next dorm who’s got a crush
on her.
But
when she starts seeing dreams that aren’t hers, she learns more than she ever
wanted to know about her friends, her classmates…and a strange, terrifying man
whose dreams could get Sara killed.
 |
| BOOK TWO |
BOOK DESCRIPTION
The
second book opens up in the summer of 1991. Sara has just started her
first month of medical school, and she and Brian were just married a couple of
months before. Sara's dreams start up again, and she sees the dreams of
several people in the medical school, all of whom are dreaming about the death
of one of Sara's teachers, the very unpopular Dr. Morris. Then that
teacher becomes sick, and Sara is convinced he's being poisoned by one of the
people dreaming about him.
While
trying to survive the rigors of medical school, Sara again has to play
detective and figure out which one of the suspects is trying to kill him, and
how. In the end, Sara discovers that it's his secretary, Maureen Jackson,
who's been having a long-term affair with Dr. Morris. Sara confronts
Maureen in Dr. Morris' hospital room, and in a desperate struggle, she manages
to stop Maureen from finishing the job and killing her lover. Several
months later, with the dreams once again behind her, Sara gets good news -
she's pregnant.
BLURB FROM BOOK TWO
BLURB FROM BOOK FOUR
BLURB FROM BOOK TWO
“I
didn’t expect to be woken up by someone I don’t know dreaming about killing
somebody. I thought I was done with that
once and for all…”
But
Sara’s not done with it. As if adjusting
to life as a newlywed and starting medical school weren’t difficult enough, she’s
started seeing the dreams of everyone around her, again. Before everything is said and done, those
dreams might destroy Sara’s hopes of becoming a doctor, wreck her marriage and
even end her life…
“Dream
Doctor” is the thrilling second novel in the Dreams series.
LINKS FOR BOOK TWO
AMAZON
BOOK DESCRIPTION
After some
investigation, Sara learns that the mobster is blackmailing the Congressman in
order to get a toxic incinerator built, bypassing all the rules and regulations
that ought to prevent it. In the end, Sara confronts the Congressman, and
ends up punching him out before he can go back to Washington to carry out the
mobster's orders. She then confronts the mobster in his own house, and
Sara forces him to back down, convincing him of all the innocent people that
will be harmed or killed if the project goes forward. Between her
powerful argument, and the fact that she's been so forceful in standing up to
him at the hospital when treating his daughter, the mobster is impressed by
Sara and gives in to her demands. The book ends a few days later with the
revelation that it's not just Sara's daughter who can see dreams, but her
mother learns she has the same talent.
LINKS FOR BOOK TWO
AMAZON
 |
| BOOK THREE |
The
third book jumps ahead to the winter of 1996. Sara finished medical
school and now she's in her second year of residency at Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia. Her daughter is about to turn four, and she's just given
birth to twins a couple of months ago. On a trip to Washington, DC for a
medical conference, Sara and her very precocious daughter, Lizzie, run into the
wife and son of her Congressman, and make fast friends with them. That
night, Sara learns that Lizzie shares her talent for dreaming - Lizzie sees the
Congressman's son dreaming. In the dream, the Congressman is being
blackmailed by a "big, scary man with a big black car." Over
the course of the book, Sara investigates and discovers that the scary man is a
powerful mob boss, Paul Sorrentino. He's also the father of one of Sara's
patients at the hospital.
BLURB FROM BOOK THREE
"I
would give anything to take this away from her.
I would gladly go back to having the nightmares myself – the very worst
ones, the ones that had me waking up screaming in a pool of my own vomit –
rather than see Lizzie go through this..."
As a
resident at Children's Hospital, Sara can handle ninety hour workweeks,
fighting to save her young patients from deadly childhood diseases. But she's about to be faced with a challenge
that all her training and experience haven't prepared her for: her
four-year-old daughter has inherited her ability to see other people's
dreams...
 |
| BOOK FOUR |
"Why
is this so hard for me? Why am I having
so much trouble? Why do I feel so
helpless, so hopeless? What the hell is
wrong with me?"
After
tangling with murders and mobsters, not to mention medical school and three
years of residency, Sara thought she could handle anything. And then the police show up without warning at
her new office and arrest her for a crime she can't possibly have
committed. Sara's confidence, and her
grip on reality, is shattered during one terrifying night in jail.
Now,
the very dreams that have endangered her life and driven her to the edge of madness
may be the only thing that can help Sara find herself again...
"Dream
Family" is the powerful fourth novel in the "Dreams" series.
LINKS FOR BOOK FOUR
AMAZON
ABOUT THE BOOKS
LINKS FOR BOOK FOUR
AMAZON
ABOUT THE BOOKS
Sara
Barnes (later Sara Alderson, when she’s married) starts out in book 1 as an
ordinary college student, until she learns she can see into other people’s
dreams. That’s the basic premise of the
series. The characters who appear in
previous books, who also are important in book 4, are:
CHARACTERS FROM THE BOOKS
Sara
herself
Brian
Alderson – Sara’s husband
Betty
& Howard Barnes – Sara’s parents
Helen
and Ben Alderson – Brian’s parents
Lizzie
Alderson – Sara’s oldest child, age 5 ½
Steffy
and Ben Alderson – Sara’s twins, age 2
Laurie
Kensington – Sara’s medical partner, previously her supervisor during Sara’s
residency
Grace
Sorrentino – a patient of Sara’s during her residency, age 8
Paul
Sorrentino – Grace’s father. Also a
powerful mob boss, who Sara faced down at the end of the third book
Beth
Rosewell – Sara’s best friend, dating back to college
Kat
Wells – Sara’s godmother, Betty’s best friend
Rebecca
Brownell – now 21 years old, she was the teenaged girl who Sara rescued from a
killer at the end of the first book
Joseph
Harkness – Sara’s friend from medical school, godfather to Lizzie Mary
Harkness – Joseph’s wife
THE AUTHOR:
AUTHOR BIO:
THE AUTHOR:
J.J.
(James) DiBenedetto was born in Yonkers, New York. He attended Case Western
Reserve University, where as his classmates can attest, he was a complete nerd.
Very little has changed since then.
He
currently lives in Arlington, Virginia with his beautiful wife and their cat
(who has thoroughly trained them both). When he's not writing, James works in
the direct marketing field, enjoys the opera, photography and the New York
Giants, among other interests.
The
"Dreams" series is James' first published work.
AUTHOR LINKS:
~~~~~~~~~
Thanks so much James for visiting my blog today!! This series looks really good!! Can't wait to read it!!
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1 comment:
Thanks for hosting the books, Jess! If you've got any questions about them, I'll be happy to answer...
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