Kathryn Smith has not one, but two books coming out this summer and is part of an anthology. The Duckies are very lucky to offer a great contest to two lucky winners who will win an ARC from her new series called the Nightmare Chronicles, the first book is called Before I Wake. So what do you have to do to win one of these wonderful prizes? I’m glad you asked…
Book info:
You may call it a dream job . . .
And in some ways, you’d be right. I actually get paid to study people’s dreams. It comes much easier than my employers at the Sleep Center suspect; after all, I, Dawn, am the daughter of the king of the dream world, and I can roam the dreams of others, battling the nightmares that plague them.
I call it a nightmare . . .
Honestly, I could use a good night’s sleep. But ever since I met Noah Clarke, I’m even more torn between the two worlds: smart, sexy, and able to control his own dreams, Noah could be my perfect man—except he’s being stalked in his sleep by an unearthly evil, hell-bent on destroying him . . . and the entire world.
What the Duckies would like to know is what do you dream about? What is the scariest? Most realistic? Your recurring dream or nightmare? Most emotional? A dream that inspired something in real life?
Or if you really want to be daring tell us your weirdest dream and then analyze it for us. It’s okay, channel your inner Sigmund Freud and see what it means.
Be sure you comment on this post before 12 noon CDT Tuesday May 21, 2008. The two winners will be chosen from the comments on this post only and be sure to be honest, elaborate, and even be dramatic, for the most interesting dream sequence could just get you the prize.
So have a nice relaxing lie down on the couch and tell the duckies your dreams.
I dreamed the other night that Tiger Woods was my waiter in a local restaurant. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “Oh I blew thru all the millions and have to make ends meet somehow.”
It still cracks me up.
I think that’s the only time I’ve ever dreamed about going to a restaurant. I’m usually outside in my dreams.
I’ve dream that I’m tiny, really freaking tiny surrounded by huge, tall people and that they keep trying to squished me. Or that I’m really tall around a bunch of tiny people and I try to squished them.
Uh.. huh.
This might sound kind of common, but almost every night I dream that I’m falling off a cliff. It’s usually really vivid and pretty intense, to the point where I’ve punched my headboard so I can wake myself up before I hit the bottom. I guess it has something to do with taking plunges in life, because they started becoming more distinct when I decided to join the military. I doubt they have anything to do with regret or sadness, but more like impulse and worry.
I make some really fu**ed-up dreams. Problem is, I almost never remember them. My favorite was the one I had gerard Butler and Hugh Jackman waiting for me in different rooms of my house – only it wasn’t my real house, but in the dream it was mine. Huh. Or that dream where I saw Vishous, Butch and Rhage in bed together and, ahem, touching each other. Awesome. :-DD
On the nightmare front, I have a recurring one where I lose all my teeth. For instance, I’m eating an apple andI feel two of them break and I spit them out, staring at them in horror. Then one after the other all the rest fall/break too every time I snap my jaws, try to eat or something. Of course, to make things worse I always seem to crash into walls and doorframes in that dream so the teeth break all the more faster. When I wake up I’m always panicked and I have to check that my gums are not actually bare and that I don’t look like a 70-year-old without her dentures.
I have very strange dreams. My worst nightmare I was walking through a forest made of black, white, and blue paper cutouts and all the sudden a peacock turned around and looked at me. No clue why it was scary, but it was.
My dreams don’t reoccur. I have ’em once and that’s it. Some things reoccur though. In my dreams the freeway parts that lift of the grounds, those have no guardrails . . . only these flat stone things that hover. I dunno. It’s cool, but dangerous.
According to Freud, if you dream of spiders, it means you’re afraid of the phallic mother. My roomie learned this in lit class.
My most horrible dreams usually involve something bad happening to my kids or my husband. I recently dreamed that I got separated from my daughter, I couldn’t find her and I just KNEW she was gone. I woke up in a wide eyed panic, my heart racing a mile a minute. I couldn’t fall back asleep. Sometimes I try to will myself back into a dream so I change its course, but it never works. 🙁
But the strangest dream I have (and its a recurring one) is that I’m chewing gum and I try to spit it out, but there’s always these little pieces that I can never get out. I just keep spitting and chewing and spitting… LOL It’s so bizarre. Anyone want to analyze that one?
I’ve had dreams off and where I levitate off the bed, think I woke up, panic when I realize it and fall back to the bed waking up. Then I nod off again finally and it starts again. Sometimes I tell myself it’s not happening, other times I go with it and start to float a bit across the room, then panic again and go back to hover over the bed and fall back on. Nod off again, and it does intrigue me, I try to go further across the room. Sometimes I get as far as the door of the room but can’t seem to go out. When I go that far, I then see a room with two beds, mine on the other side against the wall, but fall back on the other bed – that one appears when I venture that far, I guess so I don’t panic and fall on the floor trying to get back to my bed too far away. Haven’t had it in some time now, and I’ve noticed it seems to happen when I’m very stressed with too many things going on, and more when I was looking way too many hours at a demanding job and wondering if I should leave. Must have had something to do with it, since I finally did leave that job, lol, and don’t have that daily constant pressure and haven’t had this dream since then.
I once dreamed that I turned into a bird. In the dream, I literally felt my eyes getting bigger and my body getting smaller. I felt so light, and I could see far and wide as I flew over soft green misty hills. It all felt so real. It was one of the most amazing feelings and dreams that I’ve ever had.
On lighter note, I once dreamed that I had sex with Jerry Seinfeld. WTF??? LOL
I dream a lot and most of the times my dreams are inspired by the books that I read. The most scariest dream that I had, was that my grandfather (who died in January) came back as a Zombie.
Leah, Jerry Seinfield?! Holy crap.. if I’m gonna dream about having sex with anyone, it’s gonna be Jensen Ackles!
Which I have. Hee!
Last night I dreamed that I was sexually assaulted by a co-worker but the Kardashian sisters were there and they took care of me. When I woke up I found the second part much more disturbing than the first. I interpret it to mean I should stop watching so much E!.
I had the scariest most realistic dream a few years back. I don’t know where I was, or who I was with, but suddenly men came in I guess to rob where ever I was. They had guns and were shooting people. I had hid behind a bunch of foldable tables, but I was found and shot in the head. I remember what it felt like, and everything. I was freaked out for months. It still does when I think about it.
My scariest dream was that a ghost was bearing down insistently on me. I couldn’t see its face but its weight was as crushing and overwhelming as a boulder, the pressure increasing inexorably until I couldn’t breathe, the very air squeezed out of my lungs. I was going to die and I could do nothing about it, not even to beg for mercy…Thankfully, I woke up at this point to discover it was only my arm flung over my chest. Phew!
I really can’t remember my dreams when I wake up. I know I have them, but by the time I’m awake, I can’t remember them.
I had a dream the other night that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie showed up at a BBQ at my neighbor’s house and Angelina kept hitting on me. I kept thinking, “Really? Is she hitting on me?” and then before she left she told me to “call her”. I think she told me some odd stuff about her childhood, too.
Don’t ask.
I do have a recurring dream, though. I’m driving on this winding road w/ a mountain on one side of me and a dropoff on the other. I round a bend and drive through the guardrail. I drop off the side of the cliff and plunge into a lake at the bottom. I’m able to free myself, but my son is in the backseat and the buckle on his car seat sticks, so I can’t get him out. Finally, I’m able to pull him free and I start kicking toward the surface..at which point I always wake up.
But the scariest part is I’ve been having this dream for about 8 years, and about 5 years ago I watched UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN. In that movie, Diane Lane is driving on a winding road in a convertable. The exact same winding road I’ve been dreaming about. Everything is the same. The road, the view, the dropoff, everything. Only I started dreaming of about 3 years before the movie was released.
My mother is convinced I shouldn’t ever go to Tuscany.
For some reason I always go back to the same place. It’s so realistic, I know everything about it. The mountains, and valley, the path through the mountains to the ocean and the tongue of lavarock that goes out into the water. And it always starts with me walking over the japanese style bridge to the house–which is plantation style, with tall wooden shutters and a huge parlor, and there are bookshelves and a desk, and wooden floors and a huge front porch with steps leading up to it.
And the landscaping is real, too. I know the hedges and topiaries, and dry river bed–and it just makes me wonder where on earth I got it because it’s not like anywhere I’ve seen in real life or a movie or anything. But it always starts with me walking to the door, sometimes I go in, sometimes I stand on the porch and occasionally I walk to the ocean and watch the waves. It’s just weird. But somehow I like it, it’s like my second home or something. I always feel good when I wake up, like I’ve been to someplace I want to be.
Maybe it’s wish fullfillment, but it sure is detailed.
These are some great dream stories, wow!
When I was younger I had continuing dreams about a serial killer that were very disturbing.
I’ve also had a slew of celebrity dreams. I’ve gone shoe shopping with John Stamos, to the opera with Collin Firth. Recently I had one in which Jared Padelecki from Supernatural wanted to date me, the dear little boy. Guess there’s nothing wrong with my ego! lol.
Oh, and as a teenager I had a lot of lucid dreams. I can still do it, but I just don’t have the same kind of disturbing dreams that I had back then. Anyone else ever take control of your dreams?
Incidentally I once heard that creative people have more nightmares than people who aren’t. Weird, huh?
Hi, Kathryn!
I dream about Jensen Ackles instead of Padelecki although I admit, he seems a lot hotter lately but Jensen will always my Dream Boy toy *grins*
I still have a lot of lucid dreams, some of them make me go WTF? when I wake up, they’re that bad.
Interesting the different things we all dream about. I forgot most, except those few that recur off and on over the years, and they are all ones I have in times of extreme stress, mixed up and changing somewhat and real people I know are in them and change, too, though the main dream is the same. One is a tiger that gets in the door of my condo(only it’s always my friend’s condo I see not mine), ready to attack my youngest sister (we are both years younger in this one), and I’m trying desperatly to get it back down the stairs and out the door when I come home to this and save her. This one seems to occur when she is also having problems or under stress. That one I don’t like at all, and wake up bothered, just like I would if I had Kathryn’s serial killer after me.
I wake up, as least I think I’m awake, something has disturbed me and I can’t see anything. My heart is beating so hard and fast that I find it hard to focus…I try to move and I can’t, no matter how hard I try I can’t move, I’m pinned…something is in my room, I just know it! I’m struggling now because I know what ever is in the room with me is coming for me.
I can move…I can finally move…I struggle to full wakefulness, and turn the light on as fast as I can. Now I snuggle up to my husband for quite some time before I can go back to sleep.
Darla, that’s actually what they call a ‘parasomnia’ and you are not alone in having them! You know they blame that ‘paralyzed’ state for a lot of alien abduction claims? Email me if you want and I’ll look up the info for you…
And Wendy, I prefer Jensen as well. That’s why it was really weird to dream about Jared. He was a sweetie, though. lol
Darla, I’m going to second Kathryn’s assessment. That used to happen to me all the time. It usually happens when you are in that state just before sleep. I found out that there was a term for it when doing some research for a psych class.
It is a really freaky experience though because you feel paralyzed and unable to scream or do anything and there is intense fear with it because you are somewhat awake.
I have this reoccurring dream of being in an old house where a man is chasing me who is wearing turquoise scrubs. As I run, I come to a set of stairs and as I start down them, they disappear and I start falling. I wake up trembling and covered with sweat.
I think that I am subconsciously afraid of someone or something and I feel like I can’t get away from him/it.
Crystal – turquoise scrubs? maybe he’s a nurse or something.. that is kinda odd.
I’ve heard of parasomnia before and it sounds so scary! It’s never happened to me, thank goodness.
I’ve had two dreams that have stayed with me after I’ve woken up. One was all my teeth breaking off. That is a dream I’ve had more than once. It’s pretty distrubing because I’m just bleeding and my teeth are just literally cracking and falling out. I can’t even begin to imagine what this dream means.
Another dream that I remember clearly after waking is a dream that I’m making out with my boss…which is pretty gross and such a ewwhhh moment. I think somewhere deep down I mean way down in the abyass I might find my boss a bit attractive…ewwwww gross can’t believe I said that…yuck!
Okay I’m done!
Kathryn I wanted to say how excited I am aobut this new series. You’ve been one of my auto-buy authors since Into Temptation. I was so excited when I saw you in Dallas last year.