Monday, February 6, 2012

Author Trish McCallan: A Dream Within A Dream


Forged-in-Fire coverDreams, for the most part, are a wonderful way to escape from our daily lives. They are filled with fun and interesting tidbits and author Trish McCallan found out that they can sometimes come true.

Trish, author of FORGED IN FIRE, stops by today on her Pump Up Your Book Virtual Book Publicity Tour to talk about ‘a dream within a dream’ she had.  

When I was 10 years old I dreamed an event that came true. 

It was Sunday, and my mom and dad had collected us kids and marched us outside to weed. I hated weeding, so there I was, bitching and whining and I said to my mom, “Why are we even doing this? Janie and Bruce will be here any minute.” Mom gave me this odd look and asked “What are you talking about? We haven’t seen Janie and Bruce in years. If they were in town, they would have called.” (Janie and Bruce were my mom’s step-sister and step brother-in-law. They’d moved down to Oregon years earlier, but would visit whenever they hit town.)  

Without thinking, I told her “Bruce’s Mom is in the hospital. They left during the middle of the night and arrived in town this morning. But Bruce’s mom is okay now, so they’re coming by for a visit before heading home and we’ll all go to Abby’s Pizza for lunch.” Of course my mom asked where I’d come up with this news and I suddenly realized I’d dreamed it the night before. Yeah, weird—we all had a good laugh and got down to weeding. 

An hour later Janie and Bruce showed up. Yep, Bruce’s mother had been admitted to the hospital on a suspected heart attack, which turned out to be indigestion, and because Janie was pregnant and craving pizza, guess where we headed for lunch?

This incident was a family favorite for years, but by the time I entered college we’d pretty much forgotten about it. At least until it happened again. This time I was in my university dorm room and my mom called. While I was on the phone with her, I asked how Yuki was doing. 

Yuki was a Japanese exchange student staying with my parents. My mom said Yuki was doing great, adjusting really well. And I said “No, I mean is he out of the hospital yet? Did he recover from the bee stings?” And she’s like what are you talking about. And I said “The bee stings. From that hike his science class took up to Lake Wenatchee.” 

There was this long pause and my mom said “Yuki just told me about that hike five minutes ago, he hasn’t even gone on it yet. It’s this weekend. He ends up in the hospital?” And I suddenly realized I’d dreamed about Yuki getting stung. In the dream the boys he was hanging out with were throwing rocks at this old hollow tree, and a swarm of bees came after them.  

My mom didn’t let him go on the hike, which Yuki was grateful for the following Monday when he got to school and discovered all the kids that had gone on the hike had sustained multiple bee stings. Yuki, by the way, was allergic to bee venom. If he’d been stung as many times as the other kids, it could have killed him. 

I’ve never dreamed another event, but I’ve wondered what I would do if I dreamed something terrible was going to happen—something horrible, like a plane crash or a bomb. If I dreamed something terrible, and the dream started coming true, would I try to stop it from happening? Would I try to warn the people involved? If no one believed me, how far would I go to prevent the tragedy?  

This is the theme I explore in Forged in Fire. Beth, the heroine, has a horrible dream—a nightmare in which an airplane is hijacked and the terrorists slaughter everyone on board. Beth’s not psychic. She’s never had a dream that came true. She doesn’t even believe in ESP or premonitions. So like any stable, rational person she dismisses the dream. But when events in her nightmare start coming true, she has to make a choice—to trust her instincts and the knowledge that her dream is actually happening, which means hundreds of people are about to die. Or to walk away without doing anything. Beth chooses to try to stop it and is drawn into the nightmare herself.  

The really weird thing is how this scenario came to me. Because get this, I dreamed it. Yep, I had this incredibly vivid dream where this blonde woman awakes from this terrible nightmare and through the course of the morning realizes that events in her dream are coming true. I dreamed that she headed to the flight’s departure gate to see if she recognized any of the passengers, and almost fainted when she saw the hero and his friends waiting to board. 

Yep, I dreamed the opening to FORGED IN FIRE

A dream, within a dream. How weird is that?

Forged-in-Fire

Trish, thanks so much for guest blogging today. I love how the opening came to you. The fact that 2 of your dreams have come true is amazing and I can’t image what I would do if my dreams started coming true.

Trish has been writing for as long as she can remember. In grade school she wrote children’s stories, illustrated them with crayons and bound the sheets together with pencil-punched holes and red yarn. She used to sell these masterpieces at her lemonade stand for a nickel a book. Surprisingly, people actually bought them. Like, all of them. Every night she’d write a new batch for her basket.

As she got older her interest shifted to boys and horses. The focus of her literary masterpieces followed this shift. Her first full length novel was written in seventh grade and featured a girl, a horse and a boy. At the end of the book the teenage heroine rode off into the sunset . . . with the horse.

These days she sticks to romantic suspense with hot alpha heroes and roller-coaster plots. Since she is a fan of all things bizarre, paranormal elements always find a way into her fiction. Her current release, FORGED IN FIRE, was the result of a Black Dagger Brotherhood reading binge, a cold, a bottle of Nyquil and a vivid dream.

For more on Trish and her writing, visit her at www.trishmccallan.com, stop by her blog, and find her on Twitter and Facebook

Here’s a synopsis of FORGED IN FIRE:
Beth Brown doesn’t believe in premonitions until she dreams a sexy stranger is gunned down during the brutal hijacking of a commercial airliner. When events in her dream start coming true, she heads to the flight’s departure gate. To her shock, she recognizes the man she’d watched die the night before.

Lieutenant Commander Zane Winters comes from a bloodline of elite warriors with psychic abilities. When Zane and two of his platoon buddies arrive at Sea-Tac Airport, he has a vision of his teammates’ corpses. Then she arrives—a leggy blonde who sets off a different kind of alarm.

As Beth teams up with Zane, they discover the hijacking is the first step in a secret cartel’s deadly global agenda and that key personnel within the FBI are compromised. To survive the forces mobilizing against them, Beth will need to open herself to a psychic connection with the sexy SEAL who claims to be her soul mate.

Nominated For 2011’s Best Paranormal Romance by The Romance Review! --- “Forged In Fire is a smoking hot adventure with an irresistible alpha hero. Danger, action, suspense, and a steamy romance make a story that’s impossible to put down!” –Patti O’Shea, National Bestselling Author of Through a Crimson Veil

Have you ever had a dream come true? Thanks for stopping by today.
 

15 comments:

  1. Mason - Thanks for hosting Trish.

    Trish - How interesting that you had a dream that came true like that, and how even more interesting that you dreamed the beginning of your novel. Dreams really can be powerful if we pay attention to them. I wish you much success!

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  2. Trish, thanks again for guest blogging and sharing about your dreams. Wishing you much success with your writing.

    Margot, thanks so much for stopping by.

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  3. Dreams are fascinating. Dreams are a great way to work out problems within your novel too. :)

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  4. Mason, thank you so much for hosting me today. Up until Forged in Fire, I'd never dreamed any of the scenes from my books, but I've dreamed several other scenes since then. The funny thing is all the scenes I've dreamed are connected to the Forged Series. I haven't dreamed any scenes from other works. Very Strange.

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  5. Hi Margot,

    Thank you for stopping by! I generally don't remember my dreams, so the fact I've dreamed about half a dozen scenes in Forged in Fire and Forged in Ice is very odd. What's even odder is that about a month after I dreamed the opening scene to Forged in Fire, I dreamed the opening scene to Forged in Ice. Except I wasn't even working on that book. lol

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  6. Hi Southpaw,

    Thank you for stopping by.

    Years ago, I found that if I was stuck on a scene, if the scene wasn't gelling for some reason, I could fix it by reading the entire chapter just before I went to bed. The next morning I would delete the old scene and rewrite from memory. The new scene would take a different tone, or shift in a certain place, or even be in a different character's point of view. But in almost every case the scene would suddenly gell and I could move on.

    The subconscious certainly is a mysterious beast!

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  7. great story! and the book sounds even better! congrats on the release. well done on all your amazing successes and awards.

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  8. That's wild you saw those incidents so clearly in your dream!

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  9. Cool post.

    There is more to dreams than we know, lol.
    I've had many dreams that have come true over the years. What came true may not have been as clear cut as what was shown me in the actual dream, but close enough for me to make the connection.

    A few years ago I was playing Legend Of Zelda Ocarina Of Time--without the guidebook--and I was totally stumped at this particular spot. That night I dreamed about it and I figured out what to do in my dream. When I woke up I did exactly what was shown to me in my dream and it was right, lol.

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  10. When I was a kid, my mother always had strong premonitions. She told me to listen to myself and I would, too. I sometimes will say to myself, I knew that was going to happen, and I did.
    I quit telling other people because I always get the yeah right look, but it's true.

    Love your book, Trish. It's a keeper.

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  11. When I was a kid, my mother always had strong premonitions. She told me to listen to myself and I would, too. I sometimes will say to myself, I knew that was going to happen, and I did.
    I quit telling other people because I always get the yeah right look, but it's true.

    Love your book, Trish. It's a keeper.

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  12. Thank you, Liz--the last five months have been a wild ride, that's for sure! But the first month of January has been even wilder than all of 2011 put together, lol- that's got to be an omen there, don't you think?

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  13. Hi Alex,

    Thanks for stopping by, and wild certainly describes my life these last five months. A good wild, but wild just the same! *g

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  14. Brenda,

    Sometimes I think our subconscious just likes to mess with us. lol

    Quite often if something isn't working, or a scene isn't gelling, I seem to figure out the problem during the night while sleeping.

    That's cool about all the premonitions you've had. So far I've only had the two, but they sure made an impression on me.

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  15. D'Ann,

    My dad's grandmother was what her family always called "fey." Which translates to psychic, I think from the stories my grandmother and dad have told me. She used to be able to tell people where lost items could be found. And she saved her brothers and sisters lives once, by dreaming an event and alerting them to what was going to happen.

    In this case it was during a road trip to the summit of a mountain. She dreamed the night before they were supposed to head up the mountain that the side of the hill was going to come down and push them off the side of a cliff. Her brothers and sisters trusted her dreams enough to turn the van around and go back home. But some of the other people in their caravan weren't so convinced and ended up dying because of it. They kept going and the mountain did come down on them. Two cars were swept off the road and over a cliff.

    Or so my grandmother and dad always claimed.

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I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's post. Thanks for dropping by.