Sunday, January 11, 2009

Dream Anthology

I have exceedingly vivid dreams that I use as the basis for a lot of my fiction. We all know this.

A few years back, my dreams tended to revolve around military and spy technology, and I wrote a great deal of that kind of thing. It's still coming into some kind of final form, but I'm not sure what that form should be.

I'm now having the same problem with the series of occult dreams I've been having. Thus far, there are some ghost dreams and some vampire dreams, and they're all complete and lovely and cool.

Here's the crux of the issue: they're not really consistent. My first vampire dream had vampires as beings made of smoke. If you put a wooden stake into one, the smoke was absorbed into the wood and as long as the wood was never burnt, it stayed there forever. These vampires are manipulative and calculating because they must use human beings as their hiding places during the day.

The most recent had vampires as being self-sustaining beings who never needed food or sleep but whose need to drink blood came about because it was the only way they could feel physical sensation. These vampires are creatures of enormous longing and emotion, wishing for new sights and sounds and ultimately being disappointed by everything. They don't wish to kill or hurt anyone, but they must, and it torments them.

The question is how to present these stories. The Pirate says "Just write each one up as a short and get them out." I think he's likely right. As always. What I'd love is an anthology of vampire species, but I'm just not sure.

1 comment:

gardenlore said...

an anthology is exactly what i was thinking when i read the entry. one entry for each species.