Autobiographical

I'm working on a new book now, one I'd started--geez, nearly two years ago. It's a romantic adventure with a mother-daughter team of protagonists. They're on the run from unknown bad guys, and it occurred to me today that I was writing my dreams.

Not the "sign a big contract and have a successful career while being represented by a top agent" kind of dream. The kind you have while you're sleeping and your mind rids itself of anxieties. Not a nightmare, quite, but a venting of fears and pressures.

At this point in the book, the heroine and her daughter are on the run from unknown evil. So far, in this first quarter, it's been about pursuit and evasion. They got away from the first wave of bad guys and have been staying inches ahead of the second wave while trying to get back to each other. They find a semi-safe spot, only to find that it's not so safe, and off they are again. Right now the daughter and her roommate are scrambling to hide, and are getting into a shed. It's not locked, and she thinks that eventually something's not going to go her way.

At that point I was forcibly reminded of my recurring chase dreams. I haven't had any in a while, so I was not consciously emulating them. But I have, in my lifetime, dreamed dozens of times of being on the run from someone or something. I hide, and they don't see me. Or I try to hide, and can't, and they are about to get me, but somehow I get away. In these dreams, it's constant run, constant chase, without ending. But no matter how dead the end, how close they get, how easy I am to see, something always shifts so that I get away. They never, ever get me.

I'm no expert, but I think those dreams are simple stress. Whatever I'm struggling with at the time I always know--I worry, but still always know--that it will work out somehow.

I can't do that in this book. Just as Kelsey has recognized that not all the sheds will be unlocked when she needs them to be, I recognize that they can't always get away. At some point the danger will be inescapable, and the heroine will face her darkest fear--that after eighteen years of precaution, she will be unable to protect her daughter. I'm not sure how that will come to be yet, or how they will win in the end, but I find the connection to my own life, my safe, unexciting, stable life, very interesting.