Horrible night of intense STALKER dreams

I know that many of my books are flavoured, if not directly inspired, by dreams but last night was amazing.

 

Amazing in a totally depressing fashion.

 

Cards, symbols, codes.

 

Then I had DREAM AFTER DREAM about how the new novel should go. And stupid twat that I am I didn't wanna get out of bed and write all this nonsense down. But I knew it was about the book, this book, STALKER'S GUIDE TO.

 

My dreaming mind was writing the book for me. I didn't even need to pick up a pen, or fire up the computer. I was dreaming it. In vast amounts of narrative detail, country by country. It was almost ALL there, all done last night, in one vast dreaming binge.

 

I couldn't believe it. Maybe I knew I'd never get out of bed in the middle of the night to write it down. I mean, the betrayal. What's the point of all that. I woke up several times in the last few hours of sleep. Again and again, I had another chapter laid out for me.

 

Of course, I don't remember a singl thing about it.

 

That would be too easy.

 

Though I do have a reason WHY those eight people need saving...  but I had this idea BEFORE I went to bed, so it doesn't really count. How DARE my sleeping mind fully write out something for me that I've yet to write out myelf. I had locations, characters, dialogue. Everything. Grrrrrrrrr.......

Stalker's Guide To - Mike Philbin - 2014 novel begins.









cover photo © 2013 Maurice120

STALKER'S GUIDE TO... is a potentially massive novel that's been playing in the back of my mind for 'more than a few years' now.

 

It started out as an idea for a Video Game, but I didn't 'go through with it' in any constructive sense beyond the initial prototype a friend and I put together. It's just been there, on the hard drive, as a series of game features, doing nothing since 2005; maybe earlier.

 

I've explored certain aspects of the SGT concept already in books since then, in recent novels Bukkakeworld (2008) and Tandem (2013) for example, but that's all they are; snippets of, referential to, jarring visuals from. Nothing more.

 

Here's how STALKER'S GUIDE TO begins:

 

OPENING PARAGRAPH:

If I fuck up tonight, eight people will die. Yeah, but eight people, right? Think about it. More people than that will die on the New York subway tonight. What’s so important about these eight people? I knew you’d ask that, and I had an answer all worked out. But it’s better if I don’t tell you why just yet. That will become apparent soon enough...

With my second Free Planet novel #2 LIBERATOR now in its first-draft (69,000 words, spell checked, being read by the Custodian FP #1 novel editor) state this is where Stalker's REAL STORY about time and space and really weird Travelogue-derived City-crammed high-octane narrative gets a chance for a proper airing.

 

Locations: Paris, Los Angeles, Cologne, Grenada, Oxford, Los Angeles (to fix an earlier mission failure).

 

Wish me luck...