Last week, when I commented to one of my colleagues that I just published my third book, ‘Guardians of the Chosen,’ he asked me what inspired me to begin writing the Tori Cooper Novels. When I admitted that the story for book one originated from a dream I had one night, he jokingly replied, “If you call that a dream, I would hate to hear about one of your nightmares!” I laughed back and assured him that he probably would.
The dream of a man and a woman discovering mummified remains of female bodies, hanging from the rafters in an abandoned warehouse, wasn’t my first ‘eerie’ dream. I’ve had them all my life.
When I was very young, when we were living in Greenfield, Wisconsin, I had what I thought at the time, was an imaginary friend. He was a young boy who would visit me while I slept and he would show me where things in the house were hidden. Then when I was awake, I would go to those places and sure enough, the items would be there. They were never very important things. A toy or a watch, something that could easily just get lost one day and then surprisingly found the next. I never told anyone about the boy, I never even knew his name, he never told me. We never spoke to one another.
Throughout the years, I would have fragments of other dreams and weird images, but as I grew older, my sense of logic and reason took over and I would tell myself to stop thinking of such foolish things. It was just my imagination.
Then, many years later, when I was living in Texas, I had a dream one night that I felt someone touching my leg. I rolled over and looked toward the foot of the bed and saw a white-haired elderly man, wearing a white suit, dress shirt and tie sitting on the bed beside my feet. When our eyes met, he rose from the bed, put one finger to his lips, indicating I needed to be quiet, and then he began walking towards the hallway, away from my bedroom, beckoning me with the other hand to follow him. Then I woke up. As I lay there, recalling the dream, I could feel the spot on my leg where the man had touched me. The logical side of my brain obviously first explained that the dream was just my over-active imagination and the feeling on my leg was a muscle spasm or a twitch.
The more open-minded side of my brain, however, challenged, “What if it wasn’t? What if that man was an angel or someone you used to know, now in heaven, warning you of something dangerous or evil in your life? What if you’re supposed to listen and do something?” As it would turn out, I was in a dangerous situation in my life at the time. So I took a leap of faith, decided to heed the warning and changed my life for the better. It was most definitely the right decision.
So who really knows? Maybe it was my sub-conscious sending me a message in the form of a kind, white-haired old man. Maybe it was a guardian angel. Or maybe it was just too many jalapeño’s on my tacos at dinner!
In all seriousness, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t need an explanation. What matters is where I am now and what I’m doing, which is writing my story. I love how that one dream, created the most compelling story in my head. A story that very ironically ‘haunted’ me for an entire day, until I finally sat down at my laptop and typed it out of my head and onto the page.
Here we are, three years later, and that opening scene, when Tori and Ben discover the bodies of the mummified women, has evolved into a beautiful love story; the introduction of ghostly spirits; an amazing team of FBI agents; the discovery of others with amazing gifts; a powerful guardian angel, and a prophecy that dates back as far as the creation of the heavens and the earth.
For those of you who have joined me on this journey and are enjoying the story as much as I am, thank you! I pray that I will continue to surprise you and we continue to share the story together.
