Books Inspired by Dreams

More Than A Dream: Books Inspired by Dreams by Dawn Colclasure

When I learned that The Screaming Child by Scott Adlerberg (Ghoulish Books, 2023), was based on a dream the author had, I smiled. My own novel, Shadow of Samhain (Gypsy Shadow Publishing, 2013) was also based on a dream. I started having recurrent dreams when I was sixteen years old and one of the dreams was a story dream – a story that became my novel.

Writers getting inspiration from dreams is nothing new. Dreams can inspire writers to write short stories, poems and novels. Many novelists from the past – such as Mary Shelley, E.B. White and Robert Louis Stevenson – were inspired to write stories based on their dreams.

In many cases, it can take one dream that inspires a novel idea. For other writers, however, it can be a series of dreams.

Like me, author Shiloh Darke began having recurrent dreams at the age of 16, and one such dream inspired her to create her series, The Order of the Eternals, starting with the first book, The Eternal (Gypsy Shadow Publishing, 2009). “The dream was one where I was being hunted by evil entities that wanted to use my abilities. And in the dream, it was the vampire who ended up saving me…. (it) gave me the idea for a decision made, by cursed souls, to work together to protect the innocents from the things in the world, darker than them.”

Another novelist, Charlotte Holley, was also inspired to write a novel which was based on her dream.

“As a (once practicing) psychic, I have always paid a lot of attention to my dreams, since many were precognitive,” Holley explained. She shared how she dreamed about her late husband’s death in a horrible accident two weeks before it happened. At the time, she ignored the dream, thinking it was “just a dream.” However, after this experience, she definitely started paying closer attention to her dreams – especially one which particularly frightened her. She explains this dream “was more disturbing because it was my own demise I was both watching, as the impotent observer, and acting out as the frantic young woman, fighting, pleading for her life against a faceless foe who ultimately pushed her to her death out a tower window in the ‘nuthouse’ in Iowa where she was sent for her protection from the evil that haunted McCann’s Manor, all the way down in Bastrop, Texas.”

This one dream had such a lasting impact on Holley that she gradually turned it into a novel. That one novel sparked an idea for a whole series. The story she created based on something happening in her dream got her started on what would be a series of novels called “The Actor’s Guild Paranormal Mystery Series.” Book One in this series, McCann’s Manor: Portal (Gypsy Shadow Publishing, 2008), has the exact same scene of the young woman being pushed out of a window at an asylum that Holley witnessed in her dream.

“I could never get rid of this dream. I was fairly certain it was not a precognitive one, but what was it? It actually was the groundwork for not only one book, but a series of books. I realized each book would begin with a psychically charged dream that would lay more groundwork for each volume.”

With the unlimited possibilities which can take place in the dream world, there’s always room for creative scenes and ideas to spark the writer’s imagination. Characters from dreams can likewise catch the writer’s attention and get them scribbling a story or novel which readers can enjoy.

In her article, “What, To the Writer, Are Dreams?”* for Literary Hub, author Lauren Acampora describes dreams as “an engine, a lending library.” She shares how “the power and mystery of dreams themselves inspired my novel The Paper Wasp (Grove Press, 2019), in which the narrator illustrates—and ultimately enters—her vivid, seemingly premonitory dreams.”

Whether taking advantage of the precognitive power of dreams or using them as a springboard for a novel, many books have been and continue to be written based on dreams. And readers are all the more happy and eager to read them.

*“What, to the Writer, Are Dreams?” by Lauren Acampora; Literary Hub; June 11, 2019; https://lithub.com/what-to-the-writer-are-dreams/

DAWN COLCLASURE
Author/Contributor

Dawn Colclasure is the third of seven children. She began telling stories as a child during the many times her parents moved the family from one state to another. A burn survivor, she has third degree burns on her left hand, arm, her left side, and the left side of her face. This was the result from a vehicular accident she survived at the age of 22 months.  At age 13, she caught spinal meningitis and lost her hearing. Her experiences with the paranormal inspired her to write about this topic and she gets many story ideas from her dreams.

It was during one of her many hospital stays that a nurse encouraged her to write poetry. From there, she went on to write stories, articles, essays and book-length fiction. Her first poem was published when she was 11. She went on to publish novels, nonfiction books and a collection of essays.  Learn more about Dawn and her work at: https://dawnsbooks.com/