The Opening Dream Sequence

The opening sentence was much criticized by one of my editors. I rather liked, "It all started with the nightmares." She said you can't begin a book with the word "it." Well, what about, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." I rest my case. That was one argument I chose to win.

The first chapter's nightmare scene was actually one of the last scenes written. Chapter 2 was originally the first chapter of the manuscript back when the working title was "THE MAGIC ONE." However, after being told by my agent that the first chapter needed to be beefed up and that it dragged a little, I came up with the idea of adding a dream sequence. I always liked the way the dreams happened in Ken Kesey's book ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST -- sort of never knowing what was real or illusion. Some of the dreams, from here on, will seem to be real and sometimes they will be all in James' mind. At the end of the book, I'll let you in on a secret that tells you whether or not a dream was real.

I hope that you're enjoying it so far. You may want to just skip the footnotes until after you've read the entire book if they seem to interrupt the story.

Back to the story.