Suppose You Wrote a Blog and No One Read It?

Writing from the black hole of anonymity tonight before going back to this year's NaNo Novel.

In my little sphere here in western MA I have accumulated a number of followers and fans. Most of them have free books lining their bookshelves. I can be overly generous with my family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. I have taken small stacks of books with me to appointments to gift the receptionists and lab girls. I gave books to the clerks at the post office who have helped me mail packages to the Library of Congress. I have left books in mailboxes at houses where people really decked their homes out for Halloween.

What I haven't done yet is get my books into the hands of an interested agent. Or a publisher.

I fail miserably at self-promotion. I am riddled with self doubt like Swiss cheese. You can hear the wind whistling as it blows through me.

It's a chilly, raw, rainy night here. I have had two bad nights of disturbing dreams. On Sunday night I dreamed I was in a Victorian era hospital/asylum like building, not as an inmate, but touring the place. The walls and doors were the color of cooked oatmeal. The cell doors were open. There was a man in a black suit walking ahead of me, the Administrator? He never turned around so I never saw his face. As I passed rooms/cells I would look into them. There were people who looked like zombies lying on their sides on the floor with tortured faces, using large knives to carved wedge-shaped chunks of flesh from the jaws and throats. It was not heart-pounding scary but it was disturbing enough that in the dream I had to walk outside. I was wearing a red dress. (In real life I never wear a dress.)

Last night I was riding a bike on a rather narrow bike path in a low gear so I was struggling along. About every twenty five feet or so there was a snake lying across the path. Different snakes. It made me apprehensive because I had to ride close to them or fall off the path. There was a girl riding behind me. Further along the path there was a great big yellow dog lying on the path we had to get past. It didn't seem aggressive but had small beady eyes for such a large dog. I reached the end of the path and recognized I was someplace I knew and wanted to peddle home on the main roads despite the traffic, but the girl who had been behind me convinced me it would be faster to get home going back along the bike trail. I woke up as we started back along it.

Both dreams didn't wake me up feeling terrorized- just disturbed and uneasy.

I don't know what they mean or why I am having such strange, vivid, unsettling dreams.