New Cover for The Dream Jumper!!!

I have a new COVER to show off for my novel, The Dream Jumper's Promise! And I love it!
This magnificent artistry was designed by cover artist extraordinaire, Jen Vinci/Jeanine Henning who has done some amazing bestseller covers lately. I can't remember how I found her but when I did and she started working on finding the exact combination of photos and font to reflect the contents of my book, I knew I was going to be very, very pleased.
My last cover was lovely. I still think it is a great cover. I worked really really hard on it, 5 months of searching for different photos, pouring over sites, worrying about looking too weird, too romancy, too pale, too creepy. BUT, comments from readers have led me to think that the cover did not truly represent the story. I felt badly to change the cover because my dear friend Lori Coulson, who has a fantastic eye, helped me with the cover, according to my specifications. I know she'll understand it served me well and it was time to move on.
And so, I launch this new cover with a light heart and the knowledge that I finally let the expert take over some aspect of this process and help me.
As The Dream Jumper's Promise gets more successful, I'm excited about the prospects. This new cover puts it in a whole new section of Amazon Books - the bestseller section!
http://amzn.com/B00AA4FAJC


Thanks for your support in my struggle to be a successful novelist!
Kim

Freaky Dreams-Had Any?

Dreams can be freaky. Just the thought of going off somewhere with strangers while you sleep is enough to keep anyone awake. Anyone or anything can enter your dream life to attack or torment. Conversely, you can do anything within a dream, be anyone you want. Wouldn’t it be FAN-Freaky-TASTIC to just set an order for a dream about your favorite movie star or a tropical vacation and then go to sleep knowing it would be your REM entertainment? 

Some believe you can. I tried it the other night but it kind of backfired. I was thinking about Hugh Jackman singing to me when I went to sleep but instead of dreaming of Wolverine or Van Helsing, I had a dream that I was Chuck Norris's girlfriend and he was REALLY standoffish. (I'd been tossing around Chuck Norris jokes with my daughter earlier) Maybe the trick is to think of your dreamy boyfriend earlier in the day then try to forget him so it gets pushed back to the hindbrain. Read on...

Some experts think that dreams are nothing but your pesky hindbrain’s need for stimulation while the body has gone to sleep. During REM (Rapid Eye Movement or Deep Sleep) messages are sent to the front brain to keep active and those messages link up with your memories and feelings to concoct a dream. Here’s a funny example: In a study, dreamers who wore red colored glasses before sleep had dreams that involved the color red. Taking this further, I’m wondering if I went to sleep with photos of Hugh Jackman taped to my eyeballs...

If you were hoping that dreams were more mysterious, keep reading. Something truly freaky is coming. Not everyone believes that your dream themes stem from sexual frustrations. Even Freud. Many scientists who have analyzed dreams have no explanations or interpretations but most agree that if you’re being chased, it probably means you’re afraid of something in waking life.

There is a whole, huge dream dictionary online where you can retrieve specifics but again, no one knows for sure what a dream means. Some common themes such as public nudity, losing teeth, and flying, continue to baffle even the best psychiatrists. I think we can all agree if you dream you have gone to a PTA meeting stark-naked, you have repressed insecurities and feelings of not being well liked by your peers. Can we move on to less obvious ideas now?

Flying is supposedly linked to sexual feelings but I disagree. I’d like to agree because I dream of flying all the time and I’m damned good at it. An expert, in fact. 'Nuff said.

My recurring dream theme is about entering a house with rooms, and doors, and connections to more rooms that never seem to end. Often the top floor is haunted by something evil, the wind swirling around ominously, spirits taunting me to climb the stairs etc. Sometimes I must rescue something up there. Once it was my mother who’d recently died. She was a tiny owl and I set her free out a window. But usually I avoid the top floor knowing that it is the worst form of evil there is and the likelihood of getting out is not good. I don’t even venture to the floor just below it in case something grabs me. According to dream sites, the house is me, my mind, and the attic is supposed to be my intellect. So what I get from this is: I’m afraid to be intelligent. Is that what you got too? In real life, I am not a cerebral Rhodes scholar type person whose thirst for knowledge drives me to distraction. I’m a people person (I like to say, cheerfully). So maybe my hindbrain wants more and my front brain thinks it’s a bad idea to get too smart. I don’t know.

Lucid dreams are when you know you’re dreaming within your dream. Ever done that? I remember as early as five years old having a dream about my kindergarten teacher throwing me down the stairs (don’t ask) and me saying to her that it was fine that she was about to send me flying because it was only a dream.

Then, there are things called W.I.L.D. dreams and I’m not talking about what you might think. Wake Induced Lucid Dreams are the holy grail of lucid dreaming. It’s a method of going from fully awake to a lucid dream of vivid proportions. Supposedly it takes a ton of practice and very few can do it. This is where ordering your dream might kick in nicely.

During the time you are in REM at night, you are dreaming, whether you remember them or not. If you are woken during REM, you are more likely to remember your dream. Try this idea by setting an alarm clock. You could be rewarded by remembering one. 

Here’s the freaky part I was telling you about. There is such a thing as a precognitive dream where you dream something that comes true. Now this idea is completely inexplicable in scientific terms and not well received by anyone who tends to think logically. However, Mark Twain once had a vivid precognitive dream showing his beloved brother in a coffin with an arrangement of roses on his chest, only to have it come true within the month. His brother was killed in a tugboat explosion and ended up in a coffin exactly like the one in the dream, right down to the one red rose in the midst of all the white roses. Charles Dickens had two supernatural experiences involving dreams. Once, his dead father visited him in a dream and Charles awoke to find him sitting on the edge of his bed. The second time, he dreamed of his sister in law who’d recently died. He’d loved her in real life and had several dreams of meeting her in his dreams. After one such dream, he awoke to see her apparition floating in his bedroom, eventually disappearing through the room’s ceiling. I did not know this when I wrote The Dream Jumper’s Promise but found this very interesting. If you read my book, you’ll see why.

In that novel I take the idea of lucid dreaming and W.I.L.D. dreaming one step further to a level where you are able to share dreams with another person. I honestly thought I made this up but it turns out there is such a thing as a shared dream. And it turns out there is a movie called "Inception" about this too. When I saw the ad for that movie a few years ago, I was angry that they’d somehow stolen my idea but I finished editing the book and eventually published anyways. I’m glad I did because there are many differences in how the writer of "Inception" and I approach dream jumping. For one, my jumper doesn’t intravenously squirt anything into his veins. He enters the dream through a psychic connection, matching his breathing to his subject’s. Luckily Jamey Dunn (my hero) is a moral person and would never jump into someone’s dream to swindle a Fortune 500 business man.

In The Dream Jumper’s Promise, Jamey and his former love Tina, (who has just lost her husband) share dreams to try to find out what happened the day the husband went surfing and never returned. I wanted to call it a paranormal theme but there are no vampires or shape shifters. Then I wanted to call it romantic suspense but it’s got this para aspect. Maybe someday Amazon Kindle will have a category within paranormal called Dream Jumping. You never know.

Obviously I find dreaming extremely fascinating. How about you? Had any strange dreams lately? Let's hear!

Rock Star Confidence Crumbles

I teach a humble little course about Confidence to writers who tremble at the thought of getting up in front of thousands of adoring fans (or even 2). This story is what happened to me one Saturday, whilst teaching...

As I gazed out on the audience of attendees who came to ‘Channeling Your Inner Rock Star’ and I cautioned my listeners how to avoid reading the audience too closely, I realized that the group in front of me looked more bored than a group of supermodels at a class about humility.

I almost broke a sweat as I worried about how the women in front of me were receiving what I said. Am I being too confident about self-confidence? Not confident enough? Can they tell I’m worried that I’m not helping them enough? Am I simply feeding my desire to be watched, by doing this class? To be loved?  Accepted?

I stopped myself. Be confident. Assume they love you, Kim.

I followed my own advice and believed that they were praising the day they saw my name on the workshop lineup. It’s what you should do in a situation like this.

My audience on Saturday was a small group, given that the AVON live-stream online chat was five feet from our door (with cupcakes), but I was pleased at the turnout. I’d been prepared for one or two. Having been in the Bellevue Hilton bar years before, when we’d added to our group of cocktailers a gal who didn't have anyone attend her workshop. “Oh dang,” we’d said with glasses of chardonnay, “join us and you can do your workshop on us.”

Not my workshop though. I had attendees! After all, it was only 11 am. These pioneers had waded through a Cherry Adair chat and Avon loving bodies to get to the door of the workshop that would teach them how to channel the most confident, most engaging side of oneself in the new days of self- promotion. These gals had put off other incredibly helpful classes to see if I could offer some insight to confidence. All I needed was one person in the class to need me. To need the confidence to do their own PR work.

I raged on. And it was magic.

After the class, the person who I thought was most likely to run for the door in boredom, approached me with a story to break my heart--to make this reader want to champion for her, to read everything she’s written. And, I wondered what, in an audience of writers who worry about self confidence, was I expecting to see? The writers who attended my class, gave me confidence that there are many ways to support, to love and to champion for the women who have left the safe path to write novels. And that we totally rock. You totally rock. Just the fact that we write books, hoping to entertain and enlighten... I love us.

Singing ‘We are the champions, my friend...”

And now, in an effort to Channel my inner rock star, here is my new signature to show I’m social-media savvy...

Fancy Signature,

Kim Hornsby

Commercial Women's Fiction

You only journey if you dare to leave home

The Dream Jumper’s Promise

Necessary Detour

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