Life holds a special magic for those who dare to dream.
One of the many things I love about writing and especially in Speculative fiction, where I’m most comfortable, is the use of my dream muscle. I would have never thought that my wild imagination would ever be something I could use and feel proud of. Still, here I am, decades from the time I put pencil to paper in my primary school inspired by the film, comics, and television. Here I am feeling a part of the many adventures my beloved heroes and heroine have been a part of. Today I’m using that same dream muscle to craft my stories to a broader audience than my classmates back in the day would ever imagine.
But why was I drawn to this? Who can say?
I have always loved Dinosaurs, Alien Invasions, Time Travelling, superpowers, magic, and monsters of every ilk conceivable. I was exposed to the mythology of the islands from my parents at an early age, and I was always enthralled with the stories of curses, ghosts, and Obeah men. At primary school, I discovered the tales of Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm. And let’s not forget about the contemporary authors I grew up with like Roald Dahl, John Wyndham, and Arthur C Clarke, to name a few. If I was going to read anything, the excitement quotient had to be high, or I’d be left floundering in a morass of words that meant nothing to me.
Maybe that’s why I loved comics.
As I began being exposed to Marvel and DC comics soon after, my reading habits and preferences were set.
I didn’t stand a chance.
Then came television and was being bombarded – in a good way, with Joe 90, Dr. Who, Blake 7, Thunder Birds, UFO, and the Champions, to name a few. I was in Nirvana, but as much as I was having fun, how was I to know, absorbing all these stories and ideas would one day save me. My Dream muscle has allowed me to reach out to the world in my small way. It is a repository of all the great storytellers I had contact with. And although it is below the surface of my subconscious – a part of our mind that is difficult for any of us to access, it continued to tell its own uncensored stories from the vast input it has received over the years. Stories that sometimes have bypassed my logical reasoning mind and came to me in their bizarre glory. Gifts that have become novels mainly but in the future will be Films, comics, and games. My Dream Muscle allows all this to be possible. New ideas are swimming below the surface of my subconscious, which is continually being replenished by my life experience and requires me to dive in and retrieve them.
Easier said than done.