Posts Tagged ‘parapsychology’
Friday, March 4th, 2011
I get a lot of emails asking to know more about how my Legacy Series is similar to the popular movie Inception.My first thought when this happens is that Dark Legacy sold and was published long before the movie–so why isn’t everyone asking how Inception is similar to my popular Legacy Series of novels?
Of course I love to hear everyone’s thoughts–even those who dig the movie more ;o) So keep emailing. But it’s especially cool to get feedback from those who’ve seen the movie AND read the first book. I’m dying to know more about what you think about Secret Legacy, which is FINALLY out in May. So, here’s a place to leave those comments. Let ‘er rip!
I’ll give you some highlights to work from–the cool things in both Inception and Dark and Secret Legacy that you’re not seeing out there an anything else right now.
Dream Theory
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People can’t get enough of the parapsychology and metaphysics behind the movie and my Legacy novels.Including me! I’m currently reading books on particle physics as I work on proposals for new Legacy family (and what I’ll be pitching for books 3 – 5). It’s technical stuff that a new sci-fi/fantasy audience will dig while others might find it to much. But the thing about Inception and the Legacy series is that everyone who’s seen and read them thinks is–Cool! Even people who think the premise of both is too fast paced and complicated, are fascinated with the dream theory and the frantic speed of the the scenes that give us amazing images to explain just our sleeping minds work. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, clairsentience, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, dream curcit, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Inception, Legacy Series, lucid dreams, parallel universe, parapsychology, physics, precognition, psychic, psychic children, psychokinesis, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories, The Psychic Realm | 12 Comments »
Friday, February 18th, 2011
I dreamed last night…Can’t tell you how many times my husband’s found me trying to wake up over my first can of Diet Coke in the morning, realized I’m more tired than normal, even though chronic insomnia isn’t anything new for me, and heard me say, “I dreamed last night…”
Yeah, now that you ask, my fascination with the dream theory and the metaphysical, parapsychological mysteries I weave my fantasy stories around often find their genesis in early morning, shadowy moments. The mind is an amazing, complicated pain in the ass sometimes, and I can’t help but want to know more. Even when I’m finding it hard to pry my eyelids open on heavy mornings. It’s almost like being hung over, except there was no alcohol involved in this cycle. This circuit, if you will. A dream circuit that replays itself regularly through my valuable sleep patterns, when I actually do find myself sleeping. Damn it ;o)
It’s almost like the dreams have a mind of their own. Almost like they’re in control of the shadows of my sleep, working through the things I need to work out while I’m waking, but I’m not paying close enough attention then because I can distract myself with whatever “physical” things I need to to keep the metaphysical at bay. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, clairsentience, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, dream curcit, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Inception, Legacy Series, lucid dreams, parallel universe, parapsychology, physics, precognition, psychic, psychic children, psychokinesis, Secert Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories, The Psychic Realm | 10 Comments »
Monday, February 14th, 2011
As a fantasy/paranormal reader, what makes you “buy” into a story’s alternate reality? As a fantasy/paranormal writer, how do you earn that commitment from your fans? How do you, like in Book 1 and 2 of my Legacy series (or the movie Inception), take concept like dream theory and spin an alternative world (in my case, a Psychic Realm) out if it that’s so real, a reader could see it as her own?
As for me, let’s start with some of the more obvious techniques I see out there:
1) Cool! Fantasy/paranormal readers crave the cool factor in their entertainment. As a writer, do your research (I have an entire shelf and a full “favorites” browser folder of dream research). If you veer toward sci-fi like Inception and my Legacy series do, understand the science behind the concepts your manipulating as best you can. Then ramp it up several levels.
Go for the new (which I thought I had four years ago when I started writing Dark Legacy). Then we saw Inception last year and I sat through it saying, “Cool!” over and over as the same lucid dreaming techniques and “psychic’s manipulating reality through dreams,” and “dreamers losing control of the physical world because they’re not sure when they’re dreaming or not” concepts I used play out on the screen in an even more vivid way. Go for the cool.
Those of you who saw Inception, (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, fantasy readers, Inception, Legacy Series, parapsychology, psychic, Psychic Realm, sci-fi, Secert Legacy, writing articles
Posted in Dream Theories, The Psychic Realm | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 7th, 2011
Secret Legacy takes my Dream Theory research deeper–playing with the space time continuum in a way that made my editor nervous until we agreed that SL was pushing even further into the fantasy genre than Dark Legacy did. That the particle physics and precognition and the law of causality and something called Maxwell’s Theory I was continuing to base my evolving stories on were here to stay, or I couldn’t finish the project. A project that challenges readers to wonder whether one moment can cause the next, or if the effect of our actions can be predetermined and or changed in the past regardless of what whe choose to do here and now…
Let’s face it, we realized. My Legacy books were never urban fantasy or technically even paranormal romance. There was psychic war and relationships and lots of “on the run” suspense and even mystery. But what drove my imagination as I wrote, and the readers who enjoyed the first story, was the science behind what was happening in my characters heads, and through their minds and emotions onto the page. I was crafting plots around the plausibility, no matter how faint, that there were real world explanations for the freaky things occurring in our reality that could be fictionalized on a grander scale, for kicks and giggles, into the larger-than-life realities of my characters.
And that, I was almost the last to realize even though I read the genre like an addict as a young adult, is fantasy. Sort of. It’s the kind of contemporary, parallel-reality fantasy I want to write, anyway (with a hint of science fiction and a heavy dose of the community and relationships that have driven my other work).
One genre clearly isn’t enough for the concepts I play with. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Inception, Legacy Series, parallel universe, parapsychology, physics, precognition, psychic, psychic children, psychokinesis, telepathy, teleportation, writing articles
Posted in Dream Theories, The Psychic Realm | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
Contemporary Fantasy authors–How do you decide what parts of humanity to explore and create around? How do you look at what others around you take for granted and say, “That’s interesting. What if…”
What is your inspiration?
For my first two Legacy novels, for me it was wanting to build a contemporary world that bleeds in and out of dreams. Which lead to studying dream theory and the para-science behind how they interact, react, and drive our waking lives. Which lead to the realization that dreaming is a life-long process. Which lead to the idea that as children, we saw and believed in and understood our dreams far better than we do now.
Which lead to my second book, Secret Legacy, being about not just the current psychic war being waged with dreams, but painting a tapestry of the protagonist’s dream symbols and memories since she was a child. And showing them driving what’s happening with her now, and with other characters who are sharing her dreams. Showing her childhood reality and psychic abilities foreshadowing what was to come, and her difficulty with facing what’s shaped her–even though she’s living the psychic reality in the here and now.
And THAT’s when the fantasy elements in my writing really began to take off. A good three-fourths of Secret Legacy plays out in dream sequences that span the time warp of how before/now/the future can all become the same things, if you see the thread that ties each experience to the other and understand what your mind is trying to tell you through your dreams…
Very cool stuff, especially since it’s lead me to study theories about psychic children in even more depth. THAT, as it turned out, was the key to the contemporary world I’d been writing about all along.
Believe it or not, the theories of psychic children blend well into the idea that we’re born with certain traits (nature) and develop others because of our environment and upbringing (nurture). (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, fantasy author, Legacy Series, parapsychology, psychic, psychic children, Secret Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories, The Psychic Realm | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011
I shut down the electronics in my home last Thursday, while trying to finish some online tasks before travelling. I was laughing about it to a friend, when her blank stare registered. Hadn’t she heard about me? The jokes that over time stop seeming like jokes? Oh dear. Electronics don’t get along with me when I’m stressed, I explained. I can’t help it. I has something to do with kinetic energy or something, and … My friend, also a writer, blinked slowly. Then smiled. Cool! she said, then pumped me for more information about the strangeness that is me and how I’m thinking of spinning it into storytelling.
I’ve been fascinated by the kinetic energy around me (the energy of movement),long before I knew what it was or that it seemed to seethe in and out of my life in somewhat predictable patterns. The kinetic energy of an object, I explained, is the energy the object produces while its in motion.
But what happens if the energy rush comes before the movement? What happens if things around you start going haywire, but nothing’s really moving? Until you walk by it, or turn on the computer, or try to connect to the high speed Internet the way I was when I WAS TRYING TO GET OUT THE DOOR LAST THURSDAY!!!
Eh-hem. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, fantasy author, kenetic energy, Legacy Series, parapsychology, psychic
Posted in The Psychic Realm, Thrills and Chills | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011
I dreamed about storms last night.Well, this morning, actually, because my mind was racing when I tried to sleep, so that little feat took a while to come together, and that’s when dreams come strongest for me.
A lot of blog readers have asked in comments and emails for me to share my dreams, since I typically remember them clearly, and I have fun puzzling out what I think they mean.I’m not a professional interpretor (though I play one in my books ;o), but over the years (like since I was a kid), I’ve gotten pretty comfortable weaving my sleeping mind’s fantasy imagining into my everyday reality.
So, here goes–we’ll talk dream theories at least once a week, when I wake with something fun on my mind, until you tell me you’ve had enough! Starting with last night’s nocturnal journey… (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy, fantasy author, Legacy Series, parapsychology, psychic, Secret Legacy
Posted in Dream Theories, The Psychic Realm | 7 Comments »
Monday, January 17th, 2011
It’s a tricky thing, weaving dreams and fantasy into contemporary world building, the way I’m crafting my paranormal stories. Dreams are something we rarely remember clearly. Yet, they’re most often subconscious reflections of our real worlds that our minds use to tuck away memories. Memories that we slip back into and hopefully learn from.
We either learn, or we repeat the same mistakes over and over–one of life’s lessons. One of our brain’s solutions to hurrying that process along is dreaming–revisiting key episodes and the messages we’ve yet to process from them in dream sequences and symbols and fantasies. Dreams that our sleeping minds cycle through and escalate, focus on and reject, and basically play with until the message we’re searching for breaks through to our waking minds, pointing us down a new path.
The kicker is that the barrier between dream states and waking consciousness is designed not to let things easily bleed through, (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Legacy Series, parapsychology, psychic, Secret Leacy
Posted in Books, Dream Theories, The Psychic Realm | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, January 11th, 2011
We talked about the power of “1″ on the first. You know, on 1.1.11. Then I began asking myself, how is 1.11.11 different? We are even more overwhelmed with the little buggers today.
Delving into even more thrills and chills and parapsychology this year than last (actually, at the moment I’m researching theoretical physics and super string theory as ways to explain the improbable but not impossible psychic powers and phenomenon I’m writing about), makes ia GREAT time to look a little deeper at the “1″ and the numerology behind it, so here goes! (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, creativity & inspiration, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy, fantasy author, Legacy Series, parapsychology, psychic
Posted in Books, The Psychic Realm, Thrills and Chills | 3 Comments »
Friday, January 7th, 2011
Dog willing, the second book in my, currently, dream-theory based Legacy paranormal series from Dorchester (Secret Legacy) will hit shelves in May (Yay! Had a conference call with the PR team yesterday, and what they’re planning for the digital and trade release is really exciting!).
So, more dreams are coming your way than ever before. More fantasy (in fact, they’ll be shelving it in sci-fi/fantasy, since this time around we all agree that I haven’t, from the very start, been writing romance, even though Sarah and Richard’s relationship will blow you away in this Dark Legacy sequel). More of the rich, paranormal world I knitted together in the first book and got to wallow in while I wrote the second.
Which means, while I’m researching parapsychological gifts for a new “legacy” family to have to conquer in a three-book continuation of the series beyond this new release, I’m getting back to regular Dream Theories posts.Back -logged questions will be answered. More spooky, chilling, cool dream stuff to-be-spotlighted.
And to start–some pics that answer better than words can describe the question so many of you asked about how I came up with the dream dimensions I’ve drawn around the Temple Twins contemporary world.
I’ve cleaned off my office shelves to make room for th thrity or so new research books I’ve bought as I contemplate new proposals. And before I boxed them up, I snapped some images of the early non-fiction reading that made Dark Legacy and Secret Legacy possible.
Some basic “dreaming for dummies” books started me off. (more…)
Tags: Anna DeStefano, Dorchester Publishing, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy, fantasy author, Legacy Series, parapsychology, psychic, Secret Legacy, writing articles
Posted in Books, Dream Theories, The Psychic Realm | 1 Comment »
