Jenn's World

I'm not a creepy person, but I do have creepy dreams. I view them as an asset. The only way I can come up with anything original is through dreams. It's hard to force my mind to go down anything but the well-worn paths of literary cliche otherwise.

Anyway, I dreamed I went to Brandon Sanderson's house to ask him about something unimportant, and I accidentally stole a copy of the new Robert Jordan book (I thought he had my copy of 'Fires of Heaven'). The cover was really weird--kind of this paisley wallpaper pattern with a burning phoenix at the bottom, but with no title/author/blurb on the front or anything. When you opened it, you found out its title was "Randiland" (not Randland) and it only had six chapters, and all of them variations of the word Rand.

When I started reading, the ink was so faded on some pages you couldn't see anything and then there were all these copy-editing marks in cursive handwriting so scribbly it was impossible to understand. When I gave the book back to Brandon, he kept asking me which signing I was coming to and refused to believe I wasn't from Salt Lake. Then he had me babysit his nudist roommates' kids.

Then we went to the mall to attend a lecture on Santa Clause, but when when we were sitting in this big Christmas-decorated lecture hall/movie theater, a 12-year-old black girl came up to me and accused me of using the "N-word" to insult her when we'd both been in elementary school, and I denied doing any such thing but Sanderson thought I was a racist and so left in a huff, except he reappeared when I was doing some sort of group therapy/conflict management thing with this black girl. And when I pointed out to her and her mother that I couldn't possibly be the same person because I was, you know, 14 years older than this child and so I couldn't have been in elementary school with her, but Sanderson told me I should apologize anyway because, since the universe is full of infinite possibilities, an alternate version of me from an alternate universe had probably done it in that universe, so clearly I had some race issues to work out.

Normally, I only share my dreams when they have something to do with writing but this one was so bizarrely entertaining...

Of course, if you don't have the context that I dream weird dreams about everything, and this was actually kind of mild for my subconscious, you probably view me as the kind of creepy person you should tell your kids to stay away from. Especially if you're Brandon Sanderson.

Oddly, it's one of a string of Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan book dreams. Obviously, my subconscious is terribly excited about the release. And I had been thinking before bed about what I would do if I were in control of the publicity for the Gathering Storm book tour, who would need to be approached, how to make the non-fanboy press understand the importance/significance of the events, etc. It would be a fascinating process to watch and it would give me ideas for what I would need to do on my own tour, if I ever have one.

Incidentally, its my 26th birthday today, although I refuse to admit it in public.