Sleep With One Eye Open

  Kayla and I just watched a movie on Netflix called Exam.  When you get to the end of the movie, you realize it's just a retelling of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with grown ups.  I mean, geez.  I sat through an hour and a half to see something I've already seen but without a chocolate waterfall?  If any of you out there saw this and have any thoughts, please share them.
  I wanted to talk to you about a phenomenon that I occasionally experience.  I don't really know what to call it so I'll just describe it to you.  I'll be asleep and dreaming but I'll be able to see the room I'm sleeping in because my eyes will be open.  I can move in my dream, but I can't see myself moving.  I can put my hand in front of my face, but not see it.  I can't change the direction that my eyes are facing.
  Usually I'll try to wake myself up by moving around a lot.  I'll be moving in my dream, but my body will remain motionless.  This is called sleep paralysis.  It's a safety mechanism so that you don't act out your dreams.  Only, in this case, I want to act out so that I can wake myself up!
  The coolest time that this happened was only about a month ago.  I was successful in waking myself up, but I was in a different position in my dream than my body actually was.  In my dream I had dragged myself off the bed and I was lying on the carpet on my stomach.  My hand was underneath me with the palm down.  I could wiggle my fingers in my dream and feel the fibers of the carpet.  When I woke up, I could feel the transition between dream and reality.  There was an instantaneous change from carpet to bed sheet because I really was still in bed.  Also, in reality, my hand was under me, but with the palm facing up.  That was the weirdest sensation ever feeling my hand go from palm down to palm up within the span of a second.  Please, if any of you out there have gone through this phenomenon before, let me know.  I'd like to believe I'm not alone on this.

Plot Twists

  As a sailor, I've got to tell you, being on a submarine has its ups and downs.  This one guy at boot camp sat next to me at lunch one day.  He told me, "I had a friend who's uncle was an admiral in World War II.  He was in charge of an entire fleet of destroyers."  He went on to tell me that his fleet was decisive to the outcome of an important naval battle.  I was taken aback.  I said, "Wow!  You had a friend?"
  When I'm considering story ideas, I have several topics I'm fascinated with: zombies, vampires, ghosts, aliens, poltergeists, time travel, cyborgs, alternate universes, mythology, viruses, other dimensions, the future, biblical stories, spirituality, astral projection, psychics, ecto-plasm, hypnosis, clones, twins, science, EVPs, multiple personality disorder, animals, God and dreams, to name a few.  Any story can be made more interesting by throwing in some combination of these elements in a fresh and interesting way.  That's how I come up with some of my plot twists which I love to try to have in every story.
  These are all just things that have occupied my imagination all my life.  My wife and I love visiting cemeteries and locales that are said to be haunted.  When we were in Connecticut, there was a haunted lighthouse that, unfortunately, we were unable to visit.  We were, however, able to go to Salem, Massachusetts.  That was awesome!  We got lots of photos.  One of our hobbies is to capture photos of spiritual orbs.  We've got tons.  We also try to get EVPs.  That seems to be more difficult than orbs.  We've also each seen tons of ghosts.  One of these days, I'll tell you some of my ghost stories, including one I saw while deployed on board the USS Wyoming.

Coming Up With Stories

  Every once in a while I'll be in the shower or eating or driving and an idea for a story will pop into my head.  Oh man, it's so fun when that happens.  What often ends up happening is that two or three of my story ideas will merge into one story with several facets.  Let's say that I come up with an idea for an interesting character.  Later on I may come up with an interesting scenario.  Maybe it would be really cool to put that character in that scenario and see where the story goes from there.
 That is what happened with my idea for the Nocent.  Several ideas dating back all the way to stories, songs and poems I wrote in high school to dreams I've had over the years, culminated into one huge story.  Many of the short stories and poems served as background for some of the characters.  Many nightmares I've had became actual scenes in the book.  I already knew it was scary because of how it affected me while I slept.