Some music fans will note the title of this novel "Dreams of Future's Past" and associate it with a music album by the Moody Blues. You would be correct. You may also complain that my title is not the same as theirs. You would correct again. While I liked the idea behind the title of their album enough to borrow it (and my book's original title was "Days..." rather than "Dreams..."), the exact phrasing they used did not quite fit the time travel idea of Book II. So I took some authorial license, with apologies to the Moody Blues, and changed it. You might also be delighted by how many Moody Blues references you can find in THE DREAM LAND Trilogy.
Here is a brief description:
When you conquer a new world, do you change its history
or change yourself?
After
his adventures in Book I, Sebastian Talbot (a.k.a. Set-d’Elous, legendary
warrior) has exiled himself to a desolate island, content to laze away the days
writing his memoir. Until the emissary from Queen Tammy arrives with a mission
he cannot refuse. Tammy, the IRS clerk he took to Ghoupallesz in Book I, wants
him to fetch the son she left on Earth. How could she return for him? She
married the King of Aivana.
That
mission raises desperate questions for Sebastian: If he can go back and forth
through these interdimensional doorways and arrive in different time periods,
perhaps he can do something to prevent the big war he fought through, the war
that destroyed his family and millions of others. He returns to his Ghoupalle
wife Zaura in the years he was previously away. While on patrol duty, he comes
upon a young poetess he knows will become the rebel leader who helps overthrow
the monarchy and causes the wars. What would you do?
Meanwhile,
back on Earth in another timeline, Sebastian awakens from a coma and is helped
in his recovery by Dr. Toni Franck. An affair develops—just as his opportunity
for escape comes along. Later, as Sebastian/Set escorts teams of mercenaries
back and forth to conduct their history-changing business, he tries to meet up
with Toni again only to realize the police are still in pursuing him. Desperate
to see her, he arranges a meeting only to have a SWAT team show up, cornering
him. Can he escape through an interdimensional doorway this time?
THE
DREAM LAND Trilogy continues in Book II with parallel time lines, world
domination and alien romance, and as always the minutia of heroic minds
playing god without a rule book. Cheer or jeer--it's up to you!
* * *
Take your first trip to the other side with THE DREAM LAND Book I "Long Distance Voyager"!
Then follow the further misadventures of absent-minded romantic hero Sebastian Talbot in THE DREAM LAND Book II "Dreams of Future's Past"!
And Book III "Diaspora" is well underway and should be coming out in December 2013 or early in 2014.
* * *
If you are new to THE DREAM LAND environment, let me offer you a description of Book I which should give you a sense of the overall story:
How far would you go
to save the love of your life? Through a portal to another world?
Sebastian,
that quiet tax examiner at the corner desk in the IRS service center, carries a
dark secret: once upon a time he and his high school sweetheart Gina found a
rip in the universe and stepped through it to a strange world of magical
beauty. Far from being a Disney-esque playground, the world of Ghoupallesz bursts with cosmopolitan elegance, alien perversions, and political strife. Gina, the adventurous one, falls in love with the adventurous possibilities. Not Sebastian; always practical, he insists they return to Earth. Gina refuses so he goes back alone, vowing never to return. Yet he finds himself drawn back repeatedly--he calls it “research”--and often crosses paths with Gina. Sometimes he saves her, sometimes she saves him, forever soul mates.
Now years later, life on Earth hasn’t gone well for Sebastian. Then the headaches revisit him, with flashes of memories from Ghoupallesz. Gina is in trouble again, he senses, and he must, as always, save her. Meanwhile, a pair of too-curious IRS co-workers have accidently overdosed on the Elixir of Love he brought back on his last trip and the antidote exists only on Ghoupallesz. With these co-workers in tow, Sebastian returns through the interdimensional portal, fearing it may be his final adventure. He must gather his old comrades from the war, cross the towering Zet mountains, and free Gina from the Zetin warlord’s castle before her execution. Perhaps then she will stay with him.
But are his adventures to the other side real? Or are they just the dreams of a psychotic killer? That’s what the police want to know when Sebastian returns without his co-workers.
THE DREAM LAND is a genre-mashing epic of interdimensional intrigue and police procedural, a psychological thriller marbled with twisted humor, steampunk pathos, and time/space conundrums.
Here is a review of THE DREAM LAND on the Connie J. Jaspersen's Best in Fantasy Blog and Carlie Cullen's blog.
THE DREAM LAND Trilogy
is published by
in association with
(C) Copyright 2010-2013 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.
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