The Making of a Psychic - Part 2

Last week, I mentioned that many times psychic premonitions or messages will begin in a dream state. While the body is at rest, the commotion that surrounds us during our waking hours slips away, leaving us more open to receiving psychic messages. Many times they come in the form of dreams.

Over the last few years, I've delved deeply into the psychic phenomena of dreams, speaking to many whose dreams have come true and others who work actively in interpreting them. The result has not only been the role of Vicki Boyd, the psychic spy in the Black Swamp Mysteries series, but the dreams that Detective Ryan O'Clery experiences in The Tempest Murders, which I'm happy to say has spun off a second series.

Some people dream things that have really happened or are about to happen.

My mother dreamed that her favorite nephew walked into a room filled with family members who had previously died. As he entered the room, each of the family got up to greet him. They talked, they hugged, and they welcomed him literally with open arms. My mother was also in the room but everyone ignored her, as if she wasn't even there.

The next morning, she was very disturbed by the dream because she didn't understand why family members she'd loved and they'd loved her, had completely ignored her...

Until she received the call that during that night, her favorite nephew, the one in the dream, had died. He'd been killed in an accident, which was very sudden - he'd been young and in the best of health.

She realized then that the reason the family members had greeted him was because he truly was passing over to the other side. The reason they had ignored her is they could not see her since she was still physically on this side. It wasn't her time to be greeted.

Other people dream in code.

Sometimes, our dreams are not to be taken literally, but they are a form of code. For example, many of us have dreamed that we were in a building of some sort. Buildings represent parts of the soul or parts of our lives. Dreaming of a kitchen, for example, means there is something going on in the domestic or home part of our lives. Dreaming of a hotel means a situation in our lives is temporary.

When you begin trying to remember your dreams and make a conscious effort to decipher them, it sends a signal to the universe and to your own brain that you want to tap into something deeper; something that can't be seen with the naked eye. If you continue to write down your dreams, they will become stronger and you'll remember more of them.

Not all psychics or psychic spies begin with dreaming, but many of them do. The more psychic work they do during waking hours, the more apt they are to have lucid dreaming.

So what do you do when you have a disjointed or seemingly nonsensical dream?

Write down as much as you remember, and then go to a trusted source to see what each component means. One that I particularly like (and use when writing about dream sequences in my books) is Dream Moods (http://dreammoods.com/). Not only does it tell what something represents, but often what it's doing or the context it shows up in means something as well. This site delves more into that.

But how does this affect psychic spy training?

Find out next week when I talk about the basic testing of potential psychics, and how the charlatans can be weeded out of the truly gifted - and how science meets the psychic.

Congratulations to Book Tour Winners!

Congratulations to two lucky winners of a beautiful Celtic butterfly necklace!

I just completed a virtual book tour with Girls Heart Books that took me around the world in thirty days as I promoted my latest release, The Pendulum Files. Upon its conclusion, the host with the most number of comments won this necklace, and that host was Ginny from Gin's Book Notes (http://ginsbooknotes.com/).

Also, one random commenter was awarded a necklace, and that went to C.J. Schindler of Ohio.

Congratulations to you both!

Many, many thanks to all the people who tweeted and left messages on Facebook about my appearances. It was so much fun to connect with readers from all over the world.

The Pendulum Files is the fifth book in the Black Swamp Mysteries series, featuring psychic spy Vicki Boyd, CIA operative Dylan Maguire, computer hacker Brenda Carnegie and political strategist Christopher Sandige - and of course, CIA department head Sam Mazoli, who tries to keep this team together!

In The Pendulum Files, Vicki and Dylan are tasked with discovering who is behind the bombings of merchant vessels en route from China to the United States. Their work will take them into Black Sites, the high seas and international espionage. And when Brenda Carnegie's old archrival escapes from prison determined to finish the job he started in Exit 22, they all find themselves in the crosshairs of an assassin.

The Making of a Psychic - Part 1

Since I began writing the Black Swamp Mysteries series, I've been asked about my research into the character of Vicki Boyd, a CIA psychic spy. So over the next few weeks (or longer, if there's interest) I will be writing a series of blogs about the real psychic spy program and how science and the esoteric are meeting in this golden age of science and technology. Along the way, I'll give specific information about how psychic spies are trained, some of the declassified missions they were engaged in, and other things I've learned along the way as I've conducted some comprehensive research into psychic phenomena.

If you haven't read the Black Swamp Mysteries series, Vicki Boyd makes her entry in Vicki's Key. She came to the attention of the CIA when she was just twelve years old. She had a premonition that her parents would die in an airplane accident, but everyone from her parents to teachers to counselors were convinced that she was exhibiting an active imagination -- until her parents really were killed in the accident on a plane that Vicki had begged them not to take.

So are we born with psychic tendencies?

I have become convinced through my research that what we are able to see - the physical body - is a tiny fraction of who we really are. But each person makes a conscious decision whether to live a physical life or tap into something greater.

Most people focus on the physical. It can be challenging sometimes to concentrate on the work in front of you, your relationships, school or church or volunteer work, plus all the errands one must do to exist in this world - grocery shopping, keeping a roof over your head, etc.

But when we fall asleep, only our physical body requires the rest. It is then that people often dream.

And it is in dreams that psychic phenomena often begins to manifest itself.

Step number one is often to become more conscious of what you dream. When you awaken, try remembering as much as you can about your dreams. It doesn't matter at this point whether the dreams make sense, or if they are disjointed or seem nonsensical. Simply begin by becoming aware of them.

You may even want to begin a dream diary. Keep a notebook on your nightstand and jot down as much as you can recall about your dreams.

Next Tuesday, I'll talk about another step psychics often employ that build upon dreams.

Another Planet Discovered

A few months ago, I wrote a blog about the golden age of science and technology and how planets are being discovered at an amazing rate. I received an email from a retired teacher who corrected me, telling me that there are only 8 planets. Period.

Well, this might come as a shock to some but scientists are discovering thousands of planets. One that was recently discovered is of particular significance because it is almost a "cousin" to Planet Earth. It is only slightly larger and it has great promise of liquid water on its surface.

Image Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

It was discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope in the Constellation Cygnus. It is approximately 500 light-years away from Planet Earth and revolves around a star similar to our sun. However, at the star's brightest part of the "day" the light is only as bright as our sun is close to sunset, so the planet is likely to be much colder than Earth.

This new discovery was named Kepler-186f. The next steps would involve discovering the planet's composition. This would provide information to scientists on the likelihood of life forms on that planet, ranging from microbes to more advanced forms of life.

For more information, visit NASA's website.

Looking into the past...

I just finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Yes, I know the book has been out for years but my TBR pile is so high I'm surprised I got to it at all.

It was not at all what I'd expected. I suppose I expected something funny, something scandalous... But instead, I found myself confronting memories of my past.

You see, in 1967 I moved with my family from New Jersey to the Mississippi Delta. My father was an FBI Agent and he was placed in charge of the Greenville, Mississippi office. The 1960's was a violent decade filled with images of the Vietnam War, draft dodgers, campus riots... And in the Mississippi Delta, it was also filled with cross burnings, molotov cocktails, beatings and lynchings.

I remember my mother marveling that "even the maids have maids" in Greenville. The neighbor children on either side of us, in fact, were being raised by maids who arrived every morning and departed just after suppertime. The buses ran in one direction in the morning - from the black homes to the white homes - and in the opposite direction in the evening, all to bring the maids to their employers.

It was a time when black people had to enter stores by a different door - and only those stores who wanted to accept their business. They were generally not served in the same restaurants but could sometimes buy food from the restaurant's back door. Water fountains were for white people only, and occasionally there would be another water fountain or perhaps a pipe for the black people. Rest rooms in public places were never shared under any circumstances. The white schools got the supplies they needed while the black schools made do.

Our family was appalled at the treatment of human beings of color and I watched my mother time and time again go out of her way to be nice to them. (We did not have a maid, by the way; my mother believed in raising her children herself.) My father's work involved breaking up the Ku Klux Klan, which the FBI did successfully, greatly reducing their ranks and bringing to justice many who had committed violent acts.

I couldn't wait to get out of the Delta and at my first opportunity - in 1976 - I did just that.

But in reading The Help, it also showed me just how far we've come.

Who would have thought in 1964 when three civil rights workers were murdered for attempting to register black voters, that in less than 50 years we would have a black president in the White House?

Who would have believed that the days of segregation would become such a distant memory that our children and our children's children cannot even imagine it?

My favorite song of all time is Imagine by John Lennon. It was written in 1971 and released in 1975 (1980 in the UK) when America was still undergoing radical changes.

I like to think that we're moving toward a world in which we accept all human beings regardless of their race or color.



In search of other life...

Science has made quantum leaps over my lifetime, in particular with regard to exploring our universe.

One of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, is barely 300 miles in diameter which means if you could drive a car along its circumference it would take roughly six hours at 50 miles an hour to drive all the way around it. It is covered in ice that scientists believe is around 19 to 25 miles thick.

What is so interesting about Enceladus is the recent discovery of an ocean beneath that thick layer of ice. The ocean might be regional and so far scientists believe it is around 6 miles deep.

Why is this interesting?

When I was a little girl, my grandfather had a saying when something was deemed impossible: "You can no longer do that than place a man on the moon." Well, of course in my lifetime I've not only seen us place many men on the moon, but we've also launched satellites which are still in orbit, we've launched exploratory spacecraft both manned and unmanned, and we have the International Space Station where people live for months at a time.

So as we continue our exploration of our universe and those beyond it, it stands to reason that we'll need some pit stops along the way, especially when we begin sending men and women into the farthest reaches. Those pit stops should be able to sustain life, and the most fundamental ingredient is water. Enceladus, then, is getting scientists' attention because with water comes life forms. They might be in their infancy - microbes - or they may discover something more.

The spacecraft Cassini has, to date, flown past Endeladus 19 times. Each time it has measured the force of gravity on this moon, and  in its explorations it discovered water gushing out of its south pole. It has even determined that this water is salty - another ingredient for life.

The more that is discovered about our universe, the more fascinating it becomes.



How to kill someone you like...

I just finished reading a suspense novel with a time travel element. I've come to the conclusion that I enjoy books involving time travel because they take me back to various eras while I can continue looking at them through the lens of the present day.

In this latest novel, the woman who travels back in time meets a man who is purportedly her soul mate. She accompanies him on a history-altering battle in which he sees her about to be attacked and throws himself in front of her. Unlike books that have a happily-ever-after, her soul mate dies in defense of her - right there on the battlefield.

In the paragraphs that follow, it's about her preparing to return to her own time because her work there is finished. With her soul mate gone, there's no reason to hang around.

I had issues with that.

The way I saw it, the man would not have died if she had not traveled back in time and accompanied him to the battlefield. She'd done nothing on the battlefield to help his people; in fact, they lost. And while I didn't form a complete picture of this character in my mind's eye, he seemed like a good, decent person. So why kill him? For the convenience of sending her forward in time without regrets?

I think there's a way to kill a character that the reader has come to like. His death must stand for something; he has to alter history or at least a few people's fates to give meaning to his death. We've all read true stories or seen movies based on historical figures whose deaths changed history, often heralding in much-needed changes. Millions sat through The Passion of the Christ because they knew one man's crucifixion would change the course of human history. But what if nothing changed after his death? What then?

One could argue that fiction is... fictional. And of course the author can write whatever they wish, however they wish. But I think when we introduce a character that we want the reader to connect with, to like, and to recognize he or she is a good and decent person... We owe it to them to give their death meaning.

What do you think?

When that bright object in the night sky is NOT the moon...

If you've been paying attention to the night sky lately, you might have noticed something besides the moon rising into the night sky.

It's the planet Mars, converging close to Earth over the next month.

You can see Mars rising in the east as the Sun sets in the west. At midnight each night over the next few weeks, it will be almost directly overhead.

On April 8, it will be closer to the Earth than at any time in more than two years, and on that same date, the Earth, the Sun and in between, Mars - will all be lined up almost perfectly straight.

On April 14, Mars will come even closer. In fact, it will be so close that our astronauts would be able to reach it in just six months' time.

On April 14, we will also have a full lunar eclipse and our moon will turn as bright red as Mars itself.

Watch this video from NASA for more information:

Face it: the unknown is frightening...

Writing suspense/thrillers means becoming an expert on what frightens people. And let's face it: it's the unknown that scares us more than anything we can see with our own eyes.

It's the shadowy figure in Vicki's bathroom that moves in a disjointed, grotesque way... And isn't there when she turns on the light. (Vicki's Key)

It's not knowing when the bad guys are going to show up once the trap has been set - and not really knowing whether the trap will work. (Secrets of a Dangerous Woman)

It's riding on horseback into the mists of the bogs in Ireland as midnight approaches and not being able to see anything around you. (Dylan's Song)

Or finding out that the cameras installed in your home weren't put there by an alarm company - and not knowing what the viewers on the other end might have seen. (The Pendulum Files)

It could be arriving on deserted beaches in the dark of night after a hurricane devastated the island, knowing the killer is there, feeling his eyes on your back. (The Tempest Murders)

Or it could be something that seems to be completely innocent, like Detective Ryan O'Clery finding a pacifier on his office desk - and realizing the killer was in his little girl's room at home and also managed to get into his police department office. (The White Devil of Dublin, due out this fall)

What frightens you?

When a good girl crosses the line...

I've often described Vicki Boyd, one of the main characters in the Black Swamp Mysteries series, as a good girl who stays between the lines.

Well, turns out, that's not really true.

Vicki wants to stay within the lines; she really does. But sometimes things happen beyond her control.

There was the little matter of a dead body in her bedroom in Vicki's Key. No, of course she didn't call the police. Instead, she helped hide the body... which meant feeding it to the alligators in the black water of the Lumber River...

In Secrets of a Dangerous Woman, when she discovered her sister, bad girl Brenda Carnegie, knocked unconscious by a bad guy, she dragged her sister into the coal cellar - but not before using some pretty vicious moves Dylan taught her to fend off attackers. Let's just say that guy won't be having children any time soon.

Then in Dylan's Song, she witnessed three men surrounding her lover - and well, she just couldn't let that happen. So off she went with a pistol in hand. Turned out, she really didn't know how to use it so when she attempted to fire a warning shot... well, it hit one of the men.

Her response? Oops.

Sometimes a good girl just can't help being bad.

And who would I want to play Vicki if the series was turned into film? Amy Adams, pictured here.