Dream Portal Read online

  Dream Portal ~ Journey Into Morpheus

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  Dream Weaver Series ~ Book One

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  © 2021 by Paige Saunders, Judi Cameron, Jaci Madison, Renee Amberson, Gloria Chadwick

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief quotations used in a review.

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  Morpheus Books

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  Books to Change Your Mind, Your Life, and Your World

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Dream Portal ~ Journey Into Morpheus (Dream Weaver)

  Introduction

  JOURNEY INTO MORPHEUS | Paige Saunders

  Chapter One | Dream Weaver

  About Paige Saunders

  NOVEL JOURNEY | Judi Cameron

  Chapter One | Somewhere in the Writing Blogosphere...

  Chapter Two | Aloha

  Chapter Three | Orientation Breakfast

  Chapter Four | Dazed and Confused

  Novel Quest ~ A 30-Day Novel-Writing Adventure

  About Judi Cameron

  LOST IN TIME | Jaci Madison

  Chapter One | Lost in Time

  Chapter Two | Kairos Coffee Shop

  Chapter Three | Illusions

  Chapter Four | Decisions

  Chapter Five | Jump-Start

  Chapter Six | Synchronicity

  Chapter Seven | A Book From the Past

  Chapter Eight | Seemingly Empty Spaces

  Rift ~ A Rip in Time

  About Jaci Madison

  MORE THAN JUST A DREAM | Renee Amberson

  Chapter One | Raindrops

  Chapter Two | Circles and Parallel Perceptions

  Chapter Three | A Violet Sphere of Light

  Somewhere Over the Rainbow

  AWAKENINGS | Renee Amberson

  Chapter One | The Rainbow Path

  Chapter Two | Spiritual Search

  Chapter Three | Inner Light

  Chapter Four | Light Library

  Chapter Five | Multidimensional Meadow

  Chapter Six | School of Spirituality

  Chapter Seven | Butterfly Wings

  Chapter Eight | A Shimmering Space

  Chapter Nine | Spiritual Sun Rays

  Chapter Ten | Awakening

  Whispers Beyond the Rainbow

  About Renee Amberson

  About Morpheus Books

  Once Upon a Dream...

  Introduction

  LET ME TELL YOU A LITTLE bit about me and Morpheus...

  I am a dream weaver. I weave the dreams you think you dream at night into the dreams you experience in what you think is your waking life.

  I am also the keeper of the pseudonyms. We all hang out together and decided to write a book together. And since we all got together on the Morpheus blog, we decided the book should be about dreams.

  Morpheus is the Greek god of dreams, offering you the ability to transform (morph) yourself through what you dream about.

  Morpheus brings shape and form to dreams, and has the ability to interact with you in your dream world and to change your dreams, whether you dream your dreams when you think you’re sleeping or you perceive them when you’re awake.

  To “morph” means to change from one form to another, just as your dreams have the ability to change in form—from what you may perceive to be just a dream—into a real-life experience.

  Which brings me to this book... Writers dream our books before we write them, so...

  Once upon a dream, somewhere in the land of Morpheus, I invited my pseudonyms on a dream journey.

  Four brave souls ventured into the misty night, into the realm of dreams, not knowing what they would find.

  Upon awakening, they rose into the clear light of day and returned to the world of written words, bringing with them the awareness of all they had experienced in their nightly sojourn and placed their discoveries into the pages of an open book.

  DREAM PORTAL shares their stories. Some of the stories are prequels, some are excerpts, and some are stories that have yet to be published.

  My writing buddies—four of my pseudonyms—have written their stories, not realizing they were weaving their dreams into the fabric of their lives—or at least the pages of their novels.

  JOURNEY INTO MORPHEUS ~ Paige Saunders

  Confessions of a dream weaver.

  NOVEL JOURNEY ~ JUDI Cameron

  I dreamed I wrote a novel in my sleep. Yeah, right.

  LOST IN TIME ~ JACI Madison

  Lost in what appeared to be a dream, I found myself in a parallel reality.

  MORE THAN JUST A DREAM ~ Renee Amberson

  Is this a dream? Or is life more than just a dream? Am I awake? Or am I dreaming? And do I really have to reincarnate?

  AWAKENINGS ~ RENEE Amberson

  Once upon a dream, a rainbow whispered to me, inviting me to follow a path into spiritual awakening.

  JOURNEY INTO MORPHEUS

  Paige Saunders

  Chapter One

  Dream Weaver

  I HAVE A CONFESSION to make. I am a dream weaver. I am not real—at least not in the sense that most people define “real.” I am a figment of my author’s imagination. She created me to be a writer and told me writers define “real” a slightly different way than most people.

  She told me I lived inside her imagination and it was my job to write books about things that aren’t real—because that’s what writers do, at least the novelists. She told me that I am the newest “edition” to her family of writers.

  She also told me I am a dream weaver. A dream weaver is someone—perhaps a magical being, perhaps not—who weaves dreams into the subconscious mind of the dreamer.

  She also informed me that I am the keeper of the pseudonyms. Being a writer, my author writes several different kinds of books in several different genres, and—to tell you a little secret, she sometimes has trouble keeping track of all her pseudonyms. So, she tasked me with the job.

  It’s up to me to keep the pseudonyms in check. Which is not an easy thing to do since they go running off on imaginary adventures, and I end up following them through misty dream portals, imaginary bookstores, coffee shops that don’t exist, and occasionally traveling through time into parallel realities when I have to rescue lost writers. But someone has to do it.

  It’s also my job to oversee the writing of the Dream Weaver series. But the pens have pretty definite ideas of what the books should be about. I can tell you that, at the moment, there will be four books in the series. Because Morpheus also has a say in all of this. He’s not a pseudonym. He’s a mythical god. More about him later. Actually, he’s the real dream weaver. I’m just the narrator.

  It’s fun, actually, and sometimes quite amusing, getting into the minds of my so-called writing buddies; actually, they’re more like my imaginary friends or figments of my author’s imagination. They all have definite ideas of the stories they want to tell, depending on what their genre is.

  But all my writing buddies are also very mindful of their readers. It’s been said, by other writers, that an author should ‘stay in their own lane’ meaning that the author should consistently write the same kind of stories in the same genre. This is supposedly done to gain ‘traction’ and increase book sales.

  B-o-r-i-n-g. But there’s probably some truth in there, at least the part about book sales.

  That creates a very one-dimensional sort of author, only interested in telling one kind of story. In real life, people—readers and writers—are much more
multi-dimensional than that. And their minds are multi-faceted, meaning they’re interested in more than one type of reading experience.

  Can you imagine how tedious and totally uninteresting it would be if you could only read one book—or a version of the same book—over and over? Like I said, boring. So, to get as far away from boring as she could, my author created her pseudonyms to tell the many different kinds of stories she has inside her soul. And boy, does she have some stories to tell! At least seven different kinds of stories.

  Before we go there, I probably shouldn’t mention the characters that pop into my author’s mind when she thinks she’s sleeping. They whisper amazing stories and plot twists to her, introduce her to things she’s never heard of before, and drag her into all sorts of interesting escapades. They tell her titles of books and show her visions of colorful, beautiful covers.

  They tell her how the story should be told. Her characters have very definite ideas about how their stories should be told. If the author deviates from the story the characters tell her, the characters either go silent or they revolt and write their own story, their own way, without interference by the author, or intervention from the author. That’s just how characters are. They have a mind of their own, which is what makes writing the stories so much fun.

  That’s sort of how this story starts. Since I’m the keeper of the pseudonyms, I decided to create a blog—our own little cyberspace on the web—to keep us all together. And to make marketing easier. But that’s another story, best told by a writer who writes books for writers.

  Once I collected all my pen names on the blog, they started chatting among themselves and thought it would be fun to write books together, and to go on literary adventures with each other. Since we congregated on a blog named Morpheus Books, and since Morpheus is the Greek god of dreams, we all decided the book should be about dreams and tell the stories of our dream adventures together.

  Before we start this story, I have another little confession to make—actually my author is the one that needs to do the confessing. But she made me the keeper of the pseudonyms and told me to tell anyone who was reading this book the truth about herself. And she said to write it in first person. So, here it is:

  I have multiple pseudonyms. And they write in different genres. LOTS of different genres. There’s the visionary / metaphysical part of me that writes books about reincarnation, meditation, spirituality, and positive mind power. She remembers many of her past lives, and even wrote a novel about her experiences in Egypt. Her name is Renee, which incidentally means “reborn.”

  There’s the foodie part of me that writes cookbooks. We all have to eat, right? Her name is Gloria. I could tell you some stories about her—she loves to cook and putz around the kitchen and has created totally delicious meals and really fat cookbooks with talking tacos and helpful peppers that run through the pages, but I won’t tell you about her kitchen catastrophes. She’s sworn me to secrecy.

  There’s the mindful part of me that loves coffee. She writes books about Zen meditation and coffee, because she also loves a good oxymoron—an interesting way to look at things, sort of inside out, doesn’t make any sense at first, then it just hits you and you know. She’s also fond of metaphors. Her name is Sara.

  There’s the parallel part of me that writes time travel adventures, journeying through all sorts of alternate realities. Because life is so much more than what it appears to be on the surface. Plus, it’s fun to put yourself in another world and journey through that world to discover everything you can about it, and how that world works. Her name is Jaci.

  If you know anything at all about writers, you know that writers go on many kinds of interesting, and sometimes far out, journeys in their mind before their thoughts find their way to paper.

  Then there’s the writer side of me who writes lighthearted guides for writers. Mostly because it’s really fun to write a book and some writers take that job waaay too seriously. Her name is Judi. She was born when she heard about an interesting writing challenge for authors: Write a 50,000-word novel in a month. Well, that was FUN. It really was.

  And now, another confession: Since I’m the official keeper of the pseudonyms, it’s also my job to keep track of the pseudonyms that haven’t been born yet. Let me introduce you to two more of my “imaginary friends” a.k.a. figments of my author’s imagination. They haven’t published any books yet, but their words have found their way into massive files on my author’s computer, and have even produced covers for books that don’t exist yet. And you should see the scribbles! But that’s another story, for another time.

  Melody is a soulful writer and we can’t tell yet which dimension she lives in because she supposedly died and went to heaven and is writing about her adventures there. And then there’s Kiera. She’s also a bit of an ephemeral spirit, writing about the illusionary nature of things. She’s very secretive and doesn’t say much—yet. She has this thing about portals. And she loves dragonflies.

  About Paige Saunders

  PAIGE WRITES IMAGINARY novels about things that aren’t real. Well, she’s pretty sure they’re not real. They don’t seem to be. She lives inside the mystical world of her imagination.

  She hangs out with seven of her writing buddies (only one of whom is real), following them through misty dream portals, invisible libraries, coffee shops that don’t exist, and occasionally traveling through time into parallel realities when she has to rescue lost writers.

  She’s been seriously influenced by her not-real pseudonyms, but is bound and determined to write a memoir of things that never happened. She’s currently working on the second book in the Dream Weaver series—Life is Just a Dream.

  You can find her, and her imaginary friends, at Morpheus Books.

  NOVEL JOURNEY

  Judi Cameron

  Chapter One

  Somewhere in the Writing Blogosphere...

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23—SOMETIME Late at Night

  I looked at the research books on Huna spread across my desk next to my scribbled notes for the novel I wanted to write—a story about a woman who went in search of herself and found Huna.

  I picked up one of the books, read the title—Hawaiian Huna: The Secret of a Magical Mind—and opened it, flipping through the pages.

  The philosophy of Huna was intriguing to me—you create the world you live in through your thoughts and feelings; you can influence your environment and create events you want to experience—but what seemed so elusive to me was the loving, accepting spirit of Aloha on which the ancient wisdom of Huna was based.

  Huna seemed to be so much more than a philosophy; it was a way of life, a way of living your life filled with magic.

  I wanted to find a kahuna—a master who could teach me or show me how to open and use the magic in my mind; I wanted to live a life filled with happiness and light.

  It’s one thing to read about something; it’s quite another thing to experience it, I thought to myself. I looked at Magi curled up on the floor by my feet. “I need to find a way to meet a kahuna and get first-hand knowledge,” I said to her. She looked up at me and wagged her tail.

  “I’m going on a kahuna quest,” I told her.

  But how is that possible? I wondered. The house repairs last month had wiped out my Maui money.

  I sighed and turned my laptop on. Browsing the blogosphere and wishing I could find a way to pay for the airline ticket to Maui next month, I landed on a Writer’s Workshop blog and saw the ad...

  Wanted: Writers who would like to write the novel they’ve always dreamed about writing, are invited to attend the annual thirty-day—all-expenses-paid—Wiamea Writer’s Retreat on the island of Maui.

  I could hardly believe what I was reading. I’d just been wishing for a way to get to Maui and this blog post was a wish come true. I read it again, just to be sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.

  This is totally awesome! I thought. This is my ticket to Maui. I’d been planning a vacation in Maui in Novembe
r, and Magi had already passed the rabies titers and qualified for direct airport release, so it seemed like perfect timing.

  The only thing holding me back was the price of the air fare. “Thank you, Universe,” I whispered. I stood up and did a happy dance. Magi barked at me and wagged her tail, then twirled around, doing her little happy dance.

  I read the instructions: Book your stay and bring your laptop. Some clothes and a toothbrush would also be nice. Everything else is provided. There were several paragraphs of fine print I didn’t bother to read.

  I filled in a few lines on the attached form; a pop-up window instructed me to check my email and click on the link to confirm my reservation. I was then directed to the Wiamea Writer’s website to enter my username and a password before printing out my tickets.

  I looked at the blinking cursor in the username field. Might be fun to create a pseudonym, I thought to myself. But what? I looked at the cup of coffee on my desk and typed Mocha Latte.

  I packed four pairs of jeans, my flip flops, and some T-shirts—thinking I’d buy some new clothes in Maui—and a few other essentials into my small carry-on suitcase.

  I tossed my toothbrush, sunglasses, and mini laptop into the huge messenger bag I always carried with me. The front, zip-up pocket contained Magi’s food, two small food bowls, and her treats.

  Then I went to bed. Happy and excited, I could barely sleep. This is going to be so much fun, I thought.

  Early the next morning, I was on my way with Magi, curled up comfortably in her purple dog stroller. It was almost too good to be true. Little did I know what I was getting myself into...

  Chapter Two

  Aloha