Dream Student

What would you do if you could see other people’s dreams? If you could watch their hidden fantasies and uncover their deepest, darkest secrets…without them ever knowing?

Sara Barnes is about to find out. She thought that all she had to worry about was final exams, Christmas shopping and deciding whether she likes the cute freshman in the next dorm who’s got a crush on her.

But when she starts seeing dreams that aren’t hers, she learns more than she ever wanted to know about her friends, her classmates…and a strange, terrifying man whose dreams could get Sara killed.

“Dream Student” is the thrilling first installment of the Dreams series.

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Dream Doctor

“I didn’t expect to be woken up by someone I don’t know dreaming about killing somebody. I thought I was done with that once and for all…”

But Sara’s not done with it. As if adjusting to life as a newlywed and starting medical school weren’t difficult enough, she’s started seeing the dreams of everyone around her, again. Before everything is said and done, those dreams might destroy Sara’s hopes of becoming a doctor, wreck her marriage and even end her life…

“Dream Doctor” is the thrilling second novel in the Dreams series.

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Dream Child

"I would give anything to take this away from her. I would gladly go back to having the nightmares myself – the very worst ones, the ones that had me waking up screaming in a pool of my own vomit – rather than see Lizzie go through this..."

As a resident at Children's Hospital, Sara can handle ninety hour workweeks, fighting to save her young patients from deadly childhood diseases. But she's about to be faced with a challenge that all her training and experience haven't prepared her for: her four-year-old daughter has inherited her ability to see other people's dreams...

"Dream Child" is the suspenseful third novel in the "Dreams" series.

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Dream Family

"Why is this so hard for me? Why am I having so much trouble? Why do I feel so helpless, so hopeless? What the hell is wrong with me?"

After tangling with murders and mobsters, not to mention medical school and three years of residency, Sara thought she could handle anything. And then the police show up without warning at her new office and arrest her for a crime she can't possibly have committed. Sara's confidence, and her grip on reality, is shattered during one terrifying night in jail.

Now, the very dreams that have endangered her life and driven her to the edge of madness may be the only thing that can help Sara find herself again...

"Dream Family" is the powerful fourth novel in the "Dreams" series.

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Waking Dream

“Oh, God! We can hurt each other. Whatever we do to each other in the dream, we’ll do it to ourselves for real…”

When her own dreams are visited by a mysterious woman in a red dress, Sara realizes she has something she never expected: a counterpart, someone outside her family who shares her talent to see other people’s dreams.

When the woman in red keeps showing up in other dreams as well, leaving ruined lives in her wake, Sara knows she has something she never imagined: a nemesis.

Now, Sara must track the woman in red down in the waking world, before she’s forced to fight for her life in her dreams…

“Waking Dream” is the exciting fifth novel in the “Dreams” series.

AUTHOR GUEST BLOG POST

I’ve been asked, just like pretty much every other writer, do my characters ever “take over” and do things I don’t expect? I can’t speak for anyone else, but my answer is: absolutely, yes they do.

There’ve been countless times in the five (so far) books that my characters have gone off in directions that I didn’t plan; and also several occasions where characters simply demanded more “screen time” and importance than I’d planned to give them.

One of them is Sara’s mother-in-law, Helen Alderson. She’s got only one scene in “Dream Student,” and she’s mainly there to provide a small roadblock in Sara’s otherwise easy romance with Brian. She doesn’t appear at all in the second book, except for a couple of mentions in passing. But she’s got a big role in the third book, “Dream Child” – and it wasn’t really meant to be so big, but she kept pushing. It wasn’t until I’d finished the book that I realized I was unconsciously modeling her character on Emily Gilmore from “Gilmore Girls” – and then her pushiness made perfect sense!

The entire fourth book was the result of Sara reacting in a way I didn’t really expect. The original plot for the book was that Sara would meet a rival; someone else who shared her talent for stepping into other people’s dreams, but who used her talent for selfish, evil purposes. I planned that somewhere in the second half of the book, as a minor obstacle to dealing with her nemesis, Sara would find herself spending a night in jail. I thought it would be more of a distraction for her, and in the end something she could laugh off, but once I started thinking about it, Sara rebelled, and the scene became much longer, and much darker. And Sara went right off the deep end.

I realized the scene had to come at the beginning of the book, and that the story of the book would be what was done to Sara in that one night, and how (or even if) she could recover from it. In the course of her attempts to recover, I actually overruled Sara on one thing. One of the signs that she was still not coping with what she’d been through was her inability to put her wedding ring back on (after she’d been forced to remove it in jail). At one point, Sara was going to break her own ring finger to give herself an excuse to keep it off, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go that far. I’m still not sure what I think about that decision; the story was dark enough already that it didn’t need to go any further, but at the same time, it’s what the character “wanted” to do and maybe I should have let her.

Before I started writing the first book, I never took it seriously when writers said that their characters took on a life of their own. But Sara and Brian and their friends have taught me better…

Author Bio:

J.J. (James) DiBenedetto was born in Yonkers, New York. He attended Case Western Reserve University, where as his classmates can attest, he was a complete nerd. Very little has changed since then.

He currently lives in Arlington, Virginia with his beautiful wife and their cat (who has thoroughly trained them both). When he's not writing, James works in the direct marketing field, enjoys the opera, photography and the New York Giants, among other interests.

The "Dreams" series is James' first published work.

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