Dreaming of a new book

I'm loving writing the new book. This is the way I like to write, incubate an idea for a year or so, while I'm writing something else, then sit down with a clear direction in mind.  In common with several of my books, the character at the centre of my world is a teenager. The adults rotate around her but she is strongly the heroic figure, sorting out the adult world around her. Her story is pouring onto the page, while her father tries to find her and one of her carers starts to wonder if she's been told everything about this comatose, lost child.  

My focus is on dreaming, which by itself is a fascinating area. I remember my dreams (mostly) and some of them are very odd. It turns out some people have way weirder dream experiences that I do, from waking dreams to lucid dreams (when you know you're dreaming and can 'direct' the dream somewhat. Over Christmas I fell asleep in front of the news (bad idea), the stories fed into my dreams. This idea that your dreams can be changed by what's going on around you is fascinating. It mostly happens in non-REM dreaming (non rapid eye movement), which leaves our muscles working and our senses on alert. the dreams are more snappy and bitty, and less colourful BUT they form particular movements of energy and activation in the brain that is in the area of the brain that produces consciousness. It's possible people in 'comas' (although most have moved into disorders of consciousness if they don't wake up) may experience NREM dreaming before their brain learns new pathways to wake up. Now all I have to do is turn that into 100k words of story and characters to make it interesting. Which will be easier when family life stops getting in the way.

Meanwhile, I'm exchanging books with my fellow panellists at my first CrimeFest - exciting stuff! These are two of my fellow panellists - their books, anyway. Bedtime reading when family stuff calms down again...