Dreams of Kubla Kahn and the Dire Planet

Samuel Taylor Coleridge reported that he awoke from a dream with two or three hundred lines of his famous poem, Kubla Kahn, composed in his head. He feverishly began to scribble them down, when he was interrupted by a person from Porlock on business. When business was finished the lines of the poem left unwritten had faded away, never to be recovered.

The novel Dire Planet, too, had its origins in dream. One night I dreamed of a stranded astronaut encountering a vision of a beautiful alien while his oxygen ran low, and when I awoke I feverishly scrawled notations on a handy scrap of paper I keep by my bedside in case of such nocturnal inspirations.

However, the duties of the day intruded and the haunting dream faded, evaporating like dew before the morning rays of sun, and I was left with a handful of notes to help me recall the images.

These notes languished for years in the bottom of a drawer before the opportunity to write a serial tale for Frontier Press inspired me to dig it out and write a first chapter based on that strange dream.

As I wrote, characters and situations presented themselves in my head, sometimes carrying the story into theaters of the imagination where I had not yet dared to tread, and taking the tale in directions I could not expect.

Unlike Coleridge and the lost lines of Kubla Kahn, I have, fortunately, been able to continue the tale of the Dire Planet. Over the years the story of Garvey Dire grew into three volumes, and I still hear his voice in my head offering to dictate yet another of his adventures on the ancient red planet.

Dire Planet, Exiles of the Dire Planet, and Into the Dire Planet are available at PulpWork Press, Amazon, and in a variety of electronic formats at Fictionwise.

This is the first stop of the Dire Planet digital book tour. Please be sure to check out Russ Anderson's Blog tomorrow for further thoughts on the Dire Planet.