Explanation for the Title

I have very vivid and elaborate dreams. I dream in all senses, including pain, temperature, and feeling of fullness upon eating fully-tasted dream-food. Most of the time I take joy in this, though nightmares bring uncommon terror. It helps with ideas, though most of my ideas I get lying in bed waiting for sleep, rather than during it.

Over the past few months I have been dreaming in the same location that feels, unlike any other dreamscape, like something I constructed. Something that's mine in a profound sense no physical object can be. If I had a physical mansion it would belong also to the architect who designed it, and the constructors who mortared each brick in place, and the real estate agent, and the plumber, and the bank that gave me the huge loan this physical place would have cost. But this I made, every bit, as natural as breathing.

It has many, many floors. I don't know how many. There are no grand staircases, but instead a mishmash of spiral stairs, stone steps, ladders of the pull-out kind and the wood kind and the rope kind. Books line many walls. The lighting is warm. Sometimes I run into a living room like one from a house I lived in the waking world. There are many bedrooms, some what interior designers would call "vintage eclectic" with velvet hangings and lots of weird/delightful knicknacks on shelves, some clean and Asian-inspired, white sheets and bamboo and silk screens. I'm pretty sure there was a steampunk kitchen somewhere.

In the basement there's at least one fully staffed and operational bistro, and further down many flights of steps there's a canyon floor reminiscent of Bryce Canyon in Utah (or indeed may landscapes in the Utah/Arizona/New Mexico area, swept curved by water and wind). When I went to the Canyon there were lots of young people having furtive sex in the shadows; I let them because it was consensual and safe.

One night I dreamed that my Mansion had been condemned as unsafe, and oh! how we fought for it. We picketed and hunger-struck, and one of the many residents - whose faces I almost always forget upon waking - had to be dissuaded from using Molotov cocktails against the bureaucrats. We must have one. I don't know how.

I occasionally have to throw unwanted turn-ups out. Last week Tom Cruise was there and I angrily told him that John Barrowman (whom he very faintly resembles) is far sexier and manlier than he could ever be, and does the whole action-hero-thing in an order of magnitude better, despite Barrowman being an openly gay frequent star of musicals. Cruise dumped his glass full of ice water on me.

But I do bring guests from my waking life in as well. And that's why this blog is named after the Mansion - I want it to be the meeting place between me, the writer, and you, the reader. If you don't manage to access it full-bodied with your dreams, then please take the slower route of imagining it.

We are seated in a room full of comfy couches and velvet pillows. Would you like a drink? Want me to make a fireplace? Any ideas on how I should decorate?

Welcome.

I Suppose It's About Time

I've resisted having my own blog:

- I already have a Google Site, a Facebook Fan Page, a defunct Twitter account that went nowhere, and all my posting on the Eternal Press Yahoo groups. I don't want to annoy people with yammering.

- The Twitter account failed to become useful because I couldn't think of enough things I wanted to say open to the general public, though with my friends it's chatterchatter.

- I have books to edit and write, college classes/summer jobs, and the first really active social life of my late-blooming youth. Would I update enough to keep the blog viable?

HOWEVER, it's in my contract that I must overstep the bounds of modesty and shyness and promote like I'm being pummeled with hotcakes until I can sell books in a similar manner. Also I am vain enough to suppose, just a little, that my nonfiction musings away from the mask of story could actually be interesting for someone out there.

So this is a test. Stand by. This is only a test.

If you've come upon this tentative, experimental post, you are probably a fan of one of my published novels - Halloween Romance and Bite Me - or one of my many, many posted online works under various aliases, and followed a link. Or you could be someone who knows my private self, in which case I'm flattered, but please don't post anything too revealing in comments or otherwise.

Dad, I'd really prefer you give me professional space - Facebook friends is enough. More than that and I feel crowded, no matter how good buds we are and how great a parent you've been (Mom I know would find so much English reading tedious).

(Raises metaphorical eyebrow.) There are many advantages to signing your first book contract at eighteen and having a third book on the way at nineteen, such as extra attention from your peers and professors, the feeling that there is potential for even greater things, and looking really cute in the publicity photo. The drawback, though, is that I feel like everything I write has to answer to my parents. Love my parents. Don't want to disappoint them. Don't want to alarm them.

Another drawback is that I feel a bit out of place among the other EP writers, with their talk of children and careers and aging parents and other adult things. I don't post to either the Authors' or Readers' loops very often. I don't discuss writing very well with people my age either, as they feel intimidated or I can't quash feelings of detestable arrogance. It sickens me when I catch myself looking down on them because I find their characters weak or plots formulaic.

I'm taking creative writing classes next semester. My plan is to keep "Donaya Haymond", the writer, a secret identity, just as I like to maintain about 70 Facebook friends and not post openly where I live. I feel like I should have a cape.

This could be a good outlet for my writing persona. Even if no one reads this. There's a friendliness to a composition box and the dance of telling enough of your heart to the expanse without exposing it dangerously. Also I'll get to write the way I think, which is different from how I speak or tell stories. The stories have shape and filter. The speech with all but a few is watered down because my words tend to be too big for a lot of people - precocity is a real killer on communication.

Okay. Trial run. Let's see where this goes.