Review Tuesday: Dream Student by J.J. DiBenedetto (#review #paranormal @JJDiBenedetto )

Dream Student by J.J. DiBenedetto

Createspace, 2013

Sara Barnes is an ordinary college student. Perhaps she’s a bit more studious than most, given that she plans a career in medicine, but for the most part, her worries correspond to those of the typical university junior: getting up early for class, inedible cafeteria food, tough exams, freezing her butt off walking across campus, the rare hangover from a wild party. Studying and socializing with the other men and women in her coed dorm, she views herself as totally normal—even boring, compared to the more vivacious and fashion-conscious roommate and best friend, Beth.

Then, without warning, Sara’s life turns extraordinary. She begins to see the dreams of the people around her. Mostly, this is just embarrassing and annoying, but one dream recurs again and again, showing her horrible visions of a serial killer who targets young women just like Sara. She wakes up screaming from these terrible dreams—even before one of the girls she sees in the dream turns up dead by the side of a nearby road.

Fortunately, Sara has another extraordinary experience: love at first sight. Though she’s a practical young woman, she can’t deny the evidence of her body and heart. Shy, bookish and two years younger than Sara, Brian is an unlikely soul mate, but he proves his love and fortitude as Sara struggles for her sanity.

Supported by Brian and Beth, Sara descends into her blood-soaked dreams in a desperate attempt to unravel the identity of the killer, before he strikes again.

When I re-read the above synopsis of Dream Student, the book sounds hokey and contrived. Nevertheless, the novel really grabbed me. J.J. DiBenedetto made me care about Sara. I didn’t find her dreams very convincing—dreams are generally not that coherent, plus if she were experiencing them as the dreamer did, wouldn’t she have been seeing the world through the dreamer’s eyes?—but her near-breakdown in reaction to them rang true. I found myself eager to return to the book each night, to see what would happen next, even though at some level I knew Sara and her friends would solve the mystery. (Indeed, I had a strong hunch who the murderer was chapters before the characters figured it out.)

Part of the book’s appeal is the intimacy of the first person narration. We’re literally in Sara’s head as she tries to handle her terrifying new power as well as her more mundane worldly concerns, like her bratty younger sibling, Brian’s disapproving mom, and the competition for a medical school scholarship. We share her wonder and doubt as she grows closer to Brian. And she’s such a likable person, without being a goody-two-shoes, that I really started to enjoy her company.

Dream Student is the first volume in a nine book series that follows Sara from her college days through medical school, marriage and motherhood. I have to admit I’m wondering how the author will maintain the interest, without falling into a repetitious “Sara solves another dream mystery” pattern. However, I liked this novel enough that I’m willing to give the next one a try.

(I received the first three books of the Dream series from the author as a thank you for hosting him on my blog, without any obligation to post a review.)

Time-travelling to the 1990’s (#guestblog #giveaway)

By J.J. DiBenedetto (Guest Blogger)

It’s an interesting challenge writing a book set in 1990. In some ways, it’s harder than writing one set in the more distant past. There’s plenty of research material to help you get the details correct for a book set during the Civil War, or in medieval times. And the farther back you go, the less you have to worry about year-to-year changes. The everyday details of life in the year 1300 are not notably different than they are in 1305. You also don’t have pop culture to worry about.

But going back only 26 years is a different matter. I was 20 years old, and a lot of my readers are in my age group or, if they’re younger, they’re still old enough to have clear memories of that era. It’s far enough back that my personal memories are not always clear, or accurate, but it’s recent enough that many people will notice the details. Some of them can be looked up; I’ve got IMDB to tell me that I can’t have my heroine go to a matinee of “Silence of the Lambs” because that movie didn’t come out until 1991. But not everything can be found so easily.

When, for example, did the Internet really become an everyday thing for most people? It was sometime in the 90’s, but I was using email (and CompuServe – remember THAT?) as early as 1987. It’s hard to nail things like that down.

Or cell phones. When did you get your first cell phone? Do you even remember? I honestly don’t. It was the late 90’s, that’s the best I can do. But one of my friends worked in a call center for NYNEX (one of the companies that would eventually become part of Verizon) handling customer service for cell phones in 1989. At least, I think it was 1989. It might have been 1988. Or 1990.

That’s the problem. It’s too close to be able to get away with fudging the details, but it’s too far away to be able to rely purely on memory. And there really isn’t an encyclopedia to consult. Sure, there’s Wikipedia, but it’s not always reliable.

So why did I set my new book, FINDERS KEEPERS, in that time? Why not just set it in the present?

Two reasons. The most important one is that Jane, the heroine is a spinoff character from my Dream Series novels. We see her in the first book of that series, DREAM STUDENT, as a fellow student and dorm-mate of that book’s heroine, Sara. That book takes place in 1990 as well, and Jane is a year ahead of Sara (who’s a junior). FINDERS KEEPERS starts with Jane in her first months of graduate study at the University of Oxford, so in order to maintain continuity, it has to take place in 1990.

The second reason, and it’s also a big reason why DREAM STUDENT was set then, too, is that the general absence of cell phones, and Google and GPS navigation and so forth make both stories a lot easier to write. Both heroines could have solved their problems in about five minutes if they had access to modern technology, and since I didn’t want books that were ten pages long, I needed to find some way to work around that!

(A third reason is that the college Sara and Jane attend in DREAM STUDENT is a very thinly veiled version of the college I actually went to, and that’s when I was there. Write what you know!)

Jane, the archaeologist

Here’s a very brief excerpt illustrating the similarities and differences of a time that’s not very long ago and yet is a totally different world:

As you can see from the postmark on the envelope, I’m still in England. I have not “washed out” or “packed it in” or, my personal favorite, “come crawling home with my tail between my legs.” How would that even work, anyway? It’s not anatomically possible, even if I had a tail.

I have not been driven mad by the weather, or the thick accents and the different spellings of everyday words, or the inability to watch new episodes of “Star Trek: the Next Generation.” They do actually show it here, every Wednesday night. We all get together in the Middle Common Room to watch. Shows what you know.

Besides, I’m sure you don’t even have a Middle Common Room back there at Cornell, do you? Certainly not one that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien once sat in. I could be sitting in the very same seat that the first draft of one of the Narnia books was written in. Where are you sitting to watch “Star Trek?” Some crummy dorm lounge with ugly furniture that doesn’t match the carpeting, to judge by the photo you sent last month.

FINDERS KEEPERS is available now, on Amazon and elsewhere, both as an eBook and in paperback (and soon as an Audible Audiobook!). What’s it actually about, other than being set in 1990?

Blurb

It should have been a simple job. All archaeology student Jane Barnaby had to do was pick up a box her professor needed and deliver it to him at his dig site, along with his new car. Yes, his office was in Oxfordshire, and his dig site was in Spain, a trip of 1,400 miles across three countries and two bodies of water. Still, it should have been simple.

And it was, until Jane discovered she picked up the wrong box by mistake. Not the one with boring pottery samples, but instead the one with priceless ancient Egyptian artifacts. The one that a team of international art thieves is after.

Now she’s chasing – and being chased by – the thieves. And she’s picked up a pair of passengers who claim they can help her outwit them, get her professor’s pottery back and return the artifacts to their rightful owner. If only she could figure out which one of them is working with the thieves and which one she can trust in this high-stakes game of finders keepers.

FINDERS KEEPERS is on Amazon at http://getBook.at/FindersKeepers and you can find links to all other retailers right here: http://writingdreams.net/my-storie/the-jane-barnaby-adventures/finders-keepers.

As for me, well:

J.J. DiBenedetto is the author of the Dream Series. He lives in Arlington, Virginia with his lovely wife and Danny, a white cat who’s trained them both. He’s originally from Yonkers, New York. He loves the New York Giants, fondue, photography, travel, the opera and he’s a huge science-fiction and fantasy geek.

You can follow me at my website – http://www.writingdreams.net, and also on FaceBook and Twitter.

Last, but certainly not least, I have a giveaway! I have a free eBook copy of FINDERS KEEPERS, and also a five-book eBook box set of my Dream Series novels. Just comment to this post for a chance to win!

Too Good to End

By James DiBenedetto (Guest Blogger)

Before I get started, I want to thank Lisabet for opening up her site to me today. So, thank you! And also, please read to the end – I’ve got a giveaway if you comment on this post!

I’m going to talk a little bit about endings. That’s on my mind now because I’m in the middle of writing the final book of my Dream Series. I’ve known since the third book where the series would end, and what event would be happening. The title of the book is DREAM WEDDING, so it’s not exactly hard to guess.

There’s no big, overarching plot in my series – it’s simply about my heroine, and following her through her life and the challenges she faces. Still, I knew I was working towards two things as the books went on. First, bringing them up to the present day (the first book takes place in 1989-90, and each one jumps ahead). And, second, bringing her character full circle. The first book of the series ends with Sara getting ready to graduate from college, and her boyfriend about to propose to her. By the third book, when we’ve jumped ahead to 1996, and she’s got a daughter, I knew that the series had to end with the daughter’s wedding. There have just been a a few bumps and detours along the way – mainly because Sara (and her daughter) have the gift (or curse) of being able to visit other people’s dreams, and that’s led to an awful lot of trouble for them!

Series endings are one thing, and individual book endings are something else. In most of the books, the climax comes a chapter or two before the end. That leaves quite a bit of space to explore what happens after the ending, and how Sara and her family feel about what happened. Mainly, I do that because it’s what I like to read (or watch, in a movie). We watch a lot of classic movies in my house (the TV is almost always tuned to Turner Classic Movies), and it’s striking how many older films end very suddenly. There’s the climax, the main conflict is resolved, and then THE END, roll the credits (except often there weren’t even credits at the end at all, until the 1950’s). Today’s movies are different – we often get a voiceover or a montage or even full scenes after the credits, letting us know what happened after the story ended. On some TV series, we get whole episodes that come after the climax to a season-long story, and sometimes mini-episodes on the web to follow up on subplots that didn’t get wrapped up.

If I like a story, If I’ve come to know and love the characters (or even love to hate them, sometimes), then I want to know more. I don’t want to leave them. And I guess I’ve carried that through in my books, too. And if I’ve spent several hours, or several hundred pages, engrossed in a story, I don’t want it to all be wrapped up quickly, in the last two minutes or ten pages.

I don’t know if I’ve managed to get the endings right in my books – I have to leave that to the reader to decide. I’ll also leave you with a sneak peek at my upcoming book, #10 in the Dream Series, DREAM WEDDING

****

Seth Taylor is a senior at Crewe University, and he lives in the same dorm she does, two floors above her. He’s also been her on-and-off boyfriend for most of her three and a half years at college, and to hear Lizzie tell it it’s been a lot more on than off since their senior year began in September. If he weren’t smiling – although the smile is becoming more nervous with each passing second – I’d wonder if he was here to deliver bad news about my daughter.

“No, Dr. Alderson. She doesn’t know I’m here. It’s – it’s a surprise.” Yes, it is. Especially because Lizzie isn’t flying home until Wednesday, two days from now.

I let that pass. I also let it pass that it’s a little bit presumptuous to show up unannounced on our doorstep and expect me to find a spare bed for him for two nights. Not that I have any problem with him visiting, or sleeping in Ben’s room for a couple of nights. He’s done it enough times the last four years he’s known Lizzie, after all. Still, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect some advance notice.

I put all that aside. “It’s Sara. Please. How many times do I have to tell you that?” I gesture for him to sit, and he does, but he can’t quite meet my eyes.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead, Doctor.” I’ve never known him to be this nervous. Granted, I don’t know him that well, but he’s always struck me as a very confident young man. “I didn’t want – I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you do over the phone. And I didn’t want her sister to find out and tell her. I want it to be a surprise.”

I have no idea what he’s…

Yes, I do. What was I just saying to myself? More on than off? I think he’s about to tell me that it’s about as “on” as you can get. 

 

****

DREAM WEDDING isn’t out yet, or even up for pre-order, but you can find the rest of the books in the series on Amazon at:

http://viewAuthor.at/JJDiBenedetto

What’s the series about?

Sara Barnes thought her life was perfectly ordinary – until the night she began stepping into other people’s dreams.

Follow Sara as she learns to cope with this extraordinary gift (or curse). The first three books of the series are:

DREAM STUDENT

It’s bad enough that, thanks to her supernatural talent, Sara is learning more than she ever needed to know about her friends and classmates, watching their most secret fantasies whether she wants to or not. Much worse are the other dreams, the ones she sees nearly every night, featuring a strange, terrifying man who commits unspeakable crimes. Now Sara wonders if she’s the only witness to a serial killer – and the only one who knows when and where he’s going to strike next.

DREAM DOCTOR

Medical school and life as a newlywed would be enough by themselves for anybody to handle. But Sara’s got another problem – her dreams have started up again. Almost everyone at the medical school is dreaming about the death of the school’s least popular teacher, Dr. Morris, and once again, Sara finds herself in the role of unwilling witness to a murder before it happens. But this time, there are too many suspects to count, and it doesn’t help matters that she hates Dr. Morris every bit as much as any of his would-be murderers do.

DREAM CHILD

Sara thought she had made peace with her dreaming talent, but she’s got a surprise coming: her four-year-old daughter has inherited it, too.

Unraveling a mystery with lives on the line is difficult enough under the best of circumstances. But when Sara has to view all the evidence through the eyes – and dreams - of a toddler, it may be an impossible task.

As for me, I live in Arlington, Virginia with my lovely wife and Danny, a white cat who’s trained us both. I’m originally from Yonkers, New York. I love the New York Giants, fondue, photography, travel, the opera and I’m a huge science-fiction and fantasy geek.

You can follow me at:

My website – http://www.writingdreams.net

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/DreamSeriesBooks

Twitter – https:twitter.com/JJDiBenedetto

Last but not least, here’s the giveaway. Comment on this post for a chance to win: an ebook or audiobook box set of the first three Dream Series books; a USB drive with all the books loaded onto it; and a signed paperback copy of the Dream Series book of your choice (that’s three separate prizes for three winners!) Be sure to include your email address in the comment so I can find you!

No Cubbyholes!

By J.J. DiBenedetto (Guest Blogger)

I’m J.J. DiBenedetto, author of the Dream Series, and I’m thrilled that Lisabet has turned her blog over to me for a few minutes.

This is the point where I would normally tell you what genre the Dream Series is, but that’s the trick. I don’t really have a good answer for that, and it’s been one of my biggest challenges since I published the first book in the series a year and a half ago.

I imagine that sounds ridiculous: “You wrote it,” I can hear you saying, “how can you not know what genre it is?” But it’s true. The problem is, I didn’t set out to write a mystery, or a paranormal romance, or a New Adult novel, or a romantic suspense story. I just sat down and wrote the story that was in my head, which turned out to have elements of all those genres, without actually falling easily into any one of them.

I didn’t want to change the story to fit it more conveniently into one, easily-defined genre. Partly, I guess, pride was involved. But, honestly, the real truth is that the story went where the characters took it, which is often not at all where I planned or expected it to go. And I wasn’t about to second-guess them.

Taking the series as a whole, it’s a little bit easier, because I can at least make an argument that it’s a subspecies of the cozy mystery genre. All the books follow our heroine, Sara, and her husband (and, as the books go on, children) as they cope with Sara’s gift (or curse), the ability to step into other people’s dreams. In each book, the dreams show Sara a problem that (thanks to her unique perspective) only she can solve. In the first book, Dream Student, it’s hunting down a serial killer. In book #2, Dream Doctor, it’s figuring out who intends to kill one of Sara’s medical school teachers (when it seems that everyone who knows him wouldn’t mind seeing him dead). Looked at from that viewpoint: a husband-and-wife team of amateur detectives solve a crime in each book, the answer is obvious.

But then there’s the supernatural aspect: the dreams. And there’s a lot more of Sara’s everyday life and challenges in each book (getting through her first month of medical school, or dealing with a precocious four-year-old daughter or, in the eighth book, which is still in progress, coping with a boy-crazy teenaged daughter who’s starting to make some very bad choices), and time passes in each book – Sara is twenty one in the first book, and she’s thirty seven in the book I’m working on now. And the romance element is always present – Sara’s relationship with her husband is central to the books.

So it’s a challenge to define the books, and that’s made it a challenge to sell them to readers. But they books wouldn’t let me write them any other way, so it’s a challenge I’m happy to have!

The first book in the series takes place in college, and in the winter of 1989-90, and here’s a little bit more about Dream Student.

What if you could see everyone else's dreams?
 
College junior Sara Barnes thought her life was under control.  Her biggest worries were her upcoming final exams, applying to medical school, Christmas shopping and what to do about the cute freshman in the next dorm who's got a crush on her.  Until the dreams started...
 
Now she's learning more than she ever wanted to know about everyone around her.  Watching the hidden fantasies and seeing the deepest secrets of her friends and classmates is bad enough.  But much worse are the recurring dreams of a strange, terrifying man... dreams that could cost Sara her sanity... or get her killed.

Excerpt

There’s a sound, my Dad clearing his throat, and I’m back in the here and now. He looks at the picture in my hand, and then, with a very odd expression on his face he wags his finger at me. “I think I need to meet your young man.”

“You’re going to, Dad. On Sunday.” What’s going on?

He’s still got that expression. He’s looking at me as though he’s noticing something he’s never seen before. “I see so much of your mother in you. I don’t think you realize how like her you are,” he says, finally.

I do, actually. I look a lot like her. I’ve seen pictures of her when she was young, and if you didn’t know it you might think you were looking at me. I start to say that, but he shakes his head.

“It’s not just that you look like her,” he says, reading my mind. “It’s–well, I was watching you just now. I saw how your eyes lit up when you were thinking about your Brian.” How long was I staring at that picture?

“Nobody else has eyes like yours. Nobody else’s are that bright. Nobody else’s light up the way yours did just now. Except…” and now he chokes up a bit, and he has to have some water before he can go on, “Nobody except your mother. How you looked just now, that’s how she looks sometimes, when she’s looking at me.”

Oh.

Oh, my.

I didn’t expect that. “Um–I–I don’t know–Dad, I’m not sure what…” As I’m babbling, it hits me. I’ve heard this before. From Brian, the night we met, at the club. He said something very similar to me, and suddenly I’m feeling dizzy, and warm. I have to hold on to the edge of the table to steady myself.

“I saw it, honey,” he says with a gentle smile. “I see it right now. You’re done for. This Brian, he’s in your heart. You can’t hide that, and you can’t fake it, either.”

I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with my father. But he’s right. Brian’s in my heart, that’s exactly how it is. There’s no point pretending it’s not true. And it’s such a relief to have someone really and truly get what I’m feeling. Even if it is Dad.

“Can I ask you something?” My voice is very small and very far away. I still need to hang on to the table for support.

“Always. Anything. You know that,” he says.

I already know the answer, but I want to hear it anyway. I let go of the table and my hands are shaking. 

“Sometimes when I look at him, when I look into his eyes, I mean really look into them, and he catches mine, it’s like everything else just disappears. Like we’re the only two people in the whole world. Even if we’re in a crowd, or at the movies or wherever. Is it like that with you and Mom?”

He reaches across the table, takes my hands in his. “Boy, you do have it bad. Worst case I ever saw. Or the second-worst, anyway.” He lets go of my hands. “It was. It was exactly like that.”

 
Dream Student is the first book of the Dream Series.

You can buy it at:

Amazon: http://getBook.at/DreamStudent

Audible Audiobook: http://getBook.at/DreamStudentAudio

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-student-jj-dibenedetto/1114915766

About JJ

J.J. (James) Dibenedetto's fans would swear he's got a sixth sense when it comes to seeing into the minds of others and often wonder if his stories could possibly be fiction. He enjoys suspending disbelief with suspenseful paranormal tales that are a perfect blend of reality meets fantasy.

His popular Dream Series continues to delight readers with each and every exciting installment.

Born in Yonkers, New York, he currently resides in Arlington Virginia with his beautiful wife and a cat he is sure has taken full advantage of its nine lives. When it comes to the cat, he often wonders, but then again it might just be his imagination.

You can follow JJ at
:

My Website: http://www.writingdreams.net

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Dream-Series/107699179403603

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jjdibenedetto

Amazon Author Page: http://viewAuthor.at/JJDiBenedetto