Author Interview – Dermot Davis

The book is about dreams?

The book is partly a questioning about what reality or what we call ‘consciousness” really is. Whatever state you find yourself in, then that’s your reality. When you’re in a dream, then that’s the only reality you know. We only call that reality a “dream state” when we’re in another reality that we call “waking reality.” We have no knowledge of a “waking reality” when we’re in the reality of the “dream state.”

But your protagonist knows that he’s in a dream?

Not at first, no. Just as some people question that this reality we share just might be a dream, he also begins to reason within the dream that he just might be in a dream. It’s his training that prompts him to question. However, it’s also his training that just might keep him stuck in his dream state.

Explain that?

Reasoning and intellect can only take us so far. Integration and healing of the whole person can only take place when we allow ourselves to heal on an emotional and spiritual level as well.

This is a book about healing, then?

Yes, although the protagonist, Robert Monro, is not aware that the problems he is having in his life and in his marriage are related to incidents in

his past that require healing. It is only when he summons the courage to remember and to experience his past traumas that they provide the key for him to wake from his dream world.

How did you develop your writing?

I began writing plays first, screenplays second and finally, novels, which is an uncommon chronology as most writers tend to start with novels, then go to screenplays and maybe not attempt the play, at all. Writing plays, however, is a wonderful preparation for writing prose of any kind because if it’s one thing that the craft of playwriting teaches you is to be very sparse and very precise with the words you chose. It’s easy to overwrite a novel but almost impossible to do so with a play or a screenplay as to do so takes you beyond the confines and limitations of the medium. The normal length of a screenplay is between 90 and 110 pages, which translates to 90 to 110 minutes of screen time. You have to tell a complete story within that time. Unless you’re Steven Spielberg, of course. Lincoln was 150 pages long.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

My inspiration comes from no one identifiable source, although, ironically I do tend to get fiction ideas from reading non-fiction books. I love reading books about psychology, for instance, which, as the scientific study of human behavior, gives me good options for how my fictional characters may or may not behave. Reading about the biological and inherent psychological differences between the sexes gave me ideas for how to write certain scenes for my romantic comedy, Zen and Sex. Did you know that the body produces a drug cocktail which induces the effects of euphoria in the brain when we meet someone and “fall in love?” When I read that, I thought to myself: “that’s going in the book!”