About Never Wake: An Anthology of Dream Horror:
Since the beginning of time, people have argued the meaning of dreams. Are they symbolic visions that hold great meaning and personal significance? Are they portals into other worlds? Or are they just a series of random events our mind shows us when we fall asleep? Whatever the case, this much is true - the mind can be a scary place to venture, even for a few hours.
NEVER WAKE is an anthology of dream horror, bringing you several mind-bending tales of nightmares, hallucinations, and phantasmagoria from some of the hottest talent in horror fiction. But don’t worry - when you (wake up screaming) flip the last page, just remember to tell yourself, “It was only just a story…”
Unless it wasn’t.
Featuring an introduction from Sadie "Mother Horror" Hartmann and stories from Philip Fracassi. Eric LaRocca, Gwendolyn Kiste, Todd Keisling, Kristin Peterson, Laurel Hightower, Lee Murray, Michael Bailey, TJ Cimfel, Angela Liu, Michelle Tang, Jara Nassar, Pedro Iniguez, Joe Koch, Anaea Lay, Steve Rasnic Tem, Cynthia Pelayo, Lyndsay E. Gilbert, and Catherine McCarthy. Edited by Kenneth W. Cain and Tim Meyer. Cover art by Don Noble.
Excerpt:
INTRODUCTION
SADIE HARTMANN
My mom had this big dictionary of dream interpretations my sisters and I liked to use. I’ve tried to find it online; I think I would recognize it if I saw the cover. It was so cool! If you had a dream about a dog, you could look up the word dog and then the book would break that down into different kinds of dog dreams. For instance, if the dog was scary and chasing you, that would have a whole different meaning than if the dog in your dream was friendly. And if you were bitten by a dog, that had its own meaning as well. I remember looking that up once and the book suggested that if a dog bit me in my dream, I needed to stay alert because someone close to me could be trying to take control of me or harm me. Clearly a warning about my parents ruining my life by disciplining me for no reason!
I went through a weird season of my life where I was having these horrible nightmares about my teeth falling out. They were so realistic. It wasn’t like I would just open my mouth and all my teeth just tumbled out; that wouldn’t be as bad. In my dream, my teeth were loosening; wiggling, one by one. One tooth would fall out and I would just be beside myself and then, soon after, another tooth would start loosening. The anxiety and fear I felt were so intense, I would wake up and immediately start checking my teeth to see if they were loose. Dream interpretations claim this kind of dream could indicate that you’re going through some significant life changes or difficult loss. At the time of those dreams, this felt accurate.
I mean, who knows if there is any validity to these interpretations? Regardless, our brains are manufacturing vivid stories while we sleep and it’s entirely possible there could be hidden messages in these stories that would prove to be useful to our waking life if we could somehow unlock the code. The code to the “...bad videos in my head.” In this book, Kenneth W. Cain and Tim Meyer have curated an anthology of dream horror, nightmares, hallucinations, and
phantasmagoria.
Experimental sleep studies.
Dream journals.
Lucid dreaming.
A memory box.
A future where people visit “pillow cafés” and “pop pills to dream for days.”
Strange persistent dreams coincide with a couple’s growing penchant for violence. Some of these stories are ethereal and dreamy—nightmarish fairytales.
Others are cold, calculating, and cruel.
A particularly memorable story begins with, “Six months following his death I began having my father’s dreams.”
One story gave me a nightmare about a doll that rattles when you shake it. You’ll have to read all these gems to find out which one it was and what was inside the doll.
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About the Editors:
Kenneth W. Cain is an author of horror and dark fiction, and a Splatterpunk Award nominated freelance editor. To date, he has had over one hundred short stories and thirteen novels/novellas, as well as a handful each of nonfiction pieces, books for children, and poems released by many great publishers such as Crystal Lake Publishing, JournalStone, and Cemetery Gates Media. He has also edited eight anthologies, with two more coming in 2023. He lives in Chester County PA with his family and two furbabies, Butterbean and Bodhi. His full publishing history is available on his website at kennethwcain.com
Tim Meyer dwells in a dark cave near the Jersey Shore. He’s the author of more than fifteen novels, including Malignant Summer, The Switch House, Dead Daughters, Limbs, and many other titles. When he's not working on the next book, he's usually hanging out with his
wife and son, shooting around on the basketball court, playing video games, or messing with a new screenplay. He bleeds coffee and IPAs. You can learn more about his books at timmeyerwrites.com.
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