Books
John Little is at it again, which is always a good thing for readers like you and me.

In his latest mindbender -- entitled DREAMS IN BLACK AND WHITE -- John tells the tale of Charlie Parkinson, a photographer who suffers from insomnia. Charlie wakes up over a dozen times each night and as a result he never feels completely refreshed. After going through a sleep study, Charlie finds that he doesn’t enter into REM sleep and therefore never dreams. For years he’s been resigned to the fact that he’ll never get a good night’s rest…

…until suddenly, he sleeps for an uninterrupted stretch of four hours. On top of that, Charlie has a vivid dream in which he sees an accident occur a few miles from his home. Excited about sleeping for the first time in ages, yet curious about the premonitory “feel” of the dream, Charlie sets out to watch the accident site. While the circumstances he witnesses don’t exactly match his dream, an accident does happen and Charlie is there to capture the scene in black and white. As time goes on, Charlie has more and more dreams, all of which point him to the specific time and location of another accident.

Weaved throughout the story are a number of themes that will undoubtedly hit close to home for a number of readers: a self-absorbed spouse and parent who becomes entrenched in his work to the detriment of his wife and child; a wife who has a secret she wants to share with her family, but doesn’t know how to; the effects of alcoholism; the helplessness someone feels when there is nothing they can do to right a wrong; and the drive to go to any lengths to protect loved ones. John Little has become a master of taking painful situations -- the things all of us deal with but tend to bottle up inside ourselves -- and leveraging them to make the reader feel something, anything, no matter how much it hurts. Strip away all the dreams and manipulations of time and space that Little employs in many of his stories, and you’re left with everyday people and their various shortcomings, striving to change their lives for the better and doing whatever it takes to get there. What makes Little’s writing even more effective is that he realizes even the most well-intentioned people don’t always think things through, taking a bad situation and unwittingly making it worse in their desire to make things better. In the end it all boils down to this: John Little is honest with his readers – celebrating characters’ small victories yet not shying away from the deepest, darkest spots of their lives – and he’s to be commended for giving it to us straight.

Accompanying the long novella are interior illustrations by Zach McCain, who successfully captured some pivotal scenes from the story; an introduction by James Newman, who hits on a variety of reasons why John’s writing clicks with so many people; and an afterword in which the author shares where he got the ideas for the story.

DREAMS IN BLACK AND WHITE was published by Morning Star (an imprint of Bloodletting Books) and is available in a number of states – an e-book for $5.95, a signed limited edition for $50, and a traycased lettered edition for $295. Head on over to the Horror Mall and pick up whichever version fits your budget. This one shouldn’t be missed.

(9 out of 10)

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