Dreams, Daydreams, Inspiration by guest mystery author Penny Goetjen

DreamWatch.com is all about dreams.

I’m happy to host mystery author Penny Goetjen on my personal blog. Here at Writings on the Wall, I write about whatever interests me at the time, could be new blooms on an old houseplant or spotting a strange bug that landed in my driveway. DreamWatch is all about dreams. Please join me in welcoming my guest Penny Goetjen writing about dreams. —Kat

Dreams

Dreams are a funny thing. We encounter them during late night slumber, when all we’re hoping for is a few hours of solid rest to ready ourselves for the coming day. Most people experience them, but dreams don’t always make sense. Some are so startling, we’re shaken to the core and swear we’ll never forget them. Others are fleeting and, although we try to remember the details, they seem to dissipate like a wisp of smoke from the tip of a cigarette. Many just leave us amused by the seemingly random pieces our sub-conscious pulled together.

There are professionals—dream interpreters—who claim to be able to explain the meaning of dreams but are steeped in controversy over whether there is any validity in their methods. Some offer to teach us how to interpret dreams ourselves, a sort of DIY psychological exercise. The desire to understand our elusive nighttime encounters goes back centuries to when there was a strong belief that dreams were a way of communicating with spirits. I happen to believe this does occur, although not as often as other types of dreams that are downright puzzling.

Daydreams

But where do daydreams fit into all of this? Are they similar enough in nature to be grouped in with night dreams? I would venture to say our more vivid daydreams could be similar in experience to the nighttime version and just as unsettling.

Inspiration

Murder On the Precipice

It was one such daydream in a fictional setting that sets into motion the events for Manhattan interior designer Elizabeth Pennington in Murder On the Precipice. It’s late on a Friday afternoon and her boss has just stepped out of the conference room so she’s alone in the quiet, gazing through the rain-splattered windows. As fatigue washes over her, she slips back to her childhood when she would climb the steps to the lighthouse and watch storms approach from inside the stalwart 100-year-old walls. Movement catches her eye on the breakwater. At first one, then a second figure struggles to keep from getting washed into the ocean by the waves churned up by the storm.

Startled by her boss returning to the conference room, Elizabeth has little time to ponder the meaning of the daydream. Was it simply her active imagination at work? A repressed memory?

As the story progresses, Elizabeth’s grandmother summons her to return to her childhood home—a quaint coastal inn in Pennington Point, Maine where a young female guest is missing, and the case is eerily similar to an unsolved disappearance years earlier when the family ran an all-girls school on the property. Elizabeth is determined to find the girl and save the inn from an elusive killer, but in her pursuit, she uncovers painful secrets that put into question everything she thought she knew about herself, her family, and her past. By the time the last page is turned, Elizabeth realizes the meaning of her daydream in the Manhattan conference room, high above the rain-soaked streets below.

Murder Beyond the Precipice

In Murder Beyond the Precipice, Elizabeth’s story continues when she receives an unexpected invitation to a wedding in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, up the coast from her family’s inn. She arrives unannounced at the celebrated estate-turned-inn to surprise a friend who works there, only to learn no one knows her whereabouts. Other disappearances soon follow and, in her quest for answers, Elizabeth stirs long-since-buried memories the locals endeavor to keep hidden, along with the scars left behind, and finds herself tangled in a trail of betrayal, deception, love lost, and murder.

Murder Returns to the Precipice

When murder checks in, the inn’s dark past resurfaces.

In the highly-anticipated third novel in the trilogy, Murder Returns to the Precipice, to be released October 17, 2019, Elizabeth has returned to her family’s inn which she lovingly restored to its former New England charm after a powerful hurricane nearly wiped it off the map. The untimely death of a young female guest in the fitness center threatens to tarnish the inn’s re-opening and appears to be an accident, but when a second body is discovered, Elizabeth fears the inn’s dark past has resurfaced, yet remains steadfast in her quest to carry on her grandmother’s legacy as innkeeper—until the killer comes after her.

Murder Returns to the Precipice, to be released October 17, 2019

And to think, it all began late one rainy afternoon in New York City, lost in a daydream of a tragic, life-altering childhood event.

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Penny Goetjen, a national award-winning author, writes murder mysteries where the settings play as prominent a role as the engaging characters. A self-proclaimed eccentric known for writing late into the night, transfixed by the allure of flickering candlelight, Penny embraces the writing process, unaware what will confront her at the next turn. Fascinated with the paranormal, she weaves subtle and unexpected twists into her stories. It was her grandmother’s creaky, old house in Maine where she had her first paranormal experience. When her husband is asked how he feels about his wife writing murder mysteries, he answers with a wink, “I sleep with one eye open.”

Learn more about Penny and her writing on her website: https://pennygoetjen.com/

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Thanks to Penny Goetjen for posting at DreamWatch.com on my personal blog, Writings on the Wall.

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