Val Tobin's Blog, page 26

V is for Valiant (and other character names) #AtoZChallenge

Valiant means brave, so when I named my main character in The Experiencers Michael Valiant, I was playing with the meaning. That it became the series title (The Valiant Chronicles) and reflects one of the themes in the story was a happy synergy.

When I first contemplated a last name for Michael, the word valiant popped into my head. I hesitated. Was Michael Valiant too corny? Was it realistic? I was already using Michael based on the archangel. Was Valiant taking it too far? Would anyone even notice the overkill?

I did what any self-respecting lightworker author would do: I asked my angels and guides to validate the choice.

The synchronicities came fast and furious.

I flipped on the TV later that day with an overwhelming desire to watch an episode of the original Star Trek. The episode I randomly selected had a spaceship in it named The SS Valiant.

One of my friends on FB posted, tagging a friend of his who had the last name Valiant, and she had the same name as Michael’s wife in the story. Amused, I contacted her. She replied that, more strange still, her brother’s name is Michael.

After the novel was released, an actor with the stage name of Valiant Michael contacted me. His real name? Michael Valiant. He is interested in playing the role of Michael Valiant if there’s ever a movie version and added his name to the Imagine Film List post for it.

Most of the time, I select character names that have a special meaning. Sometimes the meaning is personal, sometimes metaphorical.

In Walk-In, I named one of the characters Talitha. The explanation for it is in the story.

I love playing around with character names and providing them with deeper meaning that readers who enjoy puzzles might catch.

U is for UFO #atozchallenge

My interest in UFOs goes way back to my childhood. I can’t recall the first time I contemplated the possibility of unexplained aerial phenomena, but it’s intrigued me for decades.

When the X-Files came along, I didn’t get into it until season two, but once it caught me, I was hooked. In the meantime, I’d had experiences of my own.

The first was during a ride home from Toronto to Bradford late one Christmas Eve. I saw strange triangular lights in the sky. Another time, I was sitting outside with some neighbours, again in Bradford, and two of us spotted a light moving in an impossible way. It zig-zagged and then shot away.

When we moved to Newmarket in 2005, I joined a UFO meetup group. When the organizer came by for pizza and a chat one day, we talked about UFO sightings. He explained that they tend to run in families and asked if my kids had had any experiences. I shook my head and said, no, I didn’t think they had.

At that moment, my son arrived home, so we asked him if he’d ever seen a UFO. His reply stunned me: “Yes, with my mom.”

As soon as he said that, I recalled the incident.

We were walking home after dark and cut through the school that led to a field located behind our house. As we walked through the deserted schoolyard, we saw something in the sky. All I can remember is looking up and saying, “What is that?”

My next memory is of entering our backyard through the gate from the field. Until my son mentioned it, I had no memory of the incident at all.

Shortly after we moved to Bradford in 1986, I learned it was considered part of what some ufologists call the Bradford triangle. This area, which spans Bradford, Aurora, and Uxbridge, supposedly had a high number of UFO sightings. I doubt that’s an official title, and I haven’t been able to find statistics to back it up, but all of my UFO experiences happened within that triangle.

In my Valiant Chronicles novels, I based two incidents on true stories, one told to me by someone close to me, who gave me permission to use the story, and another that I personally experienced.

I’m not going to give away here which ones they are. I’ll let people speculate.

For a more researched discussion on UFOs, check out my article on the validity of paranormal events.

How to Save Your Twitter Profile from the Algorithm

Good Twitter tips.

Drew Chial

On February 5, Buzzfeed reported that Twitter was doing away with their chronological timeline in favor of an algorithmic one. Users would no longer see tweets as they were posted in real time, but rather in an order the algorithm thought users wanted to see them. Buzzfeed theorized that this would help manage spam links and adjust Twitter’s signal to noise ratio, but users remained skeptical.

Many users feared, myself included, that Twitter was downgrading everyone in order to sell priority placement tweets to power users, just as Facebook had done with status updates on its Fan Pages. Social media services were shifting stanchions onto their free dance floors, relabeling the spaces as their VIP sections. Twitter appeared to be doing the same; gutting the democracy of the service to benefit a monopoly held by power users, celebrities, and advertisers.

We feared that the algorithm would put an end…

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T is for Time #AtoZChallenge

There’s never enough time when you write.

I’d thought that because I’d be my own timekeeper there wouldn’t be any time pressure. Ha. Good one.

If you schedule an editor, you must have the manuscript ready in time. Want to have preorders on your books? Ya, there’s a deadline.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) exists to put time pressure on writers. It’s a good way to get 50,000 words written.

The A to Z Challenge this month is the time monkey on my back.

What I’ve discovered after participating in things like NaNo is that I need that deadline time crunch. When I have unfettered time stretching out before me, I let things slide. If I set a deadline, even if it’s arbitrary and impacts only me, I get things done.

It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

When I was working on my master’s thesis, I’d wanted it completed by January. My timeline kept slipping away from me. But despite that, I plugged away at it, because as January slid into February and then March, I felt the anxiety of missing my target dates. By April, I’d had enough, cleared everything else from my calendar, and completed it.

My to do list is daunting, but I’m looking forward to knocking a few more projects off it by the beginning of the summer. By then, I’ll probably start another novel. I can’t seem to help myself.

Maybe I enjoy feeling frazzled.

 

S is for Sex Scenes in Novels #atozchallenge

Readers expect sex scenes in erotica novels and sometimes in romance novels, but with other genres, adding them in can be dicey.

Alan Annand’s crime novel Harm’s Way contains a sex scene, and at least one reader voiced disapproval about it on an Amazon review. I recall there was a sex scene, but either I’m jaded or that reader’s a prude, because it barely registered on my radar. At the time I read it, I thought it was well written and offered some character development, but I didn’t consider it graphic. Now I can’t remember the details.

My novels contain sex scenes.

It’s expected in the romance novels, but The Valiant Chronicles are SF, and that’s not a genre that always includes sex scenes.

Sometimes the scenes fade to black, but only when showing what happens would serve no purpose. For example, in A Ring of Truth, I don’t show the sexual encounters between the brainwashed victim and her exploiter. Knowing what’s going on is appalling enough.

While in The Experiencers sex is used to demonstrate characters’ moral codes and attitudes toward the opposite sex, in A Ring of Truth, it is used in other ways. One Amazon CA reviewer sums it up perfectly: “Sex is a weapon, a tool and a healing.”

One character, according to a reader, deserves to die because of his loose morals. Interestingly, the reader who said that was male. Female readers I’ve communicated with don’t agree.

Sex scenes, if they’re not gratuitous and move the story forward or provide character development, add a level of complexity to a story that enriches the reading experience. What a character thinks during or about sex is enlightening. Characters’ sexual relationships are as telling as their relationship to food.

R is for Reiki #atozchallenge

In October 2004 I received my Reiki Master/Teacher certifications. It was a long journey from the first class I attended to get my Level I attunements to that final moment when I received my Level III certificate.

I’d been skeptical, which was why I went to the Level I class. The cost for a Reiki treatment and Level I attunements were almost the same, so I figured I’d look under the hood while experiencing it to examine how it runs.

Reiki, for those who don’t know, is an intelligent, universal life-force energy that flows where it is needed the most when channelled by an attuned practitioner. That means a practitioner directs the energy through his/her hands into the client, and the Reiki directs itself from there to wherever it needs to go.

I was sure it was new-age hooey, but figured I could give open-mindedness a shot.

It wasn’t easy.

When our teacher talked about how Mikao Usui discovered Reiki while fasting on a mountain, I figured his discovery had more to do with needing a burger than it did with mysticism.

But she also told us that you don’t need belief for Reiki to work. I was surprised, because I had expected her to say that if you believe, it’ll work. This way, if it doesn’t work, they can tell you it’s because you don’t believe enough.

The instructor also explained how channelling Reiki feels. She told us to expect our hands to heat up and tingle. But she also cautioned that not everyone feels something, which doesn’t mean it’s not working.

Convenient, I thought. There was my red flag. It was like the Emperor and his clothes. Trust they’re there. He’s not naked. You just can’t see them because you’re flawed.

Fully expecting not to feel anything, I went along with it all anyway. Why not? I’d already paid my money and was amongst nice people. I could relax and go through the motions of receiving attunements and laying my hands on my partner during the practice sessions.

Imagine my surprise when my hands, which are always freezing, heated up to the point of throbbing. When I was channelling Reiki, my hands tingled so much they vibrated. Now I started paying more attention.

What I discovered was that it worked for me. I decided to continue on with the training and received Level II then went on to Level III (the Master/Teacher level). In that time, I experienced things I can’t explain.

In The Valiant Chronicles, one of my main characters, Carolyn Fairchild, is a Reiki Master/Teacher.

Warning: some spoilers follow.

In one scene, Carolyn sends Reiki to Torque, Michael’s partner. Wounded, possibly dying or already dead, Torque has been stuffed into the trunk of the car she and Michael are in. While Carolyn understands Michael did this to Torque in self-defence and to save her, she can’t accept Michael’s decision not to get Torque medical attention. Her solution is to send him Reiki:

Carolyn stared out the window and thought about Torque in the trunk of the car. The least she could do was help him by sending him some Reiki.

She put her hands together and mentally went through the process of sending distance Reiki to Torque. She caught Michael staring.

“Are you praying?” he asked.

“No. If you must know, I’m sending distance Reiki to Torque.”

“Dare I ask?”

“Ask away. Reiki is a universal life force energy. It’s intelligent and goes where needed. If Torque isn’t dead, it’ll send him healing energy. If he’s dead, it’ll help his spirit.”

Michael didn’t comment.

“You think that’s crazy, don’t you?” Carolyn asked.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you think so, don’t you?”

“I don’t buy into this new-age stuff. Sorry, but it doesn’t make sense, and there’s no scientific evidence it does anything.”

“Actually, there is. Studies have been done. I don’t care if you approve. It’s something I can do.”

Despite all he’s witnessed, Michael is a skeptic when it comes to spiritual and paranormal events. That part of me that went into the Reiki Level I came alive in Michael. His growth over the course of The Valiant Chronicle novels is more than emotional. It’s a spiritual journey as well.

It’s a journey we’re all taking.

Q is for Quest Quotes #atozchallenge

Every new writing project is a quest, and I’m fond of quests. I also love quotes, so what could be better than quest quotes?

“I would love to live in The Lord of the Rings. J. R. R. Tolkien’s world is so vivid and rich and sensual. I love the country setting and the routine of the hobbits. Of course, I would like to be a hobbit who goes on small adventures – not huge, horrifying ones like Frodo’s quest.” — Mary Pope Osborne

“My quest these days is to find my long lost inner child, but I’m afraid if I do, I’ll end up with food in my hair and way too in love with the cats.” — Kenny Loggins

“The whole theme of Interview with the Vampire was Louis’s quest for meaning in a godless world. He searched to find the oldest existing immortal simply to ask, What is the meaning of what we are?” — Anne Rice

“In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out.” — Margaret Weis

“Kill Mulder, we take the risk of turning one man’s quest into a crusade.” — Well-Manicured Man, X-Files: Fight the Future

“The show is basically a religious show. It’s about the search for God. You 
know, ‘The truth is out there.’ That’s what it’s about.” — Chris Carter discussing the X-Files

 

P is for Precognition #AtoZChallenge

Precognition is a glimpse into the future. It’s knowledge of events that have yet to happen.

These visions can appear in dreams or during waking hours, and they’re not necessarily images. There are four main channels of psychic communication, and you can receive precognitive information via any of them.

A common way of receiving precognitive information is through dreams. The problem with these dreams is that they’re difficult to recognize as precognitive until what was foretold happens. But if you are aware, it’s possible to work with the information and prevent something you don’t want or encourage something you do want.

The implication here is that the future is not set.

Near-death experiencers sometimes receive precognitive information during their NDE. In my thesis on the after-effects of near-death experience, I include an example of this from Kenneth Ring’s work that he discusses in his book Heading Toward Omega:

One of the examples Ring cites in his discussion on PFs relates to a woman named Janice who viewed future events in her life review during her NDE. Two of the incidents she described involved accidents that would befall her. The first incident involved her car sinking into water and the second involved a jack-knifed tractor trailer.

That foreknowledge compelled her to change her plans and avoid those accidents when the time of their occurrence drew near. The aftermath of both incidents was reported in the news, and Janice knew she had escaped because of what she’d seen during her NDE (188). It is interesting to note that while Janice didn’t take any action to prevent the accidents from happening, she was able to avoid her involvement in them.

In Ring’s example, the woman was able to change the outcome only for herself.

In The Experiencers, I used dreams as a way to weave in backstory of past lives, and in one instance, to provide a precognitive glimpse (NOTE: mild spoilers follow):

… Carolyn and John are in a cab, driving near the ocean. The cab heads for a pier and drives onto it. John protests, telling the driver to stop the car. They yell at the cab driver, while the car gets closer to the edge of the pier, with no indication the driver is planning to stop.

The cab flies off the end of the pier and into the water. Carolyn finds herself outside of the car, swimming towards the shore. John is with her. There’s no sign of the driver. When they drag themselves up onto the beach, Carolyn realizes the agency she works for is trying to kill them. She realizes they’re also trying to kill her mother. They’d all become expendable and were to be erased.

They go to the hotel to check out. Carolyn remembers they’ve left their suitcases in the room and insists they go back for them. When she steps out of the elevator, John is no longer with her. She panics.

She wants to run to her room, but can’t remember where it is. The elevator opens and agents step out. They’re coming to kill her. Carolyn tries to run, but they grab her. She screams and struggles, grabbing at their hands, trying to get them off her. The terror intensifies. They’re smothering her. She can’t breathe and opens her mouth to scream again …

The above dream was a retelling of a dream I’d had with details modified to suit my story. In this case, Carolyn was the dreamer, and, while much of it has that sense of absurdity most dreams have, there was a precognitive component hidden in it.

Analyzing the dream would take too much space, but if you care to do it, it provides some insight into Carolyn’s unconscious. For instance, this is the only time in the novel we have mention of her mother. It’s significant that John is with her and that she’s superimposed Michael’s job onto herself. One more item about dream interpretation: if you dream you are in a car, the driver is significant. Is someone else driving you around?

When Carolyn wakes from that dream, she has a lingering sense of terror and aloneness. The precognitive part is what impacts her, but she doesn’t realize it’s because she’s been given a message about the future.

The prophecy of the dream is fulfilled, and when it is, Carolyn recognizes it. The following scene echoes the final segment of Carolyn’s dream:

Carolyn fled down the hall, towards the elevators, which were about fifteen metres away. The stairs should be nearby. Or perhaps there was a utility room or closet to hide in. The elevator pinged, and the doors opened. A man stepped out, did a double take when he saw her, and ran at her.

She realized she’d left the gun in the room, and her panic escalated. She turned and ran back to her room. No choice now. The only place to go was back to her room. She reached the door, yanked the key card out of her pocket, and shoved the card into the slot. After a second, she slid it out. It didn’t work. She’d pulled it out too fast. Frantic, she jammed it in again.

The indicator light on the door changed to green. She opened the door and rushed into the room. She shoved on the door, but the man had reached it and was pushing it open.

Somehow, with an adrenaline rush perhaps, she forced the door closed. She locked the deadbolt, flipped the latch on and jumped back. Then, to her horror, she heard him kick against the door. The latch rattled, and wood splintered. She ran to the phone to call 9-1-1. Instead of picking up the phone, she grabbed the gun from the table. She pointed it at the door with shaking hands.

Point and shoot. Don’t hesitate. Her heart thudded, and she thought her knees might buckle. The door shattered away from the jamb and the latch went flying.

The man burst into the room. He was big, shorter than Michael, but not by much, and he was stockier and more brutal looking. He lunged at her.

She pulled the trigger. The shot went wide. She tried to bring her arm down again to take another shot, but he was on her.

He knocked the gun from her hand and punched her in the stomach.

Carolyn dropped to the floor and doubled over, tears leaking from her eyes. She couldn’t breathe, and her mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, like a stranded fish. The dream she’d had this morning flashed through her mind. She was alone with this man, and he would kill her or take her away. Michael wasn’t there after all.

The dream and the reality aren’t exact duplicates. But the basic components are the same, and the feelings elicited are identical.

Precognition fascinates me because of its implications. If it is a glimpse into the future, but you can do something to alter it, then the future is not set. But does that mean there is no such thing as destiny? Or is destiny like a pantser’s story arc — a beginning point and an end point with many possible paths to that end, which aren’t set until they’ve been written?

Works Cited:

Ring, Kenneth. Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Meaning of the Near-Death Experience. New York: William Morrow and Company Inc., 1984. Print.

O is for Oracle Cards #atozchallenge

I received my first deck of oracle cards from a friend who gave it to me as a thankyou gift. That gift was also my first introduction to Doreen Virtue and her work. Doreen had created that particular deck of cards.

I was familiar with the Tarot, and this deck impressed me because it removed the negative aspects of the Tarot and spun them into positive ones. The spreads for the oracle deck were simple, the messages direct and encouraging. I loved working with it.

Two of my characters use oracle cards in their psychic work.

In The Valiant Chronicles, Carolyn Fairchild provides oracle card readings to her clients. Viktoria Kovacs, in Walk-In, does the same. Both characters use the cards the way I was taught, though we never get a chance to see Carolyn in action with her decks.

The following is an excerpt from Walk-In, which will be released in July 2016. In this scene, Viktoria gives a reading to Aedan, a journalist researching psychics for a  novel he’s writing:

She picked up the fairy deck again. Mischief indeed. She’d called it correctly. “I know now that this session is for research, but the reading is for you. Was there something specific you wanted to know about? Health? Finances? Relationship? Career?” When she said relationship, her stomach fluttered. She took a deep breath and cleared herself. Not now, Viktoria. Focus on service.

“What do you suggest?”

“If you aren’t sure, I can do a general reading. We’ll ask the fairies to tell us what they want you to know.”

He didn’t bat an eye at the mention of fairies—she gave him points for that.

“All right. A general reading, then.” She shuffled, focusing on Aedan McCarthy and what he should know. “The cards work on the Law of Attraction. Are you familiar with that?”

He shook his head.

“Like attracts like. What you think about most, you attract. The cards I pull will reflect what’s going on in your life right now. If you’d have asked a specific question, the cards would echo that. It’ll reflect whatever your focus is.” She stopped shuffling and dealt out three cards, face up, and directed at Aedan.

“You’re concerned about your career. All three cards reflect that.” She pointed to the first one. “This one tells you to let go of your need to control everything.” An image flashed into her head. “There’s a man at your office who annoys you with his personal problems.”

She sensed Aedan nodding, but ignored it. Her focus was down and to the right so the images would continue to come in. “You prefer to work at home, not at the office, because you need that feeling of autonomy and control. Did you recently have a change in your schedule?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “You don’t like it. It makes you feel like they’re putting restraints on you.”

Viktoria finally met his gaze. “Let it go. It’ll be easier on you if you go with the flow this time.”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

She looked at the next card, focused again down and to the right. “An unhealthy situation is brewing. You’re being dragged into something because you want to help. There’s that control factor again.” An image of a shark flashed into her head. A symbol. “Someone predatory. Cold. He’s—” The eyes looked like Niko’s eyes and she gasped.

“What is it?” Aedan frowned.

“Be careful who you trust.” There’s no way he could know Niko. He couldn’t possibly. “Do you know a man named Nikolas Farkas?”

“Yes. His company owns the newspaper’s office building. I’ve met him on a number of occasions. I’ve interviewed him more than once and have run into him at social events. Why?”

Her hands shook, so she clasped them in her lap. “I’m sorry. We have to stop this reading.”

“What do you mean? Why? What did I do?”

“It’s not you.” She willed the trembling from her hands and failed. She gathered up her cards. “It’s getting too personal.”

“I don’t understand, Miss Kovacs.”

Carefully, she placed the deck back in its box and closed the lid. The fairy child on the box gazed back at her, its gossamer wings glittering. “I’m seeing images of someone I know. I’ve got a conflict of interest here. I’m sorry. Obviously, I won’t charge you for this.”

Viktoria cuts the reading short when she recognizes the conflict of interest, but there’s enough in the scene to get a reasonable understanding of the reading process.

She focuses on the question she wants answered while she shuffles, and then lays out the cards. In this instance, she’s doing a three-card spread. The first card represents the recent past, the middle card signifies the present, and the last card refers to the near future.

While she reads, she uses the cards as a conduit to information. However, when she receives clairvoyant images, she glances down and to the right. That’s my habit. She doesn’t look much at her client, and ignores his body langauge.

What skeptics call “cold reading” might exist, but real psychics don’t use it. Cold reading uses feedback from the client and educated guesses based on the client’s appearance rather than intuition. It’s scammy.

I wasn’t trained in it, and what a person wears or exhibits can be more misleading than helpful anyway. And you can’t rely on that type of feedback if you’re doing a phone or email reading.

The only time I care about jewelry or something the readee wears is if I’m doing psychometry.

Psychometry uses objects, such as a ring, to help the reader receive messages about the client. But it should be an object no one else has owned, unless your intent is to pick up messages about everyone who has owned it. That can get interesting.

 

N is for Near-Death Experience #atozchallenge

One of the reasons I focused on the after-effects of near-death experience (NDE) for my master’s thesis and not on proving or disproving NDEs, was because the after-effects are tangible. Studies have shown that whether or not an NDE is a glimpse into the afterlife, it has life-altering after-effects.

Here is the abstract from my thesis:

Every Year, millions of people have a near-death experience (NDE) and return from it altered permanently. Whatever the truth about the experience itself might be, there is no denying the changes that occur at every level: mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. The results are positive if the experiencer is able to process the event in a healthy way. However, some experiencers have difficulty integrating the changes into their lives, which can adversely affect relationships. Researchers, such as Dr. Raymond Moody, Dr. Kenneth Ring, and P. M. H. Atwater, have found that subjects experience a host of similar after-effects from an NDE regardless of how the NDE was induced. As well, non-experiencers can benefit from the NDE phenomenon if, according to Ring, they are exposed to NDE research and stories, or if they consciously work to emulate NDEr beliefs and values. Dr. Raymond Moody has found similar effects on non-experiencers through the process of mirror-gazing. Humanity stands to benefit from further NDE research and, in particular, from studying NDE after-effects.

The topic of NDEs has fascinated me from the time I discovered Moody’s work in high school.

In A Ring of Truth, Michael Valiant has an NDE that follows a typical experience. While not all NDEs are the same–they don’t all include every common element–Michael’s does, with some fine-tuning to forward the story.

Most NDErs can’t communicate with the living. Michael does, but the person he communicates with, Carolyn Fairchild, is a psychic medium whose abilities allow her to connect with spirits.

Here is an excerpt of Michael Valient’s NDE from A Ring of Truth (Warning: spoilers):

Michael’s body was freezing, his arms and legs prickling, his left shoulder burning. He clutched Carolyn’s gold wedding band in his hand, squeezing so tight it dug into his palm. Okay. He could still feel, but drifted towards unconsciousness. No. Not now. If he lost consciousness, he’d die.

Blackness came.

Michael stood. He felt good. His shoulder didn’t hurt. He swung his arms and did a few jumping jacks, marvelling at his energy. When he looked down, he saw the body lying in the mud and the stones and the wet.

The body belonged to a tall man. Close-cropped, dark hair spiked up, dishevelled from the water. Detached, Michael saw the body was his. He stared at the pallid skin, the closed eyes. The right hand still clutched the ring. Whoever found him would have a hard time prying his fingers open. Yes. They won’t get it until they pry it out of my cold, dead hand.

He found that funny. Ghosts have a sense of humour. Who knew? Michael thought of Carolyn again. He’d failed her, his mission to sever her connection to the hostile aliens not completed. Now he wouldn’t be able to find her, rescue her from the Agency, and have a life with her.

Who’d shot him? Althaea? Probably. She was a good shot. He hadn’t died instantly, and that was enough for him to get away. Would humans find his body before the animals? The thought didn’t upset him—he was simply curious.

If only he could see Carolyn one last time. At that thought, Nahanni faded away, and Michael found himself in an Agency cell. Carolyn lay on a cot. He thought of approaching her and suddenly was beside her bed.

She’d been trying to sleep, but sensed the presence. Her eyes peered into the dim light of the cell. Carolyn herself glowed with a light that attracted Michael. She’d be able to see him, and he wanted that more than anything else.

When her gaze landed on him, fear and dismay crossed her face. “No, Michael, no. Please. Don’t be dead.”

Her agony cut into him.

Tell her it’ll be all right. He didn’t know where that came from, but it was a good idea. “Carolyn, it’ll be all right.” When he spoke, it came out as a buzzing sound. Had she heard him?

Face contorted in agony, she shook her head and said, “How can it be all right? You’re dead.”

He supposed he was dead, but he denied it. “No.”

She frowned, confused. “How did you die?”

“No.” He said it again because it seemed right.

Her eyes widened, as if something had occurred to her. “Michael, I’m pregnant. It’s your baby. Please. Help us. Help me save our baby.”

Pregnant. How? She couldn’t have any more kids.

Michael noticed someone next to Carolyn. The young girl appeared before him, more solid than was Carolyn, who seemed to be behind a curtain of haze. This girl, about eighteen, was clear and distinct. She had black hair, but Carolyn’s eyes.

“Dad.” The girl’s voice was musical, comforting.

“I don’t understand,” Michael said.

“I’m your daughter. We’ll be together soon.”

At that, Carolyn screamed. “No, no. You can’t both die.”

The girl turned to Carolyn and smiled. “It’s okay. I’ll see you soon too. I’m Christina. You’ll call me Tina. We’ll all be together soon.” Tina vanished.

Something tugged at Michael. A roar filled his head, like a jet taking off next to his ear. He turned back to Carolyn, to reassure her, to look at her one more time, but he found himself in a long, dark tunnel. His surroundings a blur, he moved rapidly.

When his pace slowed, he yearned for company. He hadn’t met anyone in the tunnel, and he’d lost Carolyn and his daughter. The emptiness made his heart hurt.

Light surrounded him, and Michael sensed someone near him. Jessica.

She smiled, looking radiant in a flowing gown, and extended a hand. Michael clasped the hand and marvelled at its solidity. She spoke though her lips didn’t move. “Michael. You can’t stay here, but you’re allowed to come with me for a time.”

“I love you, Jess.” He had to say it now. He’d missed his opportunity once before when she’d come to him in a dream.

“I know.” She smiled, and his heart overflowed.

Michael stepped into a sunlit meadow.

“Go on ahead. To the light.” She pointed, and his gaze followed her arm.

A brilliant light. If he’d seen it with his physical eyes, he’d have gone blind. He walked towards it, but ran when he absorbed the love and joy spilling from it. Home. He wanted to go into the light now, yearned for it.

But he paused and looked back. Jess waved, encouraging. As if from behind a waterfall, Michael saw Carolyn sobbing on her cot in the cell. He hesitated, not wanting to abandon her. But he had to leave right now. Carolyn would have to handle it. Michael turned back towards the brilliance, and a smile broke out on his face. That’s where he belonged. Happy, he ran into the light.

While some of the above takes artistic license with a typical NDE, it contains the basic components, such as an out-of-body experience (OBE), the tunnel, seeing departed loved ones, feelings of love and joy, and the being of light.

In the story, I avoid showing Michael’s experience on the other side, because when he returns, he’s unable to remember it all. He remembers he’s been sent back for a reason, but not what the reason is. I wanted the reader to share that memory gap.

That’s also an element some people experience.

Many NDErs claim they were told it wasn’t their time to die and are then sent back. Others say they were told there was something they still had to do, but were not told what that was, or if they were told, the memory of it is erased on their return.

While Michael’s after-effects are downplayed in the story, they will factor more in a sequel if I decide to write one.