Selecting what we dream isn't an option; something within us decides that for us.

However, we can try to understand what the dream meant. There usually is a reason.

Raymond was compelled to examine a day in his life that changed all that was to follow. 

You have such days too, don't dismiss them. 

I'm no fashionista, but it's not like I'm unaware that what I'm wearing is out of date. I'm just waiting for it to come back.

Baggy pants, including jeans, are once again 'boss' (look it up, every generation after Boomers). So, too are my 55-year-old Purcells. So boss they never weren't!

Which brings me to (you knew it would) the lives, both lived and unlived, in which I wore and would have worn these jeans and sneakers had I made different choices.

"Everything old is new again?"

I'm not, but a lot of my clothes are, and I'm diggin' it.

A year ago, last October, I announced the availability of the second book in the Unlived Lives trilogy, The Unlived Lives of Shelly Bennett. 

Today, I'm pleased to announce the third and final book, The Unlived Lives Reckoning, available now on Amazon as an ebook with print and audio to follow. 

And for those of you who prefer an alternative distribution source, watch for Reckoning here in a month or so. 

Note to my good friend, Ek Jones: I just received ACX authorization for JT to start narration (JT Farrell Voice Acting and Narration). That takes more time, given his schedule and the two or three weeks it takes ACX to publish when he's done. Hang in there, I'll post when it's up.

To all who bought and read/listened to one or both books, thank you. As the man said, what a long, strange trip it's been. 

​Will there be more? You'll have to read/listen to Reckoning to find out. 😉

​#psychologicalthriller, #fictionbooks, #multiverse, #paralleluniverse

A byproduct of writing the Unlived Lives trilogy is that I am now more likely to dream of lives I would have lived had I made different choices in the past. Some of them I enjoy, some I don't.

The life I do live is no different. Starts and stops, good and bad, and, like Raymond and the others, I have to accept what comes along.

But more than just accepting, I identify the choices I would make again, those I would not, hoping to have more of the former, less of the latter in the future.

There are no do-overs, but we can do better.

That's me, recently out of the army, 1970, sitting on my older brother's lap, clowning for the camera. Takes me back to the '50s, to that backyard where I fought many WWII battles with my friends. All of us, sons of WWII veterans.

What should have been long gone by the time this pic was taken was that clothesline. A relic from the '50's when mom and dad could afford a used washing machine, but not a dryer. Every weekend, Mom would have that clothesline filled with loads of wet clothes drying in the sun.

I would come in the back door to the house, finding Mom sitting at her mangle, ironing bed sheets on a machine like this one, a hand-me-down from her parents. 

I would squeeze by her and the mangle, the fresh smell of those sheets filling the air, on my way to the kitchen counter for two or three (four maybe?) of mom's fresh-baked, made-from-scratch, still-warm peanut butter cookies.

​Finally, in the early '60's, the mangle was gone, and in its place was a new washer, this time with a matching dryer. 

The clothesline? I wouldn't be surprised to find it still there.

​That's one unlived life I was fortunate to have lived.

#paralleluniverse, #multiverse, #psychologicalthriller, #fictionbooks

How boring would life be if everything turned out as planned?

You wake up every morning knowing what will happen, what won't.

By the end of the day, you know what did and didn't, do you ever think about what might have been?