This is an important and timely question explored in the highly acclaimed spiritual novel, SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING, winner of the 2015 National Indie Excellence Award for New Age Fiction.
Written with young adult and young-at-heart readers in mind, SNOOZE further proved its literary merit by being selected as a 2016 Readers’ Favorite International Book Award Finalist in the Young Adult-Coming of Age category and receiving an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Beach Book Festival Prize competition in the General Fiction category.

Now for the first time ever, this epic visionary tale is being officially serialized—in both readable and audible formats.

You’re invited to join—either with eyes or ears—Max Diver, a.k.a. “Snooze,” along the razor’s edge of a quest to rescue his astronaut father from a fate stranger than death in the exotic, perilous Otherworld of sleep.

This inspiring tale interweaves a plethora of paranormal and metaphysical subjects, from Bigfoot and enlightenment to the Loch Ness Monster and time travel via the Bermuda Triangle.

In her review of SNOOZE published in INDIE SHAMAN Magazine, June Kent had this to say about what she described as “superlative fiction”: “Engrossing, entertaining and occasionally humorous, SNOOZE also takes a look at a wide range of subjects including levitation, telepathy, lucid dreaming, spirit animals, parallel universes and shamanic-like journeying, giving a wide range of information effortlessly absorbed as you enjoy the story as well as much food for thought.”

If you’d like your own downloadable review copy to share your thoughts via Amazon, Goodreads and elsewhere, read details and contact the author with your request.

Naturally, your generous review would be greatly appreciated even if you simply enjoy the full text now being presented on this blog and numerous podcast platforms. Keep in mind that paperback and ebook versions are for sale. A complimentary online version is also available for your reading pleasure.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to follow Snooze 2 Awaken and/or Sol Luckman Uncensored for alerts as new chapters of the 84 in total that make up Max’s extraordinary story become available.

Sweet dreams!

SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING

By Sol Luckman

CHAPTER EIGHT

Max examined his hands with their long, graceful fingers waving like pale sea grasses in front of his face from under the covers and, though he was still in bed, instantly knew he was dreaming.

Breathing from the bottom of his diaphragm, like yogis are taught to do, and pushing down with his mind, he floated up and hovered, weightless, staring beneath him at his own sleeping form with its bushy eyebrows, incipient whiskers, and two unsightly pimples at the base of the elongated chin.

Otherwise, in sleep, his face was perfectly smooth and relaxed. Besides the slight undulation of his breath, only his eyes were moving, jitterbugging manically under malleable lids.

In one of many epiphanies, small and large, he had experienced over the course of his dreams, Max realized those eyes were watching him even as he was staring at them.

With this thought, he glanced at the window, outside whose curtains the first, barest hint of daylight was beginning to drain the pitch out of the sky. Knowing his father would wake him soon, he made the most of what was left of the night—zipping out into the cool December air in his pajamas and heading south toward Cuba.

As he approached the Keys, little subtropical islands dotting the Straits of Florida like emeralds he had flown over numerous times in real life, dawn was streaking the sky with yellow rays. His cheeks could feel the warmth of the sun surging up against the vast Atlantic horizon.

At that very instant, his peripheral vision registered a small craft tailed by an even smaller one on course to intersect his line of flight in the eastern distance.

Speeding up while adjusting his flight pattern, he approached the two aircraft at a sharper angle—realizing after a few seconds, with a jolt, that the lead plane was the Tempus Fugit piloted by his father!

The red-and-blue-striped Cessna Skyhawk was veering farther and farther east in an attempt to outrun a nasty squall preceding a nastier storm, resembling a dark octopus with spinning tentacles of clouds, blowing up from down around Puerto Rico.

Max found himself fighting the wind as well and instinctively fell in behind the Tempus Fugit, taking advantage of the draft like a race car driver to lessen his wind drag.

In the same motion, he became aware, once again, of the other aerial object tailing the Skyhawk—which was now roughly parallel to him at a distance of maybe two hundred yards. Imagine his astonishment when he grasped that it was no aircraft, but another person sailing through the wispy clouds beside him!

On seeing this most bizarre sight, the first thing he thought of was a story he had once read about Padre Pio—a devout Catholic priest who bore the stigmata, or Christ’s wounds, and was reportedly able to bilocate, or be in two different places at the same time.

Padre Pio, who later became a saint, was sighted by multiple eyewitnesses flying alongside Allied fighter jets during World War II, when he successfully kept the pilots from bombing a beautiful church that was no longer occupied by Axis forces.

The figure flying alongside him in his dream was still too far away for Max to discern his (or her) features. But it was obviously an adult human flying headlong, arms outstretched, at high velocity against the wind just like him.

The storm was gaining quickly. As a group, like a phalanx of birds, the three fliers adjusted their trajectory northeast toward the island of Bermuda in a last-ditch attempt to escape the fast-approaching, spinning darkness.

Coming within a hundred yards of the other airborne person, Max made out that it was a young man—and as he got even closer, unless his eyes were playing tricks on him, he found himself staring at … himself!

Well, himself at eighteen, or thereabouts. Even under emergency weather conditions, Max was relieved to see that he turned out well, actually handsome, with a male version of his mother’s attractive face, no glasses, and a decent physique under faded jeans and a gray Maroon University sweatshirt.

“So that must be where I end up going to college,” he thought.

The older Max took no notice of his younger avatar, remaining singularly focused on the Tempus Fugit, which seemed to have lost its sense of direction and was now sailing directly into the storm’s swirling vortex.

Max, the young boy, felt that he had to do something—but he didn’t know what. He zoomed up and over the Skyhawk until he was peering down into the cockpit, where his father was adjusting instruments and repeating himself into his radio, which appeared to have gone dead.

Max shouted and shouted and banged and banged on the cockpit with his fists, but his father couldn’t hear him. As they neared the outer edge of the vortex, their speed steadily increased—until there was a thunderous BOOM indicating they had broken the sound barrier.

The stormy light began to flicker in searing, multicolored strobes as the wind buffeted the three fliers left and right. The light looked like electricity riding cyclonic currents; Max could feel it, brisk and tingling, like peppermint on his skin.

Instinctively, agonizingly, he was forced to let go of the Cessna and allow it to careen forward at exponentially increasing speeds into the center of the vortex, spinning in a three-sixty as it went, with the older Max hot on its tail.

There was a nearly blinding flash, like a small atomic bomb detonating, and the Tempus Fugit disappeared into the impossible brightness like a stone dropped into a raging wildfire from above.

The older Max, with an alarmed but determined look on his face, hesitated briefly—before shooting forward, following Captain Diver into the empty center of the vortex, and likewise vanishing with a flash from sight.

Copyright © Sol Luckman. All Rights Reserved.

Introducing Sol Luckman’s new visionary novel, CALI THE DESTROYER. Learn about the single most censored story in the history of the human race—and why it matters today.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sol Luckman is a pioneering ink and acrylic painter whose work has been featured on mainstream book covers, the fast-paced trading game BAZAAR, and at least one tattoo on a female leg last sighted in Australia.

Sol is also an acclaimed author of fiction, nonfiction, and humor. His books include the international bestselling CONSCIOUS HEALING, which you can read free online, and its popular sequel, POTENTIATE YOUR DNA, available in English and Spanish.

Building on SNOOZE’s deep dive into lucid dreaming, parallel universes and Hindu mysticism, Sol’s new novel, CALI THE DESTROYER, is a page-turner of a sci-fi tale set in an Orwellian future seeded in the dystopian present that radically rewrites Gnosticism as well as the origins of the earth and humanity.

Sol’s popular book of humor and satire, THE ANGEL’S DICTIONARY: A SPIRITED GLOSSARY FOR THE LITTLE DEVIL IN YOU, received the 2017 National Indie Excellence Award for Humor and was selected as a Finalist in the Humor category of both the 2018 International Book Awards and the 2018 Best Book Awards.