Could it be there’s no such thing as the paranormal … only infinite varieties of normal we’ve yet to understand?

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 THIRTY-EIGHT

Max awoke with a start, still half in the dream world and expecting to find himself alone under a blazing sun on a deserted beach. Instead, removing his mask, he discovered Tuesday seated beside him lit up by the searing light from his desk lamp gently squeezing his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Max,” she said softly. “You were just having a dream.”

“Tuesday?” he asked, squinting in the brightness.

“Yes, Max. I’m here.”

“Me, too, old boy,” said Raul, who Max realized as his eyes adjusted was seated in his chair just behind Tuesday in the lamp’s penumbra.

“What time is it?” asked Max, sitting up, yawning, and looking around confusedly while still clutching Pablo. Without his contacts, his vision was far from perfect, though at such close range he was able to make out the contours of things.

“It’s a little after ten,” said Tuesday.

“At night?” asked Max.

“Of course.”

“You’re in bed frightfully early,” said Raul.

“I was just … beditating,” said Max.

“I’m sure you were. Was Pablo beditating with you?”

“He was teaching me how to beditate.”

“How was your meeting with Professor Icarus?” asked Tuesday.

“Couldn’t this have waited?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Max was starting to get his bearings. Tuesday’s question about Professor Icarus opened the floodgates on the day’s events—which poured back into his consciousness like a waterfall. “Our meeting was … enlightening. So was reading my mother’s essay on cryptids,” he replied, motioning toward the old manuscript he had left on top of his desk.

“Cryptology, did you say?” asked Raul.

“Cryptids,” said Max. “Creatures that are hard to explain. Like yourself.”

Tuesday laughed and Raul smiled sarcastically. “Jolly good one,” he admitted.

“What did you find out?” asked Tuesday.

“I learned that my father … that he …”

“Come on, man, spit it out!” said Raul.

“… disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle.”

“Oh, I could have told you that,” said Tuesday.

“Come again?”

“It was obvious, wasn’t it? You dreamed about him vanishing into a vortex resembling the eye of a hurricane. But it was after hurricane season when he actually disappeared.”

The simple, indisputable logic of Tuesday’s observation momentarily stunned Max. Hurricane season in the Gulf ran from June through November, with few major storms occurring after October. His father disappeared January 1^st. “How long have you known?” he asked at last.

“Since right after it happened. Mom and I independently reached the same conclusion.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I tried.”

“You did?”

“But you wouldn’t listen. Remember the Cold War years of your adolescence?”

“Okay. So maybe I didn’t listen.”

“I’m listening,” interjected Raul. “And I still don’t understand a bloody thing you two are saying. What’s this mumbo jumbo about the Bermuda Triangle?”

“If only it were mumbo jumbo,” said Max. “It seems the Bermuda Triangle constitutes a wormhole into time-space. My mother actually called it a vortex point. That’s why so many people—including my father, apparently—just blip out in that area.”

“Ah. Now I see,” said Raul.

“Professor Icarus confirmed this?” asked Tuesday.

“He didn’t confirm it. He just explained how it could be possible—and my mother posthumously filled in some of the technical details.”

“Did the professor think Captain Diver might be in actual danger, Max?”

“Yes.”

“Serious danger?”

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

Tuesday shifted in her chair and sighed audibly. “Well, maybe what Raul and I just discovered will help you decide.”

“What you just … discovered?”

“Show him, Raul.”

“Are you sure you want to see this, old chap?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not really.”

Raul pulled up a website on his iPhone, which he leaned forward and handed to Max. The site was dedicated to exposing some sort of conspiracy theory about European scientists who, a quarter of a century ago, had supposedly developed a mind-control methodology using microchips to scramble brainwaves called Operation Paper Cut.

“Sound familiar?” asked Tuesday.

“Hand me my glasses, will you?” said Max.

“Where are they?”

“On my desk. Behind mom’s paper.”

After putting on his glasses, Max continued reading. He learned that this group of researchers—many of whom were students of Nazi scientists—had reputedly inherited a great deal of dangerous knowledge (including much of an esoteric nature) straight from the Third Reich, which was infamously obsessed with utilizing the paranormal for planetary control.

“Well, this is a fascinating website,” said Max. “But I don’t really see how it applies to me.”

“Scroll down to the group photo,” suggested Raul.

Max scrolled down until he found an old Polaroid of the scientists allegedly behind Operation Paper Cut. The photograph was taken in a sunlit park, identified as Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, and featured ten Caucasian men of varying ages dressed in lab jackets in two rows of five. “I still don’t get it,” he said.

“Check out the scientist with round glasses in the first row,” said Tuesday.

Max could hardly believe his eyes. There, without question, wearing wire-rimmed glasses on his thin, carved face, was a younger version of Dr. Morrow!

“This can’t be,” gasped Max.

“But it is,” said Tuesday.

“Then why does the caption identify him as Guillaume Demain?”

“I wondered the same thing,” said Raul. “Until it dawned on me, thanks to my years of French, which had previously only come in handy at restaurants and in a handful of amorous encounters, that Guillaume Demain translates to—”

“William Morrow,” said Max.

“Précisément.”

“He must have changed his name,” said Tuesday, “when he came to the United States to work for—”

“The CIA,” said Max.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I think I always knew. I think even my father suspected and hinted at it many times.”

“There’s definitely a historical precedent,” said Tuesday. “After World War II, a number of Nazi scientists involved in all kinds of black ops were recruited to work for the United States by the CIA through something called Operation Paperclip.”

“Probably some of the same bastards who mentored Demain,” put in Raul.

“Max, do you think your father knew the specifics about Dr. Morrow’s past?” asked Tuesday.

“I have no idea. My gut says no.”

“Mine, too.”

“But there’s no way I can be sure.”

“Well, actually, maybe there is,” said Raul.

“How?” asked Max.

“There’s more, mate.”

“More?”

“Raul and I followed up with some additional research on the Demain-Morrow connection,” said Tuesday.

“It appears he wasn’t just a mind-controlling microchipper,” said Raul. “That was small potatoes. He was also quite keen on harnessing the power of—”

“Time-space.”

“Crikey, Max. Could we please be allowed to finish our own sentences?”

“Rumor has it,” continued Tuesday, “that Demain, now going by Morrow, started a special CIA program under cover of the Navy called Project Thunderbird.”

“Project … Thunderbird?”

“Kind of strange, huh? Anyway, the story goes Project Thunderbird’s object was to establish a bridge between the cosmic and material sectors in order to gain access to unlimited energy—and thus unlimited power.”

“We’re talking world domination,” said Raul.

“Oh, is that all?” said Max.

“This must be why Morrow has always been so interested in you,” said Tuesday.

“Because he thinks he can use me to establish the bridge?”

“He thinks you can be the bridge,” said Raul. “Under his direct mind control.”

“That’s crazy.”

“No crazier than levitating objects, my friend.”

With the distinct impression his life was quickly funneling down to a single point of choice that was more like an inevitability, Max considered this new wave of information. Like most things that initially struck him as absurd, he reluctantly conceded that every bit of it was probably true.

“Raul, you said there was a way to be sure about the nature of my father’s involvement with Project Thunderbird.”

“I said there might be a way.”

“What if the truth isn’t pleasant, Max?” asked Tuesday. “What if you learn that your father was … brainwashed?”

“Or CIA?” said Raul.

“Whatever I find out,” said Max, “I don’t think it will change what I do. But at least I’ll be doing it with eyes wide open.”

“So you really want to go through with it?” asked Raul. “Even if it means risking getting expelled—or worse?”

“I really want to hear what you have in mind. Then I’ll consider my options.”

“Understood. Why don’t you get dressed and we can all go down to the kitchen. I’ll make us some tapioca pudding while we chat. I’m thoroughly famished.”

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.

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.