The In Our Dreams Awake Kickstarter is LIVE
Go here and check out the Kickstarter for In Our Dreams Awake (Co-created by Egg Embry).
I’m a pack rat. I don’t throw away anything I don’t have to. Whether it is strictly because I believe I may need the item again at a future time or because I’ve attached memory to the item and worry that if I get rid of it then the memory will be lost forever… I’m not sure.
Behind all of that is this need not to throw out “useful” things. To not turn my back on an idea simply because it didn’t work at that time. Sometimes it is a matter of just finding the “right” time to put the thing out into the world.
In Our Dreams Awake is that idea for me. It’s a story that has fought and fought to try to get out into the world only to hear that it just wasn’t the right time for it to exist. Whether that was because of my own paralysis or not, I’m not entirely sure. What I do know is that I fully believe that not only is now the time for this story to come out, I have great hope that this release will begin a new chapter for me and comic books. I have a handful of ideas I’d love to bring to life, and I really think that this could help launch things.
So what the heck is In Our Dreams Awake?
Jason Byron dreams of two lives. In one fantasy, magi reactionaries won, technology is banned, and Jason is a portrait painter hiding a contraband telescope. In the other world, he leads a cyberpunk gang amid a future of flooded cities and gilled aliens. When he closes his eyes in one world, he awakes in the next. Jason’s only desire is to wake up in the arms of his true love, Laura… Uh, or is it Fem’a Lin?… If only he knew which one was real?!
I’m obsessed with the idea of What If when it comes to how people live their lives. Those little moments then spiral out to set the course of our lives. How easy it is to focus on the things we don’t have rather than embrace all the gifts we do have. It’s very easy to lose sight of what is important when you always are lamenting the things you don’t possess.
It’s human nature to evaluate and then reevaluate and then wonder about the path not taken.
With In Our Dreams Awake, Egg and I are giving this concept a bit of a twist. Instead of trying to figure out how Jason Byron’s life might have gone wrong, he instead sees a world nearly the opposite of the current life he lives. And that would be fine, we could all use a little bit of fantasy in our lives (or cyberpunk as the case may be), but what happens when those two realities begin to bleed into one another. How would you determine which was the real world and which was the dream world?
And how would you know which one was worth fighting for… or dying for?
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John McGuire is the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. The Trade paperback collecting the first 4 issues is finally back from the printers! If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!
Want to read the first issue for free? Click here! Already read it and eager for more?
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His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.
He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com