If life is but a dream, to what do we awake? The central premise of Dreamstate: A Conspiracy Theory, is the admittedly ridiculous but incontrovertibly true assertion that the universe does not exist. This is something you can understand conceptually, like watching a documentary about Antarctica, or experientially, like moving to Antarctica. There’s also a related phenomenon where you fall asleep watching the documentary and wake up in the frozen wasteland. That’s gotta be weird, but the truth is that you’re asleep in a barren wasteland dreaming that you’re not, so that’s where waking up gets you.

Part family memoir, part political commentary, part apologia, Dream State is all Floridian, telling the grand and sometimes crazy story of the twenty-seventh state through the eyes of one of its native daughters. Acclaimed journalist and NPR commentator Diane Roberts has many family secrets and she's ready to tell them. Like the time her cousin state Senator Luther Tucker wrapped his Caddy around a tree, allegedly with a jug of moonshine on the seat next to him. Or how cousin Susan Branford was given an African girl for her eighth birthday. Or the time when cousin Enid Broward was made the May Queen of 1907, even though her daddy the governor shocked the state by trying to drain the entire Everglades. Roberts' ancestors helped settle Florida, kill off its pesky Indians, enslave some of its inhabitants, clear its forests, lay its train tracks, and pave its roads, all the time weaving themselves into the very fabric of this dangling chad of a state. With a storyteller's talent for setting great scenes, Roberts lays out the sweeping history of eight geberations of Browards and Bradfords, Tuckers anf Robertses, even as she Forest Gumps them into situations with more historically familiar names. Whether it's the American court of Catherine de Médicis, the Tallahassee court of Katherine Harris, Henry Flagler's boardroom -- not to mention his bedroom -- or Jeb Bush's statehouse, you're likely to find a branch or a root of the Roberts family growing entangled nearby. Starting in the recent past with the botched presidential election of 2000, Roberts introduces the many sides of the debate, coincidentally peopled with cousins both kissing and close. She then goes back to Florida's first inhabitants, showing how this alluring peninsula many called a paradise played a role in the destiny of those who settled there. Following their colorful progress up to the present, she renders them all with a deep, familial affection. Florida has forced itself into the collective American unconscious with its messed-up elections, anthrax scares, shark attacks,boat lifts, snowbirds, and the Bush dynasty. While exposing the real people whom Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard have been fictionalizing for years, Dream State ultimately reveals the cogs and wheels that make the state tick.

An eminent film writer looks behind the curtain of the California dream It hardly needs to be argued: nothing has contributed more to the mythology of California than the movies. Fed by the film industry, the California dream is instantly recognizable to people everywhere yet remains evasive for nearly everyone, including Californians themselves. That paradox is the subject of longtime San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle's first book in nine years. The opposite of a dry historical primer, California in the Movies is a freewheeling journey through several dozen big-screen visions of the Golden State, with LaSalle's unmistakable contrarian humor as the guide. His writing, unerringly perceptive and resistant to cliché, brings clarity to the haze of Hollywood reverie. He leaps effortlessly between genres and generations, moving with ease from Double Indemnity to the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Boyz N the Hood to Booksmart. There are natural disasters, heinous crimes, dubious utopias, dangerous romances, and unforgettable nights. Equally entertaining and unsettling, this book is a bold dissection of the California dream and its hypnotizing effect on the modern world.

Square Squire and the Journey to DreamState, my 394-page, 96,729-word novel, is a semiautobiographical story of growing up geeky in the last innocent time when all the basketball players had hopes and none of the gangs had guns. Squire Brooks is a precocious nerd whose only awareness of the transitions in his neighborhood of Compton, California, in the 60s is the opportunity to chuck stones at the increasing number of For Sale signs in the yards of his white neighbors. His fathers deepening involvement in civil rights creates increasing chaos in his home, where Squire writes his short stories and daydreams. Adolescence brings peer-driven lessons about girls, puberty, girls, bullies, and girls as he navigates the temptations during his elementary, junior high, and high school years. Squires daydreaming has developed into an imaginative mechanism that frees his mind from all the chaos and allows him to escape to a dream state whenever he writes. After graduating from high school and on a road trip with his dog, Julius, Squire meets Octavia Steves, who teaches him that his dream state is actually a form of meditation that could help him become the writer of his dreams.

"In prose which somehow manages to be both precise and hallucinatory at the same time, Moira Crone gives us a luminous Louisiana of her own. Each of these (eight) wonderful tales is as complex as any novel, as vivid and fast and surprising as your life".--Lee Smith, author of "Oral History".

Learn the methods used by mystics and seers worldwide to awaken consciousness in the dream state. Among the ancient mystics, shamans, Egyptians, Tibetans, and even modern investigators like Carl Jung, consciousness and the dream state have been of the utmost spiritual and psychological importance. Astral projection, lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences and vision quests are all part of the extensive practical science of Dream Yoga, the sacred knowledge of consciously harnessing the power of the dream state. Any sincere practitioner who actively utilizes the clues in this book can open the doors to the inner dimensions of nature and the soul, and thereby come to know the truth of the mysteries that exist beyond the reach of our physical senses. * Provides step-by-step guidance leading to personal experience in the internal worlds * Explains how to remember dreams and how to understand them * Filled with examples from all the world’s religions Chapters include: Consciousness, The Awakening of Consciousness, Fascination, Sleep, Remembering Oneself, Complementary Practice, Patience and Tenacity, On Dreams, Dreams and Visions, Key of SOL, Dream Yoga Discipline, Special Nourishment to Develop the Power of the Memory, Tantric Dream, The Return Practice, The Four Blessings, The Guardian Angel, Hod (The Astral World), The Science of Meditation, Chapter 13: Dream Interpretation, Types of Dreams, Rules for Dream Interpretation, Astral Projection, The Astral Body, Useless Dreams

Cole is a college student trying his best to lead a normal life. He has a loving Mother, a bold sister, an abusive Girlfriend, and his best friend, Belle. He also suffers a scientific anomaly he calls "The Dream State". Once in the dream state, he is shifted to an alternative reality. Some of these realities are pleasant, and some carry nightmares. He attempts to balance the dream state with reality, but as he does, his personal life begins to unravel. Can he find the peace he needs to be free from the dream state? What is the dream state? Join Cole himself as he recalls his life and explains his discoveries.