The craziest dream

I had a dream the other night.

It was about my John Dee short stories. I've got five completed right now, and three of them out in circulation.

I put dates and places at the beginning of each story. Usually something fairly generic like "Small town in Texas, 1881" or "New York City, 2001." Mostly I don't mind if an editor doesn't want to use that information, but sometimes it could be helpful, pointing out story specifics without me having to get into it as much in the actual story. Sometimes the places and dates are important; sometimes not so much.

But even if an editor doesn't use those dates and places, I put them at the top of each story (just below the title and my name) for my own purposes. It helps me to keep track of when and where John is.

John has lived an extremely long life, at least by mortal standards. So, he's been around a while.

I know the basic outline of his long life, where he started and where he has traveled to during certain broad periods of time. He's not as well traveled as one might think, at least not until the modern age, but that's more of a quirk of his sometimes varying personality than it is anything else.

But back to my dream. Or maybe it was a nightmare.

I dreamed that I had written one short story for each year of John's life.

Sigh. I won't go into how many years that is, but I did some figuring. I guessed at the average length in words each story would be, then multiplied that by John's age in the year 2008.

I figured I'd have to write about 6 million words. Something like 60 books.

Why, oh why, do I do this to myself?