Memoirs of a Dreamer: Book I: Jenna Frey Becomes

By Amelia Branch

Jenna Frey is a single mother of two boys who finally finds success after years of struggle until the day she finds out that she is really Lasayla, a being who seeded into her years ago, from another dimension. She is much, much more than ever imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483531779

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Not all storms are caused by Mother Nature

CHAPTER 1

I was in the backyard trying to bar-b-cue and I wasn’t exactly doing a super bang up job at it. The chicken was getting stuck to the grill and I was agitated. I had marinated veggies and fruit and then put them inside a little coffin of tin foil, because I’m sure that they were burnt to hell too by now. I don’t know why I get these crazy ideas that I can cook from these random cooking shows at 2 a.m., but I have to give it to myself – when I suck at something, I really give it my all! And then to top it all off? The storm clouds rolled in. I was pissed because there was nothing on the news about a storm. I was sure of it. I checked. I had been running around so much of late doing a book tour, and all I wanted was to be home with my boys in the backyard and to grill us a dinner. I didn’t feel that was too much to ask. I picked today because it was supposed to be beautiful and nice, and when it got dark I would be able to sit on my new patio set and drink a beer. I know it doesn’t sound pretty, does it? Or maybe pretty isn’t a good word for it. Classy fits better. I’m supposed to be the type of person that writes books that everyone wants to read, so why do I fill my fridge with Bud Light Lime and not wine? Isn’t that what successful and classy writers do? Well, I guess I’m not classy and I’m certainly not fancy, because that is what I wanted. A cold beer, in the bottle and not in a mug or glass, is what I always want. If I’m being completely honest, there is a bottle of Jager in the freezer, too. So there you have it.

I just bought a patio set, because it was getting warm out and I wanted to finally have that experience. It’s the experience where you sit down on your patio set, it’s dark, you’ve worked hard, and you have a beer under the stars, and that is when I planned to say it to myself. Finally. You made it kiddo. You did it. It’s dramatic and ridiculous, I know, but we all have our vices. Did I mention I just bought my first house about a month ago? Well to be exact, it was more like almost six months ago, but this is the first stretch of more than a week that I had actually been here without traveling since I went to settlement. Just yesterday, if truth be told, I hung the last picture that sat leaning against the wall of my dining room. It was a nothing-too-special, earth toned picture of lilies that I’ve had for years with a frame that I spray painted from a gnarly, bright orange to a dark chocolate a few years back. I also put away the last box that sat like a dead plant in the corner. It was filled with my old photo albums, my wedding album and my scrapbooks. Oh the scrapbook fad came in like a lion and then went out like a....like a....screw it! I gave up on it. Okay? I wanted to make it sound better, but sometimes you just call it what it is; I gave up on it. Sort of like I gave up on selling Mary Kay and in some cases, what I still say to myself on quiet nights when no one is around to hear it or judge me, my own marriage. I guess deep down that box was labeled my failures in invisible ink and my heart knew it, so I left it there.

It is a decent sized home in a decent area. The house itself wasn’t exactly spectacular looking at it from the outside, because every other house around it looked exactly the same. It was the proverbial cookie cutter home. If you walked out my front door and turned your head either to the left or to the right you would see nothing but them as far as the eye can see until the road bends, and then the cookie cutter homes go off into the sunset. But yet, it was mine. It was all mine. I did it by myself and for myself, of my own hard work and of my own volition. The development itself was brand new. It was so new that there were still sod patches in the front yards of the homes that had just been built. Some of my neighbors had these pretty flowering bushes and plants out front and then you look at my house? Weeds. I was becoming THAT neighbor. The neighbor who buys a $500,000 house and then has weeds. In my defense, I haven’t had a chance to really do much of anything given that I traveled so much, and most of the time it was winter up until now. It was only the end of April so I really did have it on my list of things to do. Maybe I should put up a sign out front that says flowers coming soon....I promise, so I don’t continue to get the ugly eye when I walk out to get my mail from the mailbox at the end of the driveway.

I wish that I could say that I bought this house because in its entirety it spoke to me. I want to say that when I drove through this new neighborhood that first day that there was this concrete, deep down, speak to me like Jesus feeling in my gut that said this is where you belong, but that wouldn’t really be the truth. I had been looking for a solid month and nothing really seemed to do it for me. Old houses, new houses, it didn’t matter. I wanted that you’re home feeling and basically just because I could at this point. I had the money now and I wanted this house to represent something to me every single time I walked through its doors. It had to fit a lot of functions. It had to be my sanctuary and also give me inspiration if I was going to live here given that I need to write and work. I had to be able to walk through its doors and feel like I was not only home and safe and calm, but I had to also be able to wake up, look out its windows and have these sort of revelations, these pings as I call them, so that I could get motivated from both my surroundings and within myself. I needed that again. I was tired and I needed to get grounded. I was ecstatic with my life, but I was tired too.

I didn’t even want to walk through the doors of this place. My realtor, the very patient and skilled, Maria, told me to just do it. I’m pretty sure the child in me stomped through the doors, because well, I don’t wanna. But then it happened. I felt something. It was a swirl of a spark for the possibility of maybe liking this place after all. It had a two car garage and I liked that from the outside. On the inside, when you walk in the front door, the first thing you see is a high ceiling and to the right is a beautifully opened staircase going straight up to the second floor. Further to the right, passed the staircase, was a living area and behind that was a dining room. Off of the dining room, and if you were to walk straight back from the front door, passed the staircase, was the huge kitchen. I remember seeing the kitchen for the first time and I fell in love with the center island with its granite countertop. The cabinets went to the ceiling and there was crown molding already there. The appliances were all in steel and the stove top had grates on top that looked like something you would see in an upper class restaurant. The oven was built into the wall next to it, and then even next to that was a pantry that was bigger than the bedroom closet I had in my rental house. I didn’t even know this type of thing existed. At least not here. Maybe in Beverly Hills or something, but not here. Not in some urban development in Maryland.

To the left of the kitchen was a room that had French doors. This same room butted up against the garage and was the only part of the house that was closed in. Right before this room next to the kitchen, there was another set of large French doors that walked out onto a stone patio. From there you can see nothing but the bay. About 200 yards out there was even a little beach area. Then it was October, so it was getting cold and blustery, and the beauty of it couldn’t be seen just then, but it was there. I could even see people still taking their boats out for a spin on the water. The die hards, I call them. Oh yeah. I was getting that feeling alright. It was brewing and threatening to come up and out of me into this thing called home bliss. I tried to keep the excitement to myself. It was there though and I have an awful poker face. Maria said there was more and brought me back inside. She showed me the little room. That little room was probably 8 x 10 and she told me to imagine my office there, because it had windows that almost went floor to ceiling and I could see directly out onto the bay. I just smiled. She knew she had me. She knew it. She was proud of herself and rightfully so. And then she did it. She told me that she left the absolute best for last. I wanted to look at her and say, are you kidding me? It gets better?, but I didn’t. The child that was stomping into this house just five minutes ago was now clapping inside screaming, Hercules, Hercules!, you know like the character on Dr. Doolittle? I was about to burst open.

She took me up the gorgeous staircase to the top of the stairs, turned me right and I faced double doors. I guess I sat there for too long, because then she told me, go ahead, open them, with a smile that said I got her!. I opened the doors and it happened. It rushed in and took me hostage. I was home. It was a master bedroom to rule all master bedrooms. Well, at least to me it was. Just like the windows downstairs, these too went almost floor to ceiling and light poured in like the heavens. If there could be angels singing this would be the time. I had been shot with an arrow. I was done. To the left in bedroom was another set of double doors and when you opened them it brought you into the master bath. I don’t know what I was more excited about; the fact that I had this huge garden tub that sunk into the floor next to windows that gave me a side view of the bay or the fact that my toilet had its own special room with a door. A door! It made me think of Carrie in Sex in the City 2 when she saw her walk-in closet for the first time and loved, loved, loved it. I was loving, loving, loving this, too. There was a double vanity with a huge mirror that matched the vanities’ length, but also a stand up shower between the vanity and the door to the toilet area.

So what’s the catch? I asked her. This is too good to be true right? I mean how on God’s earth do I have a house that sits on the bay, has almost 3,000 square feet, my own office, three bedrooms, two more bathrooms (including the cute little powder room under the staircase), and it is only this much. I mean to me, $500,000 was a big deal, but I didn’t understand how this was possible. It made no sense.

Well...., she said. She said it in that tone that meant brace yourself, this is when you get disappointed.

Another couple designed this house, but something happened to them and a few days before they went to the table to sign the papers, and they canceled on it all. Apparently, the wife was having some huge, drummed up affair and got caught. It’s all I really know, but it was scandalous, for sure. Because of that, and because it’s not what you necessarily would want because it was built to their specifications, and also because the builder is sort of getting screwed here, if I can say so ever so delicately, you are being given an opportunity. They want to put this eye sore of a situation behind them and recoup their costs in whatever way they can.

So that folks is how I bought the eye sore. Obviously to me it was not an eye sore. To me it was everything I needed and wanted without knowing it. Someone else designed it, but they designed it for me. It went so fast that I was at the table, signing my life away, writing the hugest check I had ever wrote in my entire life. Within an hour, I walked out with the keys to their eye sore, and my dream. However, at the same time, a book that I had starting writting four years ago was now published.

I want to say that I wrote this book and that it was the fruits of my arduous labor, and I sent it off in an envelope signed Please, please, please! For the Love of God, please publish my book! I’m begging you!, but that didn’t happen either. It was called The Diaries of the Fluffy Single Mom, loosely based on my life as a size 14, eh hem, okay, fine a size 16 single mother and what she learned through her travels. It had everything from the character learning how to start her life over following divorce, to the new friends she made, to the men she dated, and raising kids through the middle. Everyone that I knew was a character; no one was spared, although I changed some of their details.

When I finally finished the book it was a big flipping deal. It was the first time in my life I had finished a project. I knew that I wanted it to be a series of books and I had finished the first book. I didn’t care one bit if it ever got published actually. I just wanted to complete something like this and then I did. How in the hell a single woman with two kids does something like this is beyond me. No, that’s not true. I wholeheartedly believe that I was being guided and THAT is how it happened. Not just the book, but all of it. When I made the announcement that I had finished it was met with such applause and want that I decided, why not, give it a shot. Publish it yourself and send it out. I signed up with an online publisher named Book Baby. They were able to give me an editor through their site. That is when I met the most wonderful person pretty much ever named Linda. She took what I wrote and gave me suggestions and helpful pushes along the way. She knew I was a newbie, but said that she believed in me. Two months later after arduous editing, long nights of going back and forth with myself asking, Am I doing the right thing?, This is going to be crap writing and everyone around the world will know it now, nope! Believe in yourself and keep going. You’re doing something right, it was ready for the next step.

The edits were done and then Book Baby took my hand and helped me publish not only an eBook, but also hardcover. I asked my grandparents for the loan for the hard cover version of my book. I needed a good sum of money and after a week of deliberations on their end, they gave it to me. They said not to ask them for money again (I say laughing), but they gave it to me. I ordered 500 books. Between the e-book and the hardcover versions of the books, Book Baby took my very first project and sent it into stores all over the world, both online and in store. I remember the day both versions hit the stores. I was haggard and looked like death. I was busy and barely sleeping. I was nervous, scared to death, but excited and thrilled. That day was a day that I add to my line of existence. It was a landmark for me and I placed it on my mental graph of achievements. Before I knew it I was being asked to do talks or lectures at local schools and then I did an interview for the local paper. It spun completely and totally out of control, but in a good way. Within two years of my book being published I was traveling all over and even had my first trip to Italy that I paid for by myself, taking my boys with me. For all intents and purposes I was living the dream.

When a large publishing company got wind of me, they came to me with an offer. I took it. They gave me a contract and in it it said that I needed to complete no less than three more books. I signed on the dotted line without a second thought. Surely I could do this right? Of course I can! I thought. That is when I was handed a check the sum of which was the largest amount of money I had ever seen. It was an advance on what I had already finished and whatever royalties came with it through their publishing. I was already into my second book in the series, so the advance included that book too. I still remember depositing it into my bank account scared to death that it would be a fake or it was wrong somehow, and that everyone in the bank would know it. But it wasn’t. It was real. This was happening.

That is when I decided it was time to buy a house and invest in not only myself at this point, but also to give my boys a place to call home. I had moved a lot and I hated it before all of this occurred. I needed that place, those four walls to call home and so did they. I started looking around as I explained earlier, but then I got the phone call from the publishing company about doing a book tour. They said it wouldn’t be too crazy, just 14 cities. Yeah, that didn’t sound too bad right? Well, they didn’t tell me that it meant I would be in three different book stores everyday for days at a time with only a few days break in between to go home and be a mom. Somehow in between even all of that I found this house and bought it. I was asked to do an all day workshop for new writers a few months into the new house and I pulled that off too. I added that to the same achievement timeline. They were adding up fast, but so was the need for me to be home. I needed to do that. I had been running and running and running, and I was starting to feel detached from my life. I call it the band-aid paradigm; you slowly pull the band-aid off from a cut so it doesn’t hurt, and this was sort of the same thing. The more traveling I did, the more I was pulling off the band-aid from being centered in my skin, my own life. This isn’t to say that I was ungrateful, because I wasn’t. Everybody needs some time to just be home and decompress.

So this brings me back to where we started. I was home now. I was bar-b-cue’ing and doing a sucky job. My boys, Christian and Quinn, were running around the backyard and would go down to the beach, and come back up. I had the radio going and if you take out the fact that it was getting ready to storm and I hacked up our food to the point where I needed to call for a pizza, it was indeed a good day.

Mom! Do you see that? Do you see those clouds? They’re weird, Quinn said and he was pointing sort of behind where I was. I walked towards him and turned around to look at the storm clouds he was pointing at. I had to put my right hand up to my eyes like a visor so I could actually see them because the sun sort of came through behind them in certain spots like gauges from a giant knife. I already knew it was going to storm, because I had seen some of the clouds coming over the house in the sky. But what I saw? It was nothing I had ever seen before in all my 36 years.

I looked up and there was this huge and I do mean huge cloud. It was thick. It was purple, black and gray. It had nubs and bumps, and it was oblong in shape. It had more dimension to it than I had ever seen. It was plain ominous and threatening.

Look over there, Mom!, Christian yelled out. I looked and to the right of the cloud, sort of coming around it and to the side, was a funnel cloud. It reminded me of one of those tops we play with as a child. It spun out from behind this huge lesion of a cloud in the sky and then sat right next to it spinning and toiling. I could see the funnel become elongated as if it would turn into a bon-a-fide twister, but it never really hit the ground. Actually, it didn’t even come down far enough that I would consider it to be a twister. It was like it was going to give birth to one, but then it sort of sat there, stalled.

What in the hell is going on? I said confused. The wind had picked up a little bit, but nothing that would have made me worry about a tornado. This plain just didn’t make sense to me and I could feel something starting inside of me. It is this feeling of anxiety that I get before something bad is going to happen. It hits my chest like a war horse and feathers out to my entire torso. Usually, this feeling is manageable, but when there are times when it is going to be something very bad either to someone I love or something that will occur out in the world, I will feel this until the event has happened. So I knew we were in trouble.

And then it happened. It happened right there as I stood in my backyard, next to my two boys. The funnel cloud itself started to shimmer and turn. The bright Clorox white color of it, that I could never get my own whites to look like, started to become more of this clear gelatinous form, and it moved. And this funnel cloud wasn’t exactly small either. It wasn’t the same size as the storm cloud, but it wasn’t that much smaller in comparison. It moved within the storm cloud itself. Not around it, not under it, within it. The funnel cloud became the sort of eye of this storm that was brewing. Lightening bounced around the under belly of this storm cloud and you could hear faint thunder. It was thunder that time tells us should be louder, but it wasn’t. It was muted like it was a sigh crying out from being invaded by this funnel cloud that was not actually even a funnel cloud anymore. I could still see what it turned into, because light danced around its globbed edges in rainbow colors. It was almost like it was a liquid metal and light was dancing off of that, maybe.

Just when I thought to myself, this is like some freaky Sci-Fi movie, something else happened. The shimmering gel inside the storm cloud started to break apart into shapes, all different shapes, but clearly defined shapes. And as I stood there trying to figure out what those shapes actually were, they broke off, and started to fall from the sky. Some of the pieces hit the ground and by the time they did you knew what they were. You could see them. They had a black and gold color. They hit the ground at some distance and all I heard was a loud Boom! It was so loud that I could feel it under my own feet from the ground. Other pieces turned into these sort of ships and zoomed above our heads