Author Dreams

The other night I had one of those dreams that's so realistic when you wake up, you're not sure if it's true.  I dreamed that when I woke up and did my usual 'look at my Author Page to see if I picked up any new reviews', someone had one-starred all my books.  Which is kind of tragic when the book in question only has one or two reviews.  In the dream, I didn't go look at the reviews, but for some reason I had it my head that they weren't real reviews.  More like they were left there by someone being spiteful.  And I remember thinking that I would have to contact Amazon about that.  Then I woke up.

And I did what I always do after the major events of the morning are taken care of, I checked my Author Page to see if anyone had left any new reviews.  Nope.  Whew.

But it could happen.  Which is probably why dreams like that leave me in a cold sweat. 

I like the dream where I wake up and check my sales and there's a sudden spike better. Although that dream usually leaves me feeling down when I see reality.  The good dream probably made the bad dream easier to dismiss, though. 

These dreams are more frequent than I'd like.  I'm sure other authors have similar ones.  So much of this publishing thing (self or otherwise) is out of our hands once we get the book out there in the world.  You write a good book that is generally well received and one person comes along with a twist in their undies, and one-stars it.  You see sudden sales when you haven't really done anything and you have no reason you can point to for the spike, so you can't replicate it for more sales. 

And maybe that what the dream is all about - feeling out of control.  :shrug:    It's been a running theme in my dreams for longer than I can remember. 

What do you think?  Do you have similar dreams?