I like to post a romance every so often. I wrote this before iPods, as you'll see. A beautiful woman attempts to release a long time lover from his obligation.
Eleanor's loneliness is relieved by her fantasies. At first, she's unable to control them, but eventually one fantasy starts to become reality - or is she going mad? Crazy or not, happiness enters her life, though behind her she leaves confusion and a police search for a missing person.
Adam Burbank awakes from a lucid dream - a state in which the dreamer is aware of dreaming and allows a high degree of control over what happens. He's not in his bedroom, not even in England. Unable to wake to his real life, he soon realises the sumptuous apartment in Monaco is a dream from which he cannot escape. He's in a permanent lucid dream and it's more like authentic living, not the fantasies of normal dreaming.
A few years ago, I belonged to a writers' workshop where we were challenged to write a story that was badly written, as though by an amateur, yet still holds the reader's interest. It's likely that other writers will appreciate it more than non-writers since the former should recognise all of the deliberate errors.
Just prior to my daughter's 21st, I was waiting for her in a London back street. I was in my car, studying a grim four storey house and contemplating the dangers to young women such as her. This story was the result, with a twist in the tail.