You Wake Dreaming

Robin, a quirky anorectic poet, wakes up one morning on the wrong side of fifty lamenting the past half century. None of Robin’s life dreams, to publish a book, to live in a cabin by the river, and to find true love, have come true.

It all starts with the Seattle earthquake, 1965. Eve, Robin’s mother, disappears. Howard, Robin’s father, grows morbidly obese on the couch. Robin’s older sister, as if abducted by aliens and implanted, grows huge breasts overnight, and in turn also disappears, leaving Robin to wait on their father hand and foot.

Later, after an affair with a teacher and the discovery and exploration of mixed alcohols, Robin quits college to write three novels in ten years, none of which get published. Eventually, Robin moves to Oregon, goes back to school, meets Sam, and falls in love. After a blissful summer, Sam leaves on a painting trip to Europe and never returns.

Robin, grieving, adopts a shelter cat, Maurice, dusts off the typewriter, and begins to write poems again. Robin’s best friend, Orion, a flamboyant drama teacher obsessed with the murdered designer, Paulo Scozzi, is working on a play. They discuss the word fashionable at length, drop all their other dysfunctional friends, and become a world unto themselves.

Meanwhile, on the patio at the Cosmic Cup coffee shop, a woman has chained herself to a tree, the naked lady mannequin has disappeared from the pawn shop window, Etta Crumble, Robin’s acutely asthmatic landlady, has increased the rent, Maurice desperately needs fixed, and the end of the world is said to be imminent.

Things begin to look up when Millicent, a beautiful college student and barista, invites Robin to a writing group and hatches a plot to publish Robin’s poems. Unfortunately this leads to a huge falling out with Orion.