Recently, I’ve been thinking about dreams. To be a romantic is to be a dreamer. And so to write romance is to write of dreams. The dream is integral to the romance novel. No wonder, then, that a search for the word dream’ in my latest novel, The Echoes of Love, returns so many results, among them:

… like two people in a dream… trying to break into her daydreams… the echo of a dream long forgotten… eyes took on a dreamy look… filled with a dreamy sort of kindness… she could dream, and her dreams might actually come true… her heart full of dreams… had dreamed so often of those strong, masculine hands upon her… a tremulous, glittering, fragile dream from which she had no desire to awaken… a fevered dream… to allow himself to dream of love… gazing dreamily out at the peaceful scene… alone in a world made up of their dreams… an aura of wispy dream clouds…

Beyond the language of dreaming, the physical dream takes two important forms.

The sleeping dream allows the author to explore the subconscious world of characters. After the heroine, Venetia, is saved from a mugging by a handsome stranger, her sleep is disturbed thus:

Dreams came to her of a dark figure pursuing her through the streets of Venice, cloaked and masked, whispering her name. But each time she turned round, he had gone.

Later in the book, we learn that Paolo is similarly restless come night-time:

He would dream of her tonight, as he had dreamt of her every night since they had met. Those dreams were always tormented, painful – almost nightmares – from which he invariably woke up panting and in a sweat, with at best only a vague recollection of the details. But one thing remained clear: Venetia was always at the heart of them. Was she a danger to him somehow, is that what his subconscious was trying to tell him?

Both Venetia and Paolo are haunted, stalked by some understanding that eludes them. Later, for Venetia dreams of danger mingle with ‘the most erotic dreams she never knew her imagination could conjure’. Wherever she won’t allow herself to go with Paolo by day, she escapes there at night.

And what of the day? Then, my characters dream too. One might think these conscious dreams were easier to cope with; that with the awake, logical mind in force, the emotion of the sleeping dream dissipates. But in fact these daytime dreamings represent the very hearts of the characters – their yearnings for the future; ‘bright, shining dreams of everlasting love’ – and they are tremendously stirring. So much so that Paolo, whose heart has for so long been a closed book, is quite transformed by his visions. For years he has been a man without a past – and a future. And as he explains:  ‘To live without a dream is a frightening prospect.’ It is love that gives him back the ability to dream – that ability so essential to really, truly living. ‘“Thanks to you,” he tells Venetia, “I dream. I hope and believe in love, and in all the wonderful things that the world has to offer.”’

I like to think that by the end of the book Venetia and Paolo are living the reality famously suggested by children’s writer Dr Seuss: ‘You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.’ That’s the true happy ever after!