Support Rebekah's Literary Journey
Donation protected
Boston bound July 11 – 14, 2024
Readercon 33
The conference on imaginative literature, thirty-third edition.
Boston Quincy Marriott in Quincy, MA
Rebekah is new to the well-respected Readercon convention and is honored to have been accepted as a vendor to present her book Burrows of Blood & Horror.
We are needing additional funds to make attending this conference a reality for Rebekah. She is very excited for this opportunity. You are all invited to help make this possible by contributing and sharing our Gofundme link with family, friends and beyond. Thank you for your gifts and support.
Please read thru the updates recently posted.
Hi, my name is Jan. This fundraising project is for Rebekah L Webb, my daughter. She is the author of the horror novel Burrows of Blood and Shadow. She was recently accepted as a vendor for Readercon, taking place in July, in Boston, MA, and will also be selling at Stokercon, taking place in May in San Diego, CA.
Writing is Rebekah's life and she knows her craft well. She began telling stories even before she could write them down. Rebekah began attending writing conferences in 2010, where she had the opportunity to attend and participate workshop classes, and network with others in the industry. She has been planning to sell at Stokercon for months, gathering supplies and crafting a unique and fun experience for her readers. Her day job helps to cover some of the expenses for her writing career, but, these two conferences are so close together that they require more funds than she can put together on such short notice.
She has worked so hard on getting this far and these conferences are a life-changing opportunity. It's important to me she is able to attend both conferences.
We are asking donations to help offset her conference fees, traveling/airlines tickets, hotel rooms, license fees, shipping costs, and food costs, in addition to unexpected marketing and publishing expenses.
Information about the novel provided by my daughter:
Synopsis:
The dreamers dream all the time, free to go anywhere, to be anything, to see worlds outside themselves, inside themselves and beyond themselves. The Dream Surfer has no past or memory and can only experience life through the dreams and memories of others. He is stuck in a world of doors and windows leading to quiet lives, where pain and tragedy flow like the inevitable path of gentle streams. There is one spot he refuses to go, a dank corner where burrows dive down to dark and brutal depths.
He yearns to break free of his cage and create an existence of his own. But nothing he's done so far has brought him closer to freedom. Maybe the key to escape lies where he has so far feared to tread. The Dream Surfer takes the plunge into the depths of the burrows, where he will travel the turbulent current of pain and cruelty intersecting through various narratives. Will this give him the freedom he craves? Or is it just a way to add more chains?
Thirty-seven tales weave together to shape multiple plots, some which dig into literal flesh, while others rip at the flesh of the mind. Neither guilty or innocent, young or old, are safe in this twisting path of mental and physical horrors.
Excerpts:
He wanted that strength. He wanted to hide behind a wall of courage, letting the past turn into faded background noise. He-
No. That’s where he was before, in that comforting stupor of forgetfulness. It was too late to go back. And while part of him want to turn back and scuttle into the half life he’d been living, the Dream Surfer remember how much he longed to escape.
He wished Angela’s strength had served her in the end. But life didn’t always work that way. Some claimed life wasn’t fair, but the Dream Surfer knew better. Life wasn’t fair or unfair.
Life was a strange, twisted mess of webs, connecting people in many different ways. The connections he used to follow before the burrows formed together in beautiful fractals that created notes of symphonic harmony. The connections he visited now shaped into crooked nests of sorrow that hatched discordant songs with jagged notes. But both were songs. Both were life.
She floated forever, swimming in place in her glass coffin. Time had never really meant anything to her, being a child of the sea. Her old life was filled with days of filtered sun and nights of womb-like dark, where she would float with her kin in sleep after liquid romps through their watery world. The animals of the sea knew not to harm them, that they were set apart from the world of prey and predator.
Now even that fluid passage of time sea was gone. Light never came to her new prison and so there was no day for her, only endless night. Her universe had shrunk to a box, where no amount of movement would ever take her anywhere. Life had ended and half life had begun, a world of drifting thoughts and fading memories.
She still had some memories though. She remembered the noise, thick and smooth, embracing her like arms. She remembered the songs of her kin, pure and flexible — always flowing, ever-changing, giving food and comfort, life and love — the essence of her soul.
And she remembered her people, free and gay, riding the currents and speaking the secrets of the sea. Her mate by her side, stronger than the great white, her little daughter trailing behind, brighter than the surface sun and more essential than song.
That wouldn’t happen to him. He would not die like some animal or, God forbid, some tourist. He would fight to stay alive, fight to get back home, fight like the wolf whose form he borrowed. He just had to wait. In the morning he would revert and then all he had to do was pry the trap apart.
Thomas forced his thoughts away from the pain and toward his family. His wife, Angela, would be home by now, tired from her late night, but not too tired to sneak into little Amber’s room for a covers check, and maybe a bedtime story if Amber had managed to fool the babysitter and stay awake. They’d planned to take tomorrow off and go blackberry picking at the field an hour’s drive from their home. As long as they stayed within the confines of the field’s magic, forms could be changed and unchanged at the drop of a hat. Maybe Amber would even manage to change for the first time. Thomas wished he was in that field now. His thoughts drifted to the annual potluck, when the field was filled with family and laughter. Amber would be able to change by then. She was too young to hunt, but there were plenty of butterflies to practice on and other pups to romp around with while the adults discussed the issues of the pack. News would be shared, rabbits would be caught and shared alongside homemade dishes. It was their time to be without fear of mortals with silver bullets, or scientists with scalpels, or the forces of darkness that sometimes aided both.
He’d bring his famous cheese dip, while Angela would bring her special marinade for the raw rabbits. After lunch, they’d attempt to win the scavenger hunt and be the first to find the hidden deer leg. Thomas never won, not even when his nose was young, but he would keep trying until his dying day.
His dying day. How many more days did he have left? Did he even have the night? The air around him was already cold, and his body felt as if someone was slowly letting the air out of a birthday balloon. All he wanted to do was sleep, to give in to the night and wait for the day to rescue him.
Organizer and beneficiary
Jan Webb
Organizer
Tustin, CA
Rebekah Webb
Beneficiary