Lauren Evans holds a BA in English from The University of Alabama and an MA in Liberal Studies from The University of North Carolina Wilmington. She lives in the Atlanta suburbs with her husband and their menagerie of pets. Her debut novel, Casket Case, was longlisted for the Cheshire Novel Prize.
A small-town Dream Creator finds that working with her high school rival could be the recipe for a sweet dream—or a less-than-beautiful nightmare—in this charming contemporary romance from the author of Casket Case.
Olivia’s life is exactly how she wants it. She lives in the house she's always loved, she’s close to her family, and her childhood best friend lives down the street. And to top it all off, she loves her job at the World Dream Center, where she designs and implements dreams.
As the invisible strings in the giant web that connects everyone, dreams subconsciously influence people to make decisions—move, change jobs, write a book—that move the plot of the world forward.
Olivia is great at her job. Stellar, even. But when she's assigned to create a dream for one of her friends, things start to unravel. Olivia has followed the Dream Playbook to the letter, suggesting that her friend date a certain coworker. But her friend isn't taking the hint, and it's holding up other Dream Workers who can't move forward until this relationship causes its intended ripples.
Enter Connor, who's an expert at handling difficult dreams with unorthodox methods—the same unorthodox methods that drove Olivia crazy when they went to high school together, making her less than enthused when he's partnered with her to deliver results. Everyone thinks he's a genius at his job, but to Olivia, he's just another handsome face skating through life.
The more they work together, the more sparks fly between them. But the harder Olivia tries to change someone else's course in life, the less sure she becomes of her own. With her job on the line, she has to work fast—and if she's not careful, this assignment could turn into a nightmare.
Chapter 1
Olivia's branch of the World Dream Center hides itself in plain sight in the middle of downtown Birmingham. Olivia swipes her key card to enter the building fifteen minutes early as usual. When she first started her job at the World Dream Center, she arrived even earlier because she was so worried about running into someone and being unable to keep the secret.
The mission of the World Dream Center is to keep the plot of the world moving forward. Small moments lead to big changes in the state of the world, and left to their own devices, people hesitate. They overthink. They miss signs. The WDC steps in to nudge things along while the world sleeps by designing dreams that create or reinforce the guardrails to keep everyone on track.
It's a sensitive business-one that requires confidentiality.
One person's dream can affect more than just their own life. The lives of all human beings throughout time are connected in what the WDC calls webs. Every person has their own web that intersects with the webs of others in their path, and small adjustments to one web can have consequences across the world.
Olivia was working for an advertising agency when she had a dream that a middle-aged man with long gray hair walked into her office and offered her a job designing dreams. She had eaten something spicy for dinner that night, so she dismissed it as indigestion until it happened again. She dismissed that one, too. The third dream was different. She suddenly appeared in a conference room sitting across the table from the gray-haired man.
"Hello, Olivia. My name is Bruce." He reaches across the table to shake her hand. "I have to ask—are you always this difficult to convince?"
He assured her that she would be the perfect WDC employee, that her leadership skills and discernment are exactly what they look for in executives. He took his time explaining the WDC and allowed her to ask as many questions as she wanted. By the end of the dream, she had agreed to take on the challenge and the secrecy of a life designing dreams.
Olivia has never been great with secrets. Her hands were clammy every time she mentioned her new job as a consultant at a private firm, the cover story suggested to the new employees during their first day at the WDC.
Before she even started the job, she thought through some of the questions she might be asked and practiced answering them in the mirror. She convinced herself she wasn't lying. She was maybe stretching the truth a bit. After all, she was consulting. She consulted with other people at the WDC all the time.
As it turned out, no one had any questions. Not her parents. Her siblings. Her friends. They were happy for her, but no one really knew what a consultant did anyway. It reminded Olivia of her usual response to sporting events: Congrats to your team on the thing they won! No need to share any details!
Olivia rides the elevator to her floor and steps out into a hallway lined with windows overlooking the rest of the city. It might seem brazen to put the WDC in a populated area, but Olivia doubts anyone has noticed it. The only thing that differentiates their gray high-rise from the other gray high-rises in the city is the lack of signage.
As the only company in the dream business, the WDC needs no advertising. The small but mighty PR department headquartered in the Grand Rapids branch addresses any negativity about dreams by shifting blame to the pharmaceutical or wellness industries.
The World Dream Center has locations all over the globe, and each branch creates dreams for their own geographical area. The company selected Alabama as a location for one of their regional offices when the Atlanta airport began drawing companies to Georgia in the 1960s, making Alabama a perfect option for the anonymity the WDC desired. Over the years, they have perfected the art of never having the most employees or the tallest building or anything else that might get them noticed.
Olivia passes clusters of cubicles and small shared offices before getting to the middle management area, where the small offices are no longer shared. She unlocks her door but not before sneaking a peek down the hall. As usual, she's the first to arrive.
If she were to keep walking, she would run into the executive wing of large offices lined with windows. She does venture over from time to time to "stretch her legs," which is code for assessing the situation. Which higher-ups come in early? Who stays late? Who keeps their door open to make sure everyone sees them working?
Ninety-nine percent of World Dream Center employees have no idea what people and what webs they're affecting as they're designing dreams, including Olivia. Employees at Olivia's level know they're helping move the world in the right direction, but they have no idea what direction that is.
Those in the highest echelon of the company can see everything. They know exactly what they're manipulating, what future they're ensuring and controlling. The promise of becoming part of that 1 percent at the top incentivizes employees—especially Virgos like Olivia—to be the best dream designer they can be.
Olivia's long-term career goal is to become the vice president of dream creation, a role currently held by the man who recruited her, Bruce Altman. Bruce is Olivia's opposite in almost every way, although they do have similar hairstyles. He has the largest office in the building with two full walls of windows looking out over downtown Birmingham. The rest of the leadership team uses the ample space in their offices for seating areas, but Bruce keeps his floor clear except for a pile of carpet squares against one wall. Employees can choose which square to sit on when he invites them in for visualization exercises or aura readings or anything else he decides might help group dynamics.
In an office full of business casual, he exclusively wears colorful tunics with matching linen pants and jewelry he has accumulated on his travels around the world.
He has been known to cancel meetings based on the vibes in the conference room.
Despite his eccentricities, or maybe because of them, he's a legend at WDC. It takes time to learn the subtle nuances of dream creation. The perfect number of details to include in a dream submission. The small shifts in setting to evoke the right emotions. Bruce came to the WDC with a sort of sixth sense that allows him to move past the surface layer and into what he calls "the core of the thing."
Olivia has heard this advice for years now: "Let's talk about the core of the thing." Bruce's sixth sense usually appeared at a time when she had compartmentalized him in the box with other leaders at the company who enjoyed fancy titles and taking credit for their team's successes while being completely removed from the day-to-day work, only for Bruce to remind her that he's in charge for a reason. Olivia longs for his level of expertise.
There are no official competitions between teams or employees. No giant board to report or celebrate employee performance like other companies might use. Instead, Olivia creates her own competition—with herself.
She sits down at her desk and opens the same file she opens every morning: a spreadsheet tracking all her assignments since she moved up from her first position on the tranillegalscription team to a position in dream design and now as a design team lead. She knows all her stats: average assignment time from the initial notification email to completion, average number of dreams required to complete an assignment, and the number of assignments completed by dreams that were her idea (her favorite stat). She knows assignments and dreams are subjective, but this doesn't stop her from trying to improve.
She has a portfolio of notes arranged just so in hopes of capturing everything she has learned from every assignment over the years, so she can eventually become a dream expert herself. Olivia plans to circumvent any lack of natural talent through hard work, determination, and the refusal to accept anything less than her best, or put simply, by doing too much.
On Olivia's first day, she was handed a copy of the Dream Manual just like every other WDC employee who came before her. The Dream Manual contains everything: a brief history of the company, policies, procedures, and the Playbook. The Playbook is sort of like a cookbook, except instead of food, it holds the recipes for dreams. There are sections for dreams about romantic relationships, family dynamics, workplace situations, fears and anxieties, birth and death, etc. Each section has instructions for how to proceed through the dream options in that section depending on how the assignment unfolds. Teams are supposed to use the Playbook as a guide for every assignment. As such, Olivia's well-worn copy sits on the edge of her desk.
Olivia manages her inbox and completes all her usual morning checks in time to make a lap around the office while the first meetings of the day are taking place in the conference rooms. She likes to keep an eye on all the assignments being completed on her floor to gauge the success of the other teams. To note who is palling around with whom.