Raising Sleeping Stones - Blog Tour, Excerpt and Guest Post

Raising Sleeping Stones
Author: P.H.T. Bennet
Publisher: Dramkeeper Publishing
Pages: 360
Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy

​Like every kid in Solasenda, Kiva Stone has been far too busy training for one of the five town guilds to think about something as useless as dreaming. But when she and her sister DeeDee uncover a mysterious plot to get rid of them, their only hope lies with a shadowy group of people who wield unimaginable powers drawn from their dreams. As the girls escape with them up the Varruvyen river, they start learning secret Dreaming Way techniques that have been forbidden for centuries. But how can they learn enough to stand against the enemies chasing them? The answer lies in the shattered history of Orora Crona, the lost Valley of Dreams, and whoever can piece it together first will rule for centuries to come.
For More Information

• Raising Sleeping Stones is available at Amazon.
• Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.
• Watch Trailer 1 and Trailer 2.
• Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

​“Look out!” a spectator warned her. “A tube!”
Kiva whirled around just in time to catch the tube—with her stomach. She instinctively wrapped herself around the tube, hugging it as a shipwreck victim hugs a piece of floating wood. Her chest screamed in pain, and she struggled to get her wind back, but she couldn’t let go of the tube or she’d fall right off the tower and, with the way her luck was going, she’d probably miss landing on top of Christine.
Her instincts were good—she did keep herself from falling, but her weight pulled the tube down and back down the cable it had come on. Her feet danced around, but failed to find anything to grab onto, and within seconds, she was flying: right down the wire toward the other tower. Kiva heard people shouting and running below her, but didn’t dare look—she was too busy trying to stay alive. The wooden tubes were sanded and polished to be as sleek as possible for minimum wind resistance, which meant that the one she was clinging to was very slippery. She managed to grab onto the fixture beneath the pulley and held her breath, hoping for a miracle.
It didn’t come. Instead, her tube hit another tube that had been sent before she slipped, then another and another. Each one shook her hard, weakening her grip on the fixture and slowing her down. A chilling wave of fear washed over her, a feeling that seemed strangely familiar, as if she had experienced this before, and fallen each and every time.
“She’s going to fall!” someone below shouted. “Bring over the safety net!”
“Wait! Look up there!” someone else shouted.
Kiva couldn’t look. She had closed her eyes to concentrate completely on her loosening grip on the tube. It was slowing down, and she had no idea how far she was from the other tower, but knew she couldn’t hang on for much longer. She felt her grip getting weaker, and weaker, and weaker ...
“Let go!” a voice shouted as Kiva felt her tool belt tugged upward. She was so surprised that she released the tube and was carried off by a woman swinging on a free line. A warm, glowing sensation began spreading from the place in the small of her back where the woman was holding onto her belt and replacing her fear and confusion with something else, something full of light and hope. As they reached the bottom of their arc and began to swing upward, the warmth spread to the rest of her body, making her feel free, lighter than air ... Her heart in her throat, Kiva felt as if she might die of joy.
“I’m ... I’m really …” she began weakly.
“Flying, yes!” the woman shouted over the wind, “but not for long!”

​

​P.H.T. Bennet began exploring his dreams when he was a child and has never bothered to stop. He had the good luck to have two daughters, Juliette and Paola, who not only served as the inspirations for DeeDee and Kiva, the main characters of Raising Sleeping Stones, but also helped him turn their family dreamwork sessions into this book. His lucky streak grew when he married his lovely wife, Mim, who tolerates his turning on a light in the middle of the night to write down ever-crazier dreams and talking about them in the morning as long as he lets her sleep in, first. His favorite dreams involve flying, visiting the dead, and replaying nightmares until they reveal their secrets.


Pratt’s latest projects are editing Book Two of the Orora Crona Chronicles and planning a virtual summer dreaming camp with other dream authors.


For More Information

• Visit P.H.T. Bennet’s website.
  
• Connect with P.H.T. on Facebook and Twitter.
  
• Find out more about P.H.T. at Goodreads.
  

​5 Reasons you should read Raising Sleeping Stones at bedtime with your Kids


Or… 5 reasons you should encourage your kids to share their dreams


When author P.H.T. Bennet’s young daughters started waking up in the middle of the night complaining of nightmares, he knew exactly what to do. After decades of doing research on the history of dreams and learning from his own, he was able to quickly show them how to reframe their nightmares and make them much less scary. What he didn’t know was that this would lead to their asking him to show them how to fly in their dreams, become lucid, rewind bad dreams and replay them with better endings.
After a couple months of this, his oldest, a Harry Potter fan, encouraged him to write a book about dreams for kids. He spent the next few years writing Raising Sleeping Stones with his daughters, who experimented with all the dream techniques in the book and inspired several chapters by sharing the dreams they were having along the way. Here are 5 things he’s learned from the experience of listening to their and other kids’ dreams:

• Instead of always asking them about their day at school, ask them about their dreams. They will reveal a lot more about what matters to them.
  
• Embrace the power of dreams your children feel. Instead of telling them “It was only a dream,” validate how cool, scary, or exciting theirs are.
  
• Help them have better dreams. The simple act of talking about dreams often leads to clearer and more useful ones.
  
• Dreams are an amazing was to get closer to your kids. Dreams are honest reflections of their hopes, fears, and relationships.
  
• Don’t be an analyst. Let them explain what a dream means by telling you how it made them feel.