Yet We Sleep, We Dream

by JL Peridot

Genre: Scifi Fantasy Romance, Shakespearean Retelling

He’ll need more than magic to fix this one

Meet Nick Button.

A whip-smart engineering student and the starship Athenia’s poster-child for good behaviour. Where Shakespeare’s Nick Bottom was the original play’s buffoon, our Crewman Button is a veritable genius, looking after both the ship’s hardware and software on a long summer voyage in deep space.

With all that intelligence inside him, you’d think he’d have his shit together. Perhaps a steady girlfriend and rock-solid prospects for when he’s back on Earth. Well, you’d be wrong.

Poor Nick spent his teenaged years trying to fit in with the popular kids, the mean kids, the cool kids who aren’t really that cool when you think about it.

But he wasn’t thinking about it — he was thinking about Julia.

Beautiful Julia with her come-on eyes and cascading caramel hair. Perfectly pouty Julia who models every now and then, but is now gainfully employed at the footy club with bros like the ones Nick could barely keep up with in school. He really tried to fit in, you know. He wanted it so bad he lost his best friend in the process.

But he’s paying for it now. An unexpected phone call reminds him just how lonely it gets in space, away from kin and mob, sharing a tin can with cliquey shipmates and a naked red-headed woman who calls herself a god.

This guy may be good at fixing broken robots, but he’ll need more than a touch of magic to find his happy ending. A love letter to our future

Australia’s climate has warmed by an average of 1.4°C since national records began in 1910. We’ve seen increases in sea surface temperatures, more heatwaves and bushfires, rising ocean levels and acidity, and decreased snow in our alpine regions.

That’s a lot to take in. And if we do nothing to reduce our carbon emissions, these changes are only going to intensify. Of course, government and industries are doing something now, but who knows what difference that’ll make at a global scale? What do we lose if it’s too little too late? Thinking about all this is alarming and depressing.

But it helps to imagine a future, even if it’s not a perfect future. Just knowing humanity can persevere and keep trying … well, it helps.

Yet We Sleep, We Dream imagines University students on a summer excursion in deep space, studying a dead planet that never survived its Anthropocene. But in the dust and ashes of that once-great civilisation, the students find hope for their own warming world.

It’s a love letter to our future — and pure fantasy of course. I don’t believe that magic and gods and semi-sentient robots will save us. Only we can do that by caring for ourselves, for each other, and for the world in which we live.

Want to learn how to care for the planet?

Start by finding your climate superpowers — that’s all a first step needs to be. Many people mistakenly believe they need to open with big dramatic actions, but massive changes mainly need to happen at the government, industry and billionaire level. For people like you and me, it’s about small, sustainable, ongoing actions that add up to a collective effort from the whole community.

Add solarpunk to your reading list. Solarpunk is a hopeful fiction genre and lifestyle movement that embraces technology in harmony with society and environment. If you’ve ever needed fiction to pull you out of your climate anxiety, solarpunk will be the one to do it. For newcomers to the genre, I recommend Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene, a short story anthology edited by Jonathan Strahan. Have tissues on hand; some stories are beautiful enough to make you cry 🥲

If you live around nature, learn about the plants around you and go deeper on the ones that are native to your region. Learn about their history and role in the ecosystem. You’ll unearth incredible hidden knowledge about the home just beyond your home. It’s a fascinating way to develop nature smarts and connect with the Earth.

Finally, look for one thing you can do that’s greener or more supportive of your local community. Keep it practical and within your budget. Do it deliberately and own it, and once you’re comfortable having conversations about it, know that you’re helping build a stronger and more caring culture by doing so.

(Interview 1 - about the book)

Can you, for those who don't know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?

G’day, I’m JL Peridot. I live and work in Western Australia on Whadjuk Noongar country. I started writing when I was a kid, but didn’t take authoring seriously until just a few years ago when I started writing romance as a joke.

That must sound disrespectful, but don’t worry, the joke’s on me. Turns out it’s actually very challenging to write a book! And it turns out I really enjoyed writing romance. In hindsight, I realise passing it off as a joke was a cover for wanting to be open-minded about something that everyone around me had some prejudice about. So, ha-ha, I suppose!

What inspired you to write Yet We Sleep, We Dream?

After writing a Romeo & Juliet re-telling in 2021, I wasn’t in a rush to do another Shakespearean sci-fi. But I said yes to a novel-writing challenge and didn’t want an excuse to think of myself as a quitter!

Revisiting A Midsummer Night’s Dream was an instant yes, but other elements like ancient gods and magic dust, semi-sentient robots, the garden in a spaceship, the “love will save the day” trope — that all coalesced while I was learning about climate change and how years of miscommunication and misunderstanding have put us in the position we’re in today.

I wrote this Yet We Sleep, We Dream as closure for my past self, a first-generation immigrant who struggled to study the original play in school. But it’s also a love letter to the future of our changing world, the place we call home.

If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?

You know, this kind of question sometimes comes up in the creative process. It helps a writer visualise the characters and story while writing.

From my own notes, I’ve got Stephanie Hsu pegged for Mia Tan. I love her whole vibe; it was easy to write Mia’s story with her in mind. Hunter Page-Lochard was my Nick Button. Between his smiling face, his quietly challenging face, and his annoyed face, he’d have Nick’s emotional spectrum nailed. And hearing him speak unscripted in Shadow Trackers makes me think he’d bring the right energy to this character.

Special mentions include Emma Stone as Titania; Chaneil Kular as Damian Chandrasekhar; Idris Elba as Oberon; and Sarah Jones as Tracy. I don’t know how they’d all fare with Australian accents, but wishful thinking reckons it’ll be all right 😉

Finally, what did you learn while writing this book?

Writing this book pushed me in so many ways. Now obligated to deliver this project, I wanted to make the most of it, and vowed I’d use it to level up my writing skill, practice talking to people about my work, and generally putting myself out there, which I generally struggle to do.

While sitting at my computer, I’d genuinely feel like I was in pain, a weird headachey kind of hurt. I learned partway through the process that this is just what it feels like to grow new connections in your brain by working on something challenging. It’s akin to the pain of working out at the gym, but you feel it deep inside your head.

Working with an Aboriginal sensitivity reader was eye-opening not just for learning how sensitivity readers operate, but also as a lead into better understanding the writing community and industry in Australia. So much about this world felt so inaccessible to me before, but writing out of my comfort zVA romantic space fantasy re-telling of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Love triangles get bent out of shape when restless gods come out to play.

Relationships are complicated enough when only humans are involved — something the crew of the starship Athenia know plenty about. These children of a changing climate are no strangers to conflicts of the heart. And it seems there's a lot of conflict going on, even out in space.

When an alien dust finds its way on board, the veil between realms begins to fray. Old gods of a long dead planet resume their own romantic bickering while ancient magic wreaks havoc across the ship. Grudges resurface, friends turn to enemies, unrequited love turns to passion — or does it? It's kinda hard to tell with everyone at each other's throats.

Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show; but wonder on, till truth make all things plain. Yet We Sleep, We Dream is a romantic space-fantasy inspired by Shakespeare's endearing hot mess, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was." — Bottom, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Content guidance: This book contains strong language, drug use, on-page sexual encounters, references to bullying, references to harassment and infertility, depictions of perilous situations, depictions of marital disharmony, awkward social situations, and technical language.

(Interview 2 - about writing)

So, who are you? What’s your story?

Hey, I’m JL Peridot, a SFF writer living and working on Whadjuk Noongar country in Western Australia.

My latest book is Yet We Sleep, We Dream, a romantic Aussie space-fantasy retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It features friends to lovers, second chances, ancient gods, magic dust, and a semi-sentient robot.

How long have you been writing?

All my life, in some shape or form. But I only started taking it seriously in 2017 after leaving a web design career to write professionally. I thought I’d given up on fiction until that point, but one day some beast woke up inside me and got to work. I released a novella and three short stories that year. I’ve been writing and publishing ever since.

I kept this side of my life a secret for ages. There were people I wasn’t comfortable telling about this because they’d been snide or judgemental about other things in the past. But once I’d figured out what motivated me, what inspired me, what I wanted to inspire in others, and who I could count on, it finally felt safe to talk openly about my moonlight career — which has since become my day job.

What kind of research do you do for your books?

My process is different for every book, but for this one the initial research was obvious. Because it’s a re-telling, I looked into different productions of the original play. The text itself is light on stage directions and setting, which I understand is typical of Shakespeare’s scripts. It leaves plenty of room for interpretation and casting new light on the characters and story.

Quite separately, I was also learning about climate science and horticulture (one of my special interests), which gave me access to plenty of knowledge and vocabulary I could use in my writing.

If there’s one thing fiction writers, both beginner and advanced, should know is that writing gets a lot harder over time if it’s your only hobby — which can and does happen. Developing other interests is both a form of writer self-care and an excellent way to get research done while having fun in the process.

What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters of the opposite sex?

Trying to write an authentic, respectful and relatable perspective when you don’t have personal experience can be very difficult, unless you have easy access to research material and trustworthy sources. I’m glad you included this question, because I think the difficulty applies not just to writing genders but to writing other races, cultures, orientations, lived experiences, and species as well. I second-guessed myself the whole time I was writing Nick Button’s story, because I have zero experience of living as or being close to a 20-year-old Aboriginal man.

It’s too easy to reduce “others” to simple ideas and characteristics. Stereotypes, if you will, and I want to believe it springs from from economy of thought (perhaps from tired human brains trying to conserve energy) rather than from a person choosing not to acknowledge another person’s humanity.

Some of the difficulty in writing “others” can be made easier by slowing down and really thinking about how another person might experience the world. Beyond this, finding honest critique partners, sensitivity readers, and beta readers can help a lot.

Do you believe in writer’s block?

Absolutely. I believe many things can bring it on and there’s no one-size-fits-all way to deal with it. Some people say to keep writing through it, but that only helps if the block is a matter of skill and practice. If the root cause is lack of knowledge or hyperfocus, you can easily write yourself into a rut; getting out and finding inspiration might be a better approach.

Writing can be a painful experience. Not just emotionally painful, but mentally too, especially if you’re challenging yourself to write something hard or learning to apply your writing style to a new technique. It’s like the pain of a hard gym workout, but you feel it deep inside your head.

Sometimes writer’s block comes from avoiding pain like this, perhaps procrastination, which researchers have linked to negative health outcomes. In these situations I’ve found success in taking it slow, being kind to myself, and continuing to write just a little bit until I feel able to write a little bit more.

Advice they would give new authors?

This is a tough question because good advice is hard to come by and equally hard to give! Often, people who are good at something won’t know what’s good for you unless they know your situation. They can only tell you what worked for them, and they might not know how to frame it in a way that’s useful to anyone besides themselves. In saying that, here’s something I would like to tell my younger, less experienced, writer self:

You feel like your work needs to be perfect before it’s worthy. STOP THAT. Perfect is the enemy of good, and society has an unhealthy obsession with the exceptional. If you’re an inexperienced writer, aiming to open with a bestseller is like a couch potato aiming to win a marathon without training. Find your focus, hone your craft, and approach your goal in small and focused steps, one step at a time.He’ll need more than magic to fix this one

Meet Nick Button.

With all that intelligence inside him, you’d think he’d have his shit together. Perhaps a steady girlfriend and rock-solid prospects for when he’s back on Earth. Well, you’d be wrong.

Poor Nick spent his teenaged years trying to fit in with the popular kids, the mean kids, the cool kids who aren’t really that cool when you think about it.

But he wasn’t thinking about it — he was thinking about Julia.

This guy may be good at fixing broken robots, but he’ll need more than a touch of magic to find his happy ending.
Excerpts

EXCERPT A (General)

Tracy stops in her tracks. “What in the ever-living . . .”

The loading bay is thick with red haze. That’s a plus—it means they still have air. Tracy counts the crew.

One: Nick Button, crouching at the wall console. He squints over his shoulder at her, a rag covering his nose and mouth, then goes back to punching buttons. Readout shows a Code Orange for this entire deck, but the kid’s alive and moving. Check.

Two: Damian Chandrasekhar trips over his own feet, scrambling to gather scattered fragments of rock onto a bright blue tarp. He ducks and dodges the five drones swerving in chaotic head-height trajectories around the bay. Two of them collide and back off, only to find another flight path into each other. Chandrasekhar slaps one aside and drops an armload of rocks onto his boots. But he’s alive too. Check.

Three: Mia Tan, the smart-arsed heiress to the Tan–Song media empire, the university’s top-tier sponsor. When the DVC said to keep an eye on her, Tracy never dreamed that would mean reigning her in when she runs off at the mouth or decides to take a prank too far. Now the heiress clutches her hand-cam while coughing lungfuls of dust into her elbow—a temporary reprieve for anyone who’s had enough of her verbal barrage. Check.

Four: Aaron fucking Lee, the goddamned ex-husband. Who really should know better than to have nobody standing by the backup controls. Check.

Tracy punches the annexe console. Helena Armstrong and Olek Kovalenko are accounted for in other sectors—check and check. No bodies in space. One crisis averted.

“Button, shut the goddamned inner door!” she barks, glaring at the exposed doorway between the loading bay and the room she’s in. “And get the air filters going.”

“I’m trying, Captain, but it’s not working. Nothing’s happening.”

“God damn it. All right, everyone out!”

Chandrasekhar holds up a corner of the tarp. “I’ll just get this cleaned up, Captain Nielsen!”

“You’ll do as I say, Crewman Chandrasekhar. Out—now.”

EXCERPT B (NSFW)

When Titania is done with Olek, she pads across the grass, still naked and smiling while the human sleeps. Now that she’s been fucked the way she likes, Oberon suspects she’ll be more amenable to conversation.

“I see you’ve not thrown yourself out of the airlock yet.” She joins him beneath the giant fern. “This place has become tolerable to you then?”

“Not in the slightest.”

He greets her with a kiss, savouring the softness of her lips on his. Her tongue, wet and uniquely textured, finds him. Oberon supposes the feel of it on his skin—such strange skin—and by the smug hum in his wife’s throat, he can tell she suspects his curiosity. She pulls away with a sigh and nuzzles his bare shoulder.

“You seem to tolerate this body, at least,” she teases. “Why don’t I show you what it can do?”

He smirks. “Think you can teach an old dog new tricks?”

“Never. Not when our old tricks are yet so satisfying.”

She kisses him on the neck once, twice, then nips at the skin. The sudden shock is pain, electric, exquisite. He quickens, but his will bends to hers. When her fingers close around him, a weakness consumes him in the most divine of ways, a surrender that never lost its sweetness no matter what form he deigned to take.

Her kisses move down his body, tongue along the collarbone, lips across his chest. Her teeth find his nipple in a way that makes his torso twitch, but all she gives him is a laugh and a thumb tracing his most sensitive ridge.

At last, her mouth reaches him where he wants her most. Her warm breath teases his skin, strange skin, and she looks at him with a smile. Staring into her ice-blue eyes, he finds himself afraid that she’s only playing with him, that she’ll leave him wanting in this most enjoyable suffering. Oh, how he adores her unpredictability, her chaos, and the energy she stirs within him. It’s so becoming of a god-queen.

“That mortal would never resist you.” Oberon chuckles, savouring the anguish.

Contains:

*Friends to lovers

*Second chances

*Aussies in space (casual swears)

*Sex, weed & waking dreams

*Hot robot love action

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About the Author

JL Peridot writes love letters to the future on devices form the past. She's a qualified computer scientist, former website maker, amateur horticulturist, and sometimes illustrator. But most of the time, she's an author of romantic science fiction. She lives with her partner and fur-family in Boorloo (Perth, Australia) on Whadjuk Noongar country.

Visit her website at jlperidot.com for the full catalogue of her work.

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Website: https://jlperidot.com

Newsletter: https://jlperidot.com/#dotclub

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Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17035853.J_L_Peridot

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