White Light

William Scheinman's chilling new novel of speculative horror, White Light, conjures a world in which your dreams and obsessions materialize and follow you around. . .a world where you are forced to confront the darkest thoughts of your mind as creatures of the flesh. Sal Russo's girlfriend walked out on him because he was haunted by erotic dreams of a seductress with turquoise eyes. But as the San Francisco taxi driver tries putting his life back together after the breakup, he's faced with an even greater dilemma: the figure in his dreams which caused all the trouble appears in his waking life, an apparent physical being. As Sal becomes friends with this "woman," he discovers that his movements are being shadowed by deformed cloaked figures. Just as bad, almost every morning he wakes up with inexplicable "dream scars" on his body, and he has routine encounters with a brilliant white light which may well be a doorway to Nothingness.

But when some of Sal’s friends and associates start seeing physical manifestations of their minds, Sal realizes that his disturbing gift for embodying the imaginary is contagious, and it's spreading fast. Combining Buddhist philosophy with visceral horror, vivid descriptions and complex characters, White Light is an entertaining tale about the nature of obsession and the relationship between thoughts and things. With the picturesque atmosphere of San Francisco as a backdrop, an array of eccentric cabbies, artists, homicide cops and one would-be serial killer learn what it means to gaze without blinking at the White Light. Read an excerpt.

Soon to be a motion picture from Zen Films.