In my Forgotten Empires trilogy, the heroine—Queen Euthalia of Calanthe—uses the dreamthink. Because she’s magically sensitive, messages come to her in nightmares, when her mind is vulnerable. The world is a chaotic, broken, and wounded place—and it cries to her for help. When she wakes from these terrible dreams, she pretends to be asleep still, just to calm herself so she can face a day of politics. In some ways, she isn’t entirely faking it. She wakes, then goes into another stage of sleep: the dreamthink. Lia, who lives in a world that celebrates science and knowledge, but is not technologically advanced, has given this state it’s own name. It feels to her like a kind of light dreaming, where she can also guide where her mind goes. Those of you familiar with meditation or sleep stages, might recognize this as a trance state. Or it could be a Stage 1 sleep with theta waves (which are also present during meditation) or Stage 2 with sleep spindles in the brain activity. Magical or not, those are states of mind we all experience at some time or another. I know I do! I made up the term “dreamthink” for myself. (Even…