When a brilliant dream psychologist begins appearing in thousands of strangers’ nightmares, she must confront a terrifying truth…
What if the line between your waking life and your darkest dreams disappeared forever?
Alice Sinclair, a driven psychology professor, is about to find out. When thousands of people begin experiencing terrifying, vivid nightmares … all centered around her, Alice’s quiet academic life is shattered. Haunted by the question of why she’s become the subject of these shared dreams, Alice embarks on a desperate search for answers, uncovering a chilling secret: someone – or something – hungry for global power has discovered a way to manipulate consciousness itself. The world is fast becoming a playground for those in control of the dreaming mind. In a heart-stopping race against time, Alice must navigate a treacherous web of deception, where nothing – and no one – can be trusted, not even herself.
Read a sample.
NightBorn is available at Amazon US and Amazon UK.
Book Excerpt
Alice saw the wave. It was a beast.
It rose slowly at first, the way a predator prepares to strike—silent, inevitable. It quickly gained speed, swelling into a towering monster, a force of nature, as if the ocean itself had decided to swallow her whole. The wave surged, easily 30 feet high, dark and roaring with a ferocity she could feel in her bones. It moved toward her with the relentlessness of fate.
She turned, panic seizing her as she raced up the beach, her bare feet slipping in the wet sand. The ocean was closing in—the world was closing in on her. Her breath came in jagged gasps, but the wave, too quick, slammed into her, yanking her under.
Her body twisted through the water, eyes stinging, lungs burning, desperate for air, clawing at the debris swirling around her—plastic, broken wood, seaweed, dead fish—but there was no solid ground to cling to. The current pulled her deeper, its
grip tightening like cold fingers around her throat.
She gasped for air, choking on the water, the world a dark, crushing void. She couldn’t see. Every nerve in her body screamed for release, but the ocean kept pulling, tumbling her in every direction, turning her body like a puppet with broken strings. She was drowning. No—she was going to die.
Something in her snapped.
Her feet hit something solid. Hard. Stone? She couldn’t tell.
All she knew was that she had to rise. She shoved upward, throwing her weight toward the surface with every ounce of strength she had left. Her body screamed, but she pushed
harder, until her head broke through to air. For one split second, she inhaled—but the water dragged her down again, relentless, hungry for her life. She fought the instinct to panic.
She couldn’t let it win. Not today.
Just breathe. Just breathe, Alice. Instinctively she let herself float, stilling her body, letting the sea carry her, accepting the weight of the water around her. She couldn’t fight it anymore—but maybe she didn’t have to.
Her feet found solid ground again. She shoved upward, defiant, gasping as she broke through. Sunlight blinded her.
Alice jerked awake, the sharp taste of salt lingering on her tongue, her body tangled in the sheets. The echo of the wave still thundered in her ears. The sunlight slanted through the bedroom window, blinding. Her pulse thrummed in her neck as if the sea still had its grip on her.
“You’re okay. You’re okay. It was a dream. Just a nightmare.”
What if it wasn’t just a nightmare?
Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, Alice’s feet hit the cold floor. Had Swiss psychiatrist and dream analysis pioneer, Carl Jung ever felt this unsettled after one of his dreams? Had his own night visions ever made him question his grasp on reality?
Her eyes flickered to the bedside table and her Red Book: the dream journal she’d named after Jung’s own. Ever since she was young, she’d written down her dreams. But this one felt radically different from the rest.
It was too real, though it clearly wasn’t literal. She lived more than an hour from the nearest beach and had never been to it. Was the dream a symbolic glimpse into her own future? A warning? Or something darker, deeper?
It was just a dream. Maybe it was just all the energy she’d poured into teaching Jungian dream analysis spilling out cathartically in a nightmare.
The feeling of drowning clung to her.
She grabbed her journal and scribbled out every detail of the dream. The ocean. The wave. The suffocating terror. Jung had called the act of recording dreams an act of self-analysis—so why did this one feel more like a clear and present danger than an analysis? Was it the forbidden mystery Jung had hinted at in his Red Book—that thin line between genius and insanity where revelation could be found?
Was her obsession with dreams driving her mad?
It was her calling, her passion. Perhaps, as director of the new program in Jungian Studies at the University of Central Florida, she could teach her students what she had dreamt and encourage them to analyze it; maybe it would be cathartic for
them and for her.
What if her students were the key to unlocking the deeper meanings of her own dream? She could see herself standing before the class, scrawling on the blackboard, her voice filled with energy as she taught them about using their dreams to peer into possible futures, even to shape reality. Inception—she would reference that for sure, the perfect movie fix to illustrate how the subconscious could manipulate perception and even reality.
What better way to introduce her students to the power of their own dreaming minds?
Alice pushed herself out of bed as the sinking feeling of the dream still clung tight. Blinking rapidly in front of her bedroom mirror, she forced herself to take deep breaths. Her long dark hair framing the mismatched eyes staring right back at her: one
blue, one brown. She had always hated this difference. Always hidden it behind a pair of blue lenses.
A perfect illusion of normalcy, her blue lenses. They always worked—ever since she was 14, when her mother had taken her to the ophthalmologist to prevent the cruel teasing at school.
Alice slipped them on, as though the simple act could shield her from her nightmare.
The rhythm of her repeated blinking to help the lenses settle helped bring a semblance of calm.
Something was coming, though; she could feel it. Something was drawing her, pulling her into the unknown. Could she rise above and survive it?
Alice dressed the part for her day ahead and stepped out into the bright light of the day.
Was the drowning nightmare a message? A warning? And if so, a warning about what?
– Excerpted from NightBorn by Theresa Cheung, Collective Ink, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
10 Things You Might Not Know About My Debut Novel NightBorn
Writing NightBorn has been one of the most transformative and daring experiences of my career. Many readers know me for my dream dictionaries and spiritual nonfiction, but stepping into fiction opened up an entirely different world - one full of surprises, detours, and hidden meanings.
1. The idea came from a single question my daughter inspired and a real life dream hacking campaign.
My daughter devours dark, gothic fantasies but refuses to read my nonfiction. One day I wondered: What if I taught dream decoding through a story she’d actually want to read? That question unlocked the entire novel. I'd also long been fascinated by a 2006 marketing hoax called thisman.org where a sketch of a man was posted online with the question have you dreamed of this man and thousands of people said they had.
2. Every major character is rooted in Jungian psychology.
Alice Sinclair and the other key characters are intentionally shaped around Jungian archetypes. Their choices and conflicts mirror the symbolic themes I’ve studied for decades even if readers don’t immediately notice.
3. The book doubles as a “hidden” dream manual.
Beneath the thriller plot, the conversations and dream scenes contain real dreamwork techniques. If readers follow the symbols closely, they’ll find authentic guidance on interpreting their own dreams.
4. The tagline“Some dreams must be set free. Nightmares, after all are dreams too”—came to me in a dream.
I woke one morning with those words in my mind, and they became the soul of the story. It captured both the emotional arc of Alice and the message I wanted to share about the subconscious.
5. The cover was designed by my son-in-law.
We had no budget for a designer, so he offered to try. What he created is striking, eerie, and unforgettable. Readers often tell me it triggers dream recall which delights me to no end.
6. My traditional publishers didn’t want me writing fiction.
After decades of nonfiction success, they were hesitant about me stepping outside the genre they associated me with. Their gentle “no” became the push I needed to take an indie route and trust my creative instincts.
7. The book took nearly five years to complete.
I wrote NightBorn in the spaces between my nonfiction deadlines. There were rewrites, pauses, self-doubt, and moments I wondered if it would ever be finished. But the story simply refused to be abandoned. It quite literally haunted me and often felt like it was a message from the future.
8. Alice Sinclair’s academic background mirrors a path I almost took.
I considered becoming a university academic before choosing writing full-time. Exploring that path through Alice let me revisit a version of myself who took a different route in life.
9. Early readers reported remembering their dreams more vividly.
This was the most magical surprise of all. Many readers and reviewers said the book triggered detailed dream recall for the first time in years. For someone who has devoted her life to dreamwork, that feedback was a dream come true, if you forgive the pun but dreams love to pun.
10. NightBorn is only the beginning.
This novel opened a creative door I never intend to close. I’m already exploring ideas that go even further into consciousness, symbolism, and the shadowy spaces between waking and dreaming. Writing NightBorn was my leap of faith - a novel born out of passion, intuition, and a lifelong love of the dreaming mind. I hope you enjoy discovering its layers as much as I loved weaving them. Wishing you wild and wonderful dreams.
Theresa Cheung is an internationally bestselling author and public speaker. She has been writing about spirituality, dreams and the paranormal for the past 25 years, and was listed by Watkins Mind Body and Spirit magazine as one of the 100 most spiritually influential living people in 2023. She has a degree in Theology and English from Kings College, Cambridge University, frequently collaborating with leading scientists and neuroscientists researching consciousness.
Theresa is regularly featured in national newspapers and magazines, and she is a frequent radio, podcast and television guest and ITV: This Morning’s regular dream decoding expert. She hosts her own popular spiritual podcast called White Shores and weekly live UK Health Radio Show: The Healing Power of Your Dreams.
Her latest book is the paranormal thriller, NightBorn, available at Amazon US and Amazon UK.
You can visit her website at www.theresacheung.com or connect with her on X, Facebook, Instagram or Goodreads.
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