Penny for your dreams?
Have you ever heard the saying ‘find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck’? It is a popular proverbial expression and old wives’ superstition that has stuck with us to the modern day. Pennies are the easiest coins to lose, whether they remain forgot at the bottom of a bag, dropped on the street or wedged down the side of the sofa, I can guarantee you’ve probably found pennies in the strangest of places. Throughout my debut novel Anomaly (The Soul Prophecies), I use the penny to symbolise lost dreams. Life is unpredictable, and everyone goes through life with dreams and wishes. Some people have grand dreams of becoming rich and famous, others may wish for a job promotion, and some simply wish for the traffic to speed up on their daily commute to work.
Kyle Hunter is not like his university peers, who have never given thought about their own mortality, and why would they when the young should have decades left to live? Kyle knows all too well how fragile and unfair life can be and how at any moment everything can change. One traumatic event can knock you from the path to your dreams and sometimes it feels too difficult to get back up again. Like a penny thrown into a well, dropped on the street, or wedged down the side of the sofa, people discard their dreams for one reason or another.
In Anomaly I write about these lost dreams and the reasons and circumstances behind people’s decisions. Anomaly also explores love, life, death and the consequences of even the smallest decisions. The dreams you gave up on because someone told you they were unrealistic, too risky, or wouldn’t earn you enough money. Those people were most likely friends, family and teachers who cared and were just trying to look out for you, but did their advice really help you make the best decisions?
Even when you have walked down a particular pathway in life and you have a successful career, do you still occasionally throw your loose change into wishing wells? You are not alone; tourists throw away millions in pounds sterling into wishing wells every year, and we’re all secretly hoping that those dreams, we whispered over a shiny coin, will somehow magically happen. Those same dreams we gave up on, or can never find the funds or time to make them a reality.
If your life is a tangled web made from the decisions you make and the decisions your ancestors made. Then every decision is one decision in a line of multiple decisions that may or may not have a huge impact on the world. Think about how different the world would have been if certain dictators hadn’t been born, or if certain individuals hadn’t been murdered. Realising that even your smallest decisions may have directly or indirectly been a part of something much bigger, begs the question, can you really afford to not follow your dreams? Despite the hardships and complications you may endure during your life, despite the many times you may fail, do you really want to look back on your life with a ‘what if?’ hanging from your lips?
The characters in Anomaly are set on paths to find the answer to that very question, and Kyle will have to search beyond his past and negative emotions in order to pick up his dreams, find happiness, and just maybe, he might change the world.
Interested in the book? Click here.
About the Author
Caitlin Lynagh is a blogger, writer and author of Anomaly (The Soul Prophecies). She currently writes the blog series ‘Diary of a Young Writer’ where she discusses her experiences with publishing a book and gives out writing advice and tips. She won the North West Writers Grant and graduated from Keele University with a BSc in 2013. She enjoys learning new things and skills, and is always looking for her next creative pursuit. She has travelled both to the Amazon and to Hong Kong, but spends most of her time letting her imagination run wild and tapping away on her laptop. Despite having long and unusual working hours she never fails to make time for friends and family, and above all else she confesses she is a stereotypical author who loves bookshops, reading and cups of tea. 
