A local author is celebrating the release of his new book. Scot Moir says the book is called, 'And I Woke Up Walking'. “This is the first book that I've published. The writing I've done before has been mainly for theatre and film, stuff like that. But this is the first book, first novel.” Moir says the story follows an author who feels like he has lost his imagination. “And so, he goes inward rather than outward to try to find it. He goes on an adventure into his own dreams.” He explains that an inspiration for the book came from a quote by painter René Magritte. “He says that if dreams are the flip side of waking life, then waking life is also the flip side of dreaming. And so maybe things that we feel like we can't see or aren't open to in waking life, when we come into a dream all of a sudden, all bets are off and possibilities are there for us to experience that we can't in the real world.” In the novel, the author journals his way through his dreams in an effort to spark his imagination. Along the way, he encounters unusual characters, events, and places, as well as figures from myths and legends. “There's King Arthur stories. There's Robin Hood. There are some other myths that make their way in there, because those are sort of the dreams of whole cultures kind of come to the waking world in these stories. And so, it's a mishmash of those stories and his own sort of dreaming experiences to find his imagination.” Moir says the book is partly autobiographical, woven together with different layers of meaning. “A lot of the settings probably come from my own dreams. This started mainly as an exercise to try to interrogate some of those images a little bit and say, well, what does this mean if you look at, somebody's walking through a village towards a castle. Well, what might that mean? And as you start to work with the image, a story kind of emerged. And from there, spun it out into a narrative and into the book.” And I Woke Up Walking is now available on Amazon and will soon be on shelves at local stores. “It's also going to be available at Collecta Co. At Cearspring Centre and also with Page and Post, the new startup bookstore out here so those two are forthcoming.” A book launch party is planned for Wednesday, September 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Public Brewhouse and Gallery. Local stand-up comedian Joel Brandt will host the event. With files from Corny Rempel