I Can't Sleep Tonight: Stories (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798297446748)

There are nights when sleep becomes impossible-not because of noise or heat, but because truth demands to be acknowledged.

In this collection of five Extended stories, ordinary people discover that staying awake becomes an act of courage, protection, or love. From an Irish kitchen where thirty years of family secrets finally find their voice during a scorching wake, to a government facility where one man's pharmaceutical-induced drowsiness becomes humanity's last defense against those who would steal our first contact with alien intelligence.

These stories explore:

• A widow who can't sleep until she tells the truth about her abusive marriage (Forty-Seven Cobwebs)
• A biblical princess discovering her brother's fate in the desert heat (In Search of Absalom)
• Young Elizabeth learning the sleepless responsibility of future leadership (Eighteen Summers)
• A retired analyst fighting medication to protect extraterrestrial communications (Stay Awake)
• A jazz musician whose daughter's dreams are "too big for her head" (I Can't Sleep Tonight)

Extended from their original forms on Reedsy.com, these stories contain the complete emotional landscapes their characters demanded to inhabit-the conversations that happened in the margins, the moments of discovery that emerged during the creative process.

Some nights, we can't sleep because our dreams are too big for our heads. Some nights, because our secrets are too heavy for our hearts. And some nights, because someone we love needs us to stay awake.

For readers who appreciate literary fiction that finds the extraordinary in ordinary insomnia, who understand that the most important conversations often happen in the darkest hours.