The greatest murder mystery of all time will not be written, I'm very sorry to say, because the alarm clock went off just as I was being lauded for authoring it. Why do the best dreams happen when it's time to wake up?

That's such a hazy time, that shift between snoring slumber and wakefulness. We do it every day, so you'd think we'd be better at it, but still, time after time, for the briefest of instants, we wake up confused in our real world and clinging to a fading, unreal dream. We need a moment to acclimate ourselves. Some of us need a moment or two.

When I wake up my first thought is that a mistake has been made. It can't be morning. The clock must be wrong. I must have forgotten about inheriting a fortune and hiring a bunch of servants -- I do not have to wake up yet. Especially in the middle of a dream.

One morning, I was dreaming I could fly. It started out with me skipping down the steep streets of Shamokin, going higher and higher, until I was soaring from block to block. The wind blew in my hair, my heart thumped in my chest, and I knew that in just a few more good leaps I'd be flying, when a persistent beep-beep-beep-beep dragged me away to reach for the alarm clock. I turned it off and stared at the dresser that's been in my bedroom for 18 years, trying to understand what it was, while the sensation of flying lured me back to my dream. Which I couldn't find, of course, which made me wake up feeling vaguely disgruntled and glaring at my husband when he smiled and said, "Good morning." I didn't want to hear it.

And that murder mystery? In my dream, everyone was amazed at the layered, sinister plot. You never saw the ending coming until you were there, and then you said, "Oh, man! I should have guessed." People reading it couldn't put it down. The talk show hosts booked me for their shows, all wanting to know the same thing: How did you dream up something so clever?

It sounds like a long dream but it happened in a flash, just starting, really, when the alarm went off. For an instant, I stared at my husband sleeping next to me and the story was crystal clear, and I thought, "I have to write this." But just like that, the sinister plot vanished, and my story was gone.

My husband's face came into sharper focus, blissfully unaware that we'd just lost royalties and movie rights and a chance to be on Oprah and maybe sleep in the White House, all because of an alarm clock with a bad sense of timing. It was a nightmare.

n Cindy O. Herman lives in Snyder County. E-mail her at Cindyherman1@yahoo.com.