In a time when flights of fantasy are necessary medicine, Cindy Hoyt brings us her latest book, “Lucid,” on the nocturnal world of fantasy itself.

Cindy is a Voice of Vashon regular with her husband Jeff Hoyt on a variety of local radio shows. She was the co-head writer (also with Jeff) on Vashon’s highly successful variety show, Church of Great Rain, and — who knew? — she’s been lucid dreaming for years.

Luckily for us, she spent a year writing down every single dream she could remember, then wove the best of them into what is likely the first how-to novel about lucid dreaming.

“Beginning one Halloween night and ending exactly one year later,” says Cindy, “my sleep was very busy. My husband would wake up every night to find me scribbling as fast as I could, often three or four times, for five to 30 minutes at a shot. I coined the term ‘going lucid’ to describe the ones where I became aware I was dreaming while still inside the dream. I was pretty excited when I learned how to control those.”

Who does that? Answer: A voraciously curious writer with the courage to explore the insides of her self-described “Technicolor Play-Doh” brain.

Lucid’s protagonist Callie Naylor, believing she is in the vanguard of an evolutionary shift, begins inducing and directing her lucid dreams. This eventually trips an alarm in her subconscious mind (named Sub-C), which retaliates via surprise attacks on her waking life. She has to stop driving when she crashes the family’s minivan through the front window of The Hardware Store restaurant because, yes, this story is set on Vashon.

Cindy Hoyt is neither a psychologist nor a brain chemist, but her research is evident as Callie uses her island radio show to address topics such as precognitive dreams, interpretation methods, “recurrent,” and even animals’ dreams. It’s a wild escape into a phantasmagorical landscape.

The real-life characters in Callie’s circle include her husband Peter, children Vixie and Luke, and therapist Dr. Alton, who all are trying to steer her back to the safety of so-called reality. But Callie revels in a world where her house sits on a flagpole and her dog plays the saxophone. That is, until Sub-C’s invasions force her to choose between the people she loves and an upside-down flying whale spouting a chandelier from its blowhole.

In her own words, the author declares, “Lucid is not a book about dreams. It’s about the thrills, adventures, joys, and terrors our brains bring into the world at night, and how a little attention can transform an ephemeral curiosity into a reason to live. And ultimately, it’s about the sacrifices we must make in our search for self-actualization.”

The book release party will be at 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 26, at Snapdragon. You can find the book on Amazon or at Vashon Bookshop, or learn more by visiting cindyhoyt.com, where you also can find out about Cindy’s first book, “Tansmania, the Funny Side of the Sunny Side.”

Susan McCabe is a local writer and radio host.