How are new stories born? Well, sometimes they come to us in dreams...and that is what we have for today. I woke up with the most fantastic dream in my head a few mornings ago. I rolled over and quickly wrote down what I could remember as fast as I could. The full dream sequence slipped away before I got very far, but I should be able to do it justice when I get done writing the story. Below are my original notes with additional developments and annotations afterwards:
The Lord of Winter visits the Summer climes. Burst this and that. Iguanas dropping from the trees. But at the end the southern lords give him the chilly reception kneeing him in the cold and turning a cold shoulders at him.
That's it. Now, granted, I was still partially asleep when I wrote that!
But I can remember some of the dream and the influences are easy to see. I visited my sister up in the cold north. Me, a southerner headed up. Maybe that is what starts the story, an invite from a visitor from the south and the Winter Lord wants to come down and see what all the fuss is about. We've had some cold weather here in Louisiana and I was concerned about burst pipes, which has happened before. The iguanas falling from the trees in Florida was very memorable from a few weeks ago in the news. They are cold-blooded and the chilly weather made them seem dead, but they were just unable to move. Crazy, uh? That got me to thinking what other changes would happen around the bayous and other southern locations when a big polar mass comes swooping down on us. With some editing, the basic story idea becomes this...
The Lord of Winter visits the Summer Lands. After getting a visitor from the south, the King gathers his lords and ladies and decides to travel to the fanciful lands to see the sights the visitor talked about. As his caravan heads south, the weather changes ahead of him, announcing his coming as surely as a full parade of trumpeters. A small foreshadowing of his impending visit should be here, maybe a flock of black birds unexpectedly heading further south to get away from the impending chill. The appearance of unusual white birds traveling south with the cold. "There's a Killing Frost coming..."
Freezing winds whistle through the castle, under doors and through the windows. Not burst pipes, but do wells freeze? Will have to look into that. Maybe some wizard's beakers of odd fluids and such freezing and popping like cans of soda in the freezer. Make a funny in here about how come Uncle's favorite stash doesn't expand and spill, Ah...it's alcohol that's why! Maybe not Iguanas, but some other type of reptile dropping from the trees. And alligators in frozen bodies of water, with just their snouts out to keep breathing. That actually happened too.
The Southern Lords pull out all the stops to make the Winter Lord feel welcome, but they are just not used to the air conditioning! They prefer fans!
While it would be a cool turn of phrase to have the Southern Lords give the Winter Lord the 'cold shoulder' and maybe that is still in there as a mini-climax to an issue, I think in the end maybe I will have the Southern Lords celebrate the departure of Winter with a festival and tie that into how an annual Mardis Gras type of celebration comes into being. Maybe come up with some way to say goodbye cold hello warmth in a simple phrase like Fat Tuesday. Fanciful costumes and a parade of floats in the manner of the Lord of Winter's caravan signal the end of the unwelcome climate and the return of warmer days. The celebration is not Mardis Gras, the focus being more a 'goodbye' to the cold and welcome to warmer weather than religious, but there will definitely be a lot of Mardis Gras elements in there. Sure, why not? Keep the same colors? Too easy I'm thinking. A blue for Winter should be in there perhaps. So perhaps Blue (for winter), Gold (for summer) and Green (for prosperity).
So, that's all the story development for today. Keep an eye out here occasionally for further story development and then of course buy the story when it eventually makes it to market!
Picture for today is from the interwebs... not one of mine.
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