The Legacy Covers

01 SEP 2018

My wonderful wife made some covers for me. These are for the short winter story, The Legacy, which was part of a seasonal anthology. I have a favorite cover, but you'll find out which one once I publish the story as a standalone. Winter is a big part of the story, the ring is also an important part of the story. The short description for the story is as follows: 

A family of witches, a murder, and the return of the prodigal son

 

 

A Story is Born - Winter Lords Come Calling

28 JAN 17

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.

Camp NANOWRIMO

17 OCT 16 Mondays

Not much happens writing-wise on Mondays. Hate to say it but it's true. What is cool though is that there is a great vibe right now heading into NANOWRIMO. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

If you haven't heard of it, NANOWRIMO is a month-long national writing challenge that starts every November. The goal is to write 50,000 words toward a novel. It doesn't have to be great stuff, the idea is to get it all out in November and then spend the next months editing and tweaking it. I'm not sure what I am going to write about, but it will probably be a cataclysmic fantasy story. My only problem is that the story that I want to tell has a female heroine, which I need to work on making believable. I am better at writing male protagonists.

Picture for today is below, in keeping with the winter theme of the story I am writing and, come to think of it, of spooky Halloween coming up. A lone sentry on the snowbanks watches as a gigantic skeletal figure trods across the horizon. Where is he going? Does he feel the cold? Does he have any thoughts in his head at all? What is driving him forward in the snow? What magic is holding him together? Is it even a male? What doomed him to such an existence? These are the questions that run through a writer's mind when I see something that intrigues me...What do you think?

Winter

16 OCT 16

Sunday Sunday Sunday!  The Saints won today, which is always good. I also did some writing today, some decorating for Halloween coming up and now it's time to grade some papers. The writing I did was for the Winter anthology coming up from Wolfsinger Publications. It's a cool piece full of ancient witches, death most foul and magic set in a frozen landscape. Wrote about 700 words towards a goal just under 7,000, so about a tenth of the whole piece. I fleshed out some of what the witches are like, what power they have and will use in the story, sort of Baba Yaga-ish a little bit. I also worked on the setting of the piece, talking about the twilight around them and the Northern Lights. It definitely feels like a winter story.  

The picture below, although not tied to the story, is a good indicator for the feel I am going for. Have a great Sunday everyone!