Fantasy Dreams

Goooooood day!

Before I start this blog post, I have to address a small issue. I wrote posts last week and the week before, but they didn’t show up because I didn’t categorize them. They’re up now, but I’m sorry I didn’t catch my error.

This week I’m going to be talking about my new story idea! After I finish my Writerly Chat series, I’ll be conducting an in-depth visit into my new fantasy story idea, but for now I’m going to give you an overview (it may get lengthy).

To begin, there has to be some background. Last week, I had a strange dream.

Ever had a time when you think you remember a dream, or a character in a dream? That started this dream. I was in the fuzzy place between sleeping and waking and I was thinking about somebody I’d met in a dream (not sure if that was part of the dream or real). When I fell asleep, my dream began (shocker, right?).

I was in my house, and my older brother DJ had brought over some of his friends. I wanted to hang out with him and his friends, but he was being grumpy and said no. I watched them until it was nighttime, when it was time to take his dogs for a walk before bed. Apparently his friends were spending the night, because they walked outside talking when I took the dogs out.

They were just walking around the house and I was following them, but I stopped. Our house is next to a strip of woods, and I was walking the dogs next to it. I stopped and let DJ and his friends go ahead. I stood for a while until somebody came out of the woods. It was a boy, a little older than me, with white hair and freckles. I automatically knew he lived in the woods and he could speak to wolves. He told me that there was a wolf in the woods coming for me and I needed to go back into the house. So I ran back into the house with the dogs and took off their leashes. DJ and his friends were still ignoring me and I was scared the wolf boy had gotten hurt. I went back outside and he was standing by the woods, and I asked if it was gone and he told me yes before he disappeared into the woods. I didn’t stop him, but every night for a long time I went out to the back of the house at night to see if he would come out of the woods. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he didn’t.

That dream really intrigued me. Sister and I dubbed the mysterious boy W.B. for Wolf Boy and I spent days trying to relive the dream. I quickly got the idea to write it down, and before long my short little yarn began to snowball into something resembling…a novel idea?

Yes, my friends. A simple dream with a W.B. living into the woods is quickly spinning out of my hands into a story with ghost queens, parallel universes, fever dreams, and lost magic.

The story begins with Kara Blanton, a fifteen year old girl who loves fantasy. She’s filled a composition notebook with all the tips and tricks she knows for survival in a fantasy world, just in case. She adores Lord of the Rings, the Spiderwick Chronicles, Peter Pan, and other such stories.

Then we have Kara’s older brother Russell. He just got out of the Army after a four year enlistment and is coming home to open his small business after taking college classes. He brings back his girlfriend, Tess.

Tess is Russell’s girlfriend. She is very smart, focused, and kind. She met him at a coffee shop and they started to go out. After a while he got out of the Army and decided to take her to meet his family.

Then we have W.B., also known as Wolf Boy or The Wolf Boy. He has to be one of my favorite characters, even though I don’t typically like the quiet, practical types. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a suitable picture so all you’re getting are his eyes, an aesthetic, and a description. He’s tall and thin-yet-somewhat-muscular, and has white hair, black eyes, and freckles.

Then there are a few other side characters. Kara’s mom, her siblings Logan, Grady, and Katrina, her mom’s boyfriend Chuck and his baby daughter Winnie, but they’re not important enough to warrant me scouring the Web for them. 😉

At the beginning of the story, Russell and Tess are visiting Kara’s parents. It’s all fine and dandy until Kara has the dream I described (most of the dreams and the dream world in my story are taken from my own dreams) and is really shaken. She goes to the woods at night, half expecting to meet W.B., but of course she doesn’t. That night she dreams that she finds a house in a snowy wasteland and falls asleep. When she wakes (in the dream), she looks out the window to see a mysterious woman walking across the snow. The woman notices her and summons a phoenix from the moon to attack her. Kara wakes just in time.

Pretty short, I know, but that’s all I’ve got. I will conclude with a short excerpt that takes place the night after her dream about W.B., when Russell and Tess are visiting them.

That night, I walked outside as Russell, Tess, and my little siblings sat down to watch A Series of Unfortunate Events. I’d recently finished and, still being depressed from the finale, had decided to walk outside. 

The woods were quiet. I was unsure as to what I would expect, but I was somewhat disappointed. I hadn’t seen the wolf boy very well, and I wanted to know who he was.

Idiot, I thought. It was a dream. Wolf boy wasn’t real. And yet there had been such a presence about the dream, an almost tangible sense of reality, that I wasn’t quite sure.

I stood, hands in my pockets, staring into the woods. No wolves, no wolf boy. Sighing, I walked back to the house.

That night, I lingered in that half-awake, half-asleep place.  Sleep eluded me, no matter how much I asked for it. Sighing, I flopped over and waited.

Well, that’s it! I hope you enjoyed, and I’m sorry about the blog post fluke. See you next week!

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