Snowbird Gothic Stories 12 - "For The Autumn Queen..."
There’s not much too the origin of “For The Autumn Queen”, just an image.
The story was originally posted at Storytellers Unplugged, a group blog of 30 or so horror writers who’d each contribute one essay a month (give or take) on writing. And for a few years there, the tradition was that for Halloween, instead of doing essays we’d do flash fiction, preferably something suitably scary, with a dash of literary. That’s where “Unhaunted House” first showed up, and “Deep End of the Shallow Water”, and of course, “For the Autumn Queen”.
It’s also where I posted my essay about the day I sold soft-core pornography to a bunch of nuns, but that’s a whole other story.
But in any case, “Autumn Queen…” was inspired by seeing the wind blow a bunch of dry leaves across my driveway. They weren’t quite dried out completely, so they tumbled over one another and banged off each other and generally gave the impression of being both together and actively involved in where they were going. Once that conceit was in my head – an army of dried leaves, headed off to war – other questions soon followed. Like, who were they fighting for, and what was their command structure, and how would they fight?
And then, because it was supposed to be a Halloween story and thus as creepily disturbing as possible, I brought a small child, doing the most innocent small child thing possible, into this mess. I mean, we’ve all pressed leaves in kindergarten, right? Found a couple of nice ones, sandwiched them in wax paper, and stuck them into a book (generally one of Mom or Dad’s largest and heaviest, only to completely forget the leaves for years and discovered them later at the least opportune moment possible). It’s cute and it’s harmless and it’s innocent, which is of course why I had to turn it into something with terrible, terrible consequences.
And I wonder why my mother keeps asking when I’m going to write something “nice”.
The story was originally posted at Storytellers Unplugged, a group blog of 30 or so horror writers who’d each contribute one essay a month (give or take) on writing. And for a few years there, the tradition was that for Halloween, instead of doing essays we’d do flash fiction, preferably something suitably scary, with a dash of literary. That’s where “Unhaunted House” first showed up, and “Deep End of the Shallow Water”, and of course, “For the Autumn Queen”.
It’s also where I posted my essay about the day I sold soft-core pornography to a bunch of nuns, but that’s a whole other story.
But in any case, “Autumn Queen…” was inspired by seeing the wind blow a bunch of dry leaves across my driveway. They weren’t quite dried out completely, so they tumbled over one another and banged off each other and generally gave the impression of being both together and actively involved in where they were going. Once that conceit was in my head – an army of dried leaves, headed off to war – other questions soon followed. Like, who were they fighting for, and what was their command structure, and how would they fight?
And then, because it was supposed to be a Halloween story and thus as creepily disturbing as possible, I brought a small child, doing the most innocent small child thing possible, into this mess. I mean, we’ve all pressed leaves in kindergarten, right? Found a couple of nice ones, sandwiched them in wax paper, and stuck them into a book (generally one of Mom or Dad’s largest and heaviest, only to completely forget the leaves for years and discovered them later at the least opportune moment possible). It’s cute and it’s harmless and it’s innocent, which is of course why I had to turn it into something with terrible, terrible consequences.
And I wonder why my mother keeps asking when I’m going to write something “nice”.
No comments have been added yet.
