Such stuff as dreams are made on

Well, my brain is really taken up today with these ever-revolving worries about my 4-year-old's recent behavioral problems. Worry worry worry, stress stress stress. BUT I am also frankly tired of worrying about it constantly, so I will try to force myself out of my own head by talking about something else.

Isn't the weather grand today? No, just kidding. Not that. It's raining anyway, with another 8-10 inches of spring snow expected tonight...

So...{sitting down in a comfy chair, stretching my feet out}...how did you start your current WIP?

Me, I had a dream. Really. And not a dream that would inspire most people. In fact, most people would probably call their pyschologist sobbing, after a dream like that.

The initial kernel of the book, see, was a rape. In my dream, I was a young girl, locked in a room in some sort of odd star-shaped pale tower. It was clearly a medieval time period. A nobleman came in and bragged about how he'd "bought" me, could do whatever he wanted now, and would. And he had a knife. Man, he was a jerk. {shuddering still, at the memory} Anyway, when I woke up, I knew I had to write this story down. Surprisingly, though, when I sat at the keyboard the story did not start there. It started when the young girl made a bad choice...

The book has been revised so much by now that my MC doesn't even get raped, though she certainly has to deal with enough other turmoil. But the two characters in that dream are still there.

And the tower? Ah, the tower. That was the coolest bit. I had no idea who the nobleman in the dream was, of course, so I rooted around in history. When did I want this to take place? What area? Eventually, for some unknown reason I settled on Edmund Langley, first Duke of York, as my villain, and proceeded from there. About halfway through the first draft, I did a little more research on the Duke, to find out more about him. And I found his tower, his favorite place to live, and the place where he was born:



That was it, of course. The tower I'd dreamt about in the first place.