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Description

TALES OF AUTUMN SPRING (ToAS)

by Richard Mandel

based on characters and situations

copyright (C) 2019-2023, all rights reserved

Episode 1 - "Prelude"

PREV --> FIRST -->

--------------------

COMMENTS

Brandy's tale about Princess and the laptop in "Prelude" has its origins in two things: me seeing something very similar happen in real life to a cat I used to own (it got hit and died per Brandy's story), and a rough draft of an outline I originally wrote for the first season of the original Autumn Spring that I kept kicking down the road as new ideas for new episodes came to me. It got delayed to season two, then to season three, and then I toyed with the idea of resurrecting it for ToAS even I was going to have to do some serious rewriting of it to make it work with how Autumn Spring had evolved over three seasons. I even started a ToAS prose draft which I never finished, once I decided to go in the broken laptop direction instead. I wound up using the first part of that new revised draft for this story instead (up to when Larry and Brandy go into his apartment). The original concept was titled "Princess Is Missing," and it would have taken place later in Larry and Brandy's pre-marriage relationship with an older and more mature Princess who is just old enough to go into heat (nudge-nudge). The idea was that a neighborhood tomcat passing though would have seen Princess through one of Larry's apartment windows and then started stopping by every day, hoping for a little action with a fresh prospect. He eventually got it too, once Princess decided she'd had enough of being cooped up and surprised Larry by making a break for freedom one day when he opened the door. He was shocked because he had never seen Princess do that before and he knew how scared she normally was of the outdoors, so Brandy (knowing more about cats than him) would have had to explain to her befuddled older boyfriend what was happening. A few days later and still no Princess, Larry begins looking for her and Brandy helps as she is able, with no success. He's about to give up when he hears scratches at his apartment door and opens it to find her there, happily greeting him and sauntering inside as if nothing had happened. A visit to the vet reveals she's expecting, which leaves Larry in a fine pickle, and that's where my assorted original series materials run out. I knew I was going to have to rewrite this given that Princess never has kittens the whole time she's staying with Larry at the Richland Townhomes given the way the original series would up evolving. My revised draft for the intended ToAS revamp had Brandy telling Larry (she took her to the vet) that the vet said he got very lucky and Princess is clear, but he'd better have her fixed if he didn't want her to have kittens in the future - which he does. All I needed after that was some form of final scene but I never outlined or drafted one. I decided to go with the "Prelude" shorter flashback about Princess instead because I didn't want to have to deal with issues (feline prenatal abortion and/or spaying) that certain groups of people find offensive, and the shortness of the laptop story also helped considerably in my forced paring down of all I had written for the "Nana Brandy" story envelope into a far shorter form that would wrap around it. Oh, the things you go through as a writer sometimes!

FWIW I chose Dion's "The Wanderer" as the primary leit motif or theme if you will for the Middleton neighborhood tom that sets his eyes on Princess in the unused and unfinished "Princess Is Missing." The song has been a personal favorite of mine for years and I think it works just as well with a swaggering and self-confident macho tomcat as it does with the man that the song describes. Here's a YouTube link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP1z0d…

I also chose Bent Fabric's "Alley Cat," another old fave of mine, for the music when the tom and Princess start courting each other with typical cat play-fighting (you cat owners know what I'm talking about):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMqTuW…

I personally don't plan on doing anything more with "Princess Is Missing;" however, if any of you Autumn Spring fans want to take this unfinished and unproduced episode concept and further develop it or even redevelop it on your own as an Autumn Spring fan effort, all you have to do to ask is Send a Note.

Description

TALES OF AUTUMN SPRING (ToAS)

by Richard Mandel

based on characters and situations

copyright (C) 2019-2023, all rights reserved

Episode 1 - "Prelude"

PREV --> FIRST -->

--------------------

COMMENTS

Brandy's tale about Princess and the laptop in "Prelude" has its origins in two things: me seeing something very similar happen in real life to a cat I used to own (it got hit and died per Brandy's story), and a rough draft of an outline I originally wrote for the first season of the original Autumn Spring that I kept kicking down the road as new ideas for new episodes came to me. It got delayed to season two, then to season three, and then I toyed with the idea of resurrecting it for ToAS even I was going to have to do some serious rewriting of it to make it work with how Autumn Spring had evolved over three seasons. I even started a ToAS prose draft which I never finished, once I decided to go in the broken laptop direction instead. I wound up using the first part of that new revised draft for this story instead (up to when Larry and Brandy go into his apartment). The original concept was titled "Princess Is Missing," and it would have taken place later in Larry and Brandy's pre-marriage relationship with an older and more mature Princess who is just old enough to go into heat (nudge-nudge). The idea was that a neighborhood tomcat passing though would have seen Princess through one of Larry's apartment windows and then started stopping by every day, hoping for a little action with a fresh prospect. He eventually got it too, once Princess decided she'd had enough of being cooped up and surprised Larry by making a break for freedom one day when he opened the door. He was shocked because he had never seen Princess do that before and he knew how scared she normally was of the outdoors, so Brandy (knowing more about cats than him) would have had to explain to her befuddled older boyfriend what was happening. A few days later and still no Princess, Larry begins looking for her and Brandy helps as she is able, with no success. He's about to give up when he hears scratches at his apartment door and opens it to find her there, happily greeting him and sauntering inside as if nothing had happened. A visit to the vet reveals she's expecting, which leaves Larry in a fine pickle, and that's where my assorted original series materials run out. I knew I was going to have to rewrite this given that Princess never has kittens the whole time she's staying with Larry at the Richland Townhomes given the way the original series would up evolving. My revised draft for the intended ToAS revamp had Brandy telling Larry (she took her to the vet) that the vet said he got very lucky and Princess is clear, but he'd better have her fixed if he didn't want her to have kittens in the future - which he does. All I needed after that was some form of final scene but I never outlined or drafted one. I decided to go with the "Prelude" shorter flashback about Princess instead because I didn't want to have to deal with issues (feline prenatal abortion and/or spaying) that certain groups of people find offensive, and the shortness of the laptop story also helped considerably in my forced paring down of all I had written for the "Nana Brandy" story envelope into a far shorter form that would wrap around it. Oh, the things you go through as a writer sometimes!

FWIW I chose Dion's "The Wanderer" as the primary leit motif or theme if you will for the Middleton neighborhood tom that sets his eyes on Princess in the unused and unfinished "Princess Is Missing." The song has been a personal favorite of mine for years and I think it works just as well with a swaggering and self-confident macho tomcat as it does with the man that the song describes. Here's a YouTube link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP1z0d…

I also chose Bent Fabric's "Alley Cat," another old fave of mine, for the music when the tom and Princess start courting each other with typical cat play-fighting (you cat owners know what I'm talking about):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMqTuW…

I personally don't plan on doing anything more with "Princess Is Missing;" however, if any of you Autumn Spring fans want to take this unfinished and unproduced episode concept and further develop it or even redevelop it on your own as an Autumn Spring fan effort, all you have to do to ask is Send a Note.