Story Starter?

Yesterday I needed to take some long-unused clothing to the DI (Deseret Industries. Whatever problems the LDS church has with other issues, it handles welfare and job training for its members and many others very well, hiring and training refugees, the physically and mentally handicapped, the recently homeless, etc. The DI is a chain of second-hand stores where many of these people get work experience.  It's also a great place to find craft items, costume pieces, and used books.), and naturally I wanted to go inside and hunt through their books as well. (Just because I have overflowing shelves and stacks of books doesn't mean that I don't want MORE books!)  So, after I unloaded my sacks of tee shirts unworn for a decade or so, I pulled the car around into the parking lot.
As I pulled into a space, I noticed a 20-something African-American boy (I'd say "man," but he was acting like an overgrown 8th grader, so "boy" seems more fitting.) tucking something under a red car parked on the other side of the grass divider from me.  He looked guilty as he saw me, then he scowled defiantly -- as if he knew this teacher would disapprove -- hitched up his saggy gangpants, and swaggered his way into the store.
"What a punk!" I thought.  "There's a trash can only 20 feet away!  He had to pass it to get to the door!"
When I got out of my car, I glanced toward the red car, expecting to find a fast-food sack, but it was a T-Mobile sack with an opened box poking out of it.
Weird.  Had he stolen a phone then tried to hide the evidence?  No, if he'd stolen it, he wouldn't have a sack.
I seriously considered  picking up the sack and taking it to the trash, but I didn't, for bending over at that angle would have hurt my back.
However, when I went inside the store --- which isn't all that huge, and which is nothing more than a big box, with no nooks in which to hide -- he was gone.  He must've gone out an employee exit.
I spent the next 20 minutes choosing Agatha Christie paperbacks.  But after I'd paid, I remembered the punk kid and the T-Mobile bag, so I looked for the trash.
The red car was gone, another was parked in its place, and the T-Mobile sack was gone -- although there were a few other garbage items left by other piglets kicking around within the surrounding 20 feet or so, which let me know that no custodial crew had come by to pick up.
Had some customer picked up his trash?  Or was it not trash?  Was he not really a punk kid, but perhaps a drug dealer leaving a stash for someone?  Or maybe he was a spy?
Yes, he was probably a punk kid, but there may be a story here in the making.  :D

Creepy Cemetery Writing Prompt Photo

Last year, my blog views skyrocketed when I posted a series of creepy cemetery photos.  Somehow I missed this one, so I thought I'd share it this year.
This was taken in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City.  It's the angel Gabriel, waiting to awaken the dead.

(Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Halloween Writing Prompt Photo: Thistle House

Last weekend was Fall Break and I traveled south to Cedar City to the Fall Shakespeare Festival by a different route than usual.
One of the small towns I passed through is now a ghost town, destroyed by the Thistle Dam break and mudslide of 1983.  This house sits near the highway, still half-submerged in a scummy pond.  If ever you needed an image of a "haunted house," this one is sad enough to fill that requirement.
Ignore the reality and create the backstory, my writer friends. :)

(Click on the photo to enlarge it.)

Writing Photo Prompt: Masked

Here's a pic I took in 2011.  I think it's a great little tale waiting to happen.
Maybe you'll write that tale. :)

Click on the pic to enlarge it.

Writing Update! Good News!

I'm in a great mood right now.  I just finished the first draft of the sequel to The (Dis)Appearance of Nerissa MacKay!  Yes, yes, it's very rough and all, but writing the first draft is the hardest part, so I can now start the revision process, which is more fun.
I also took a bunch of snaps today with which to make possible covers for this new sequel.
Earlier I announced a title for this novella, but I'm changing it slightly.  The new title is..... *insert drum roll*  Nerissa MacKay and the Secrets of the Seventeen Scrolls.  This title works a good deal better with the plot.  Plus, I like the alliteration.  (What can I say?  I'm an English teacher.)
Now that I've finished the rough draft of Scrolls, I plan to read through (Dis)Appearance and Scrolls back-to-back, working out any little kinks in the former and doing a first big revision to the latter.
After that, I'll be ready to publish (Dis)Appearance!  This should be in September or October at the very latest.
My remaining news is that an idea for the third book in the series plopped into my head a couple of days ago.  I have no clue for a title yet, but the 3rd novella should involve the return of Grandma Maggie, a trip to the Shakespeare Festival, and possibly a kidnapped actor.  Or maybe mysteriously changing props.  Or a crazed audience member who believes he's time-traveled.  (Yeah, I thought of that just now.  But I kind of like it.  What do you think?)  Hmmm... *goes off to grab notebook*
*****
*Five minutes later*
Seriously, I just paused there and sketched out the skeletal outline of that time-traveler plot.  Boom!  And I actually thought of it while blogging.  Weird.
Let's try out some titles:
Nerissa MacKay and the Time-Traveler.
Nerissa MacKay and the Time-Traveling Scandal.
Nerissa MacKay Has The Time Of Her Life.

Uh... none of those are thrilling me.  Suggestions?

Readers' Opinions Requested

I haven't been blogging much because I've been working on the two Nerissa novellas.  The (Dis)Appearance of Nerissa MacKay is awaiting what I hope will be the final edit.  Soon I will be asking you to volunteer for a cover reveal. :)  And I really, really wanted to get the first draft (the hardest part) of Nerissa MacKay and the Mystery of the Seventeen Scrolls finished before school began.  Well, that didn't happen, as school starts tomorrow, and I'm about 2/3 the way finished.  Maybe I can get the draft done before Labor Day.
Anyway, I'm stuck, and I'm hoping some blog readers will give me an idea or two.
So, if you had stolen an automaton (life-size), where would you hide it?  Oh, you're a locksmith, so you might have all kinds of keys to get into places.
Seriously, where?
I'd love to have your ideas.  Don't worry if you're not a writer; just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.

Writing Prompt Photos: Great Salt Lake

I occasionally like to pull photos out of my collection and post them as writing prompts.  Here are a couple of Max from one of our trips out to the Great Salt Lake.
Remember to click on the photos to enlarge them.

What comes to mind with this one?  Camera nut?  A humorous tale involving rising tide and/or an ATV?  Seagull attack?  Or perhaps the desolation of the place (it's actually Black Rock Beach) will inspire a post-apocalyptic tale.

No, he's not in the Arctic, but feel free to write an exploration tale of the frozen north.  :)
Here Max was actually standing on a large "lake" of salt crust.  The salt layer was about an inch thick over smooth sand, but it was tough and did not crack under our weight as we walked.

Writing Prompt Photo: Quintessentially Utah

(Click on the photo to enlarge.)

A mostly rotted pier stands with a tumbleweed beside it on Black Rock Beach with the Great Salt Lake and a flock of seagulls in the distance.  How much more Utah could this possibly get?  (OK, cue the polygamy jokes here.)

Feel like writing a Western?  An adventure?  Try this out for an idea-starter. :)

Writing Prompt Photo: In The Middle Of Nowhere

(Click on the pic to enlarge.)

I'm assuming this phone booth in the middle of sheep pastures on the wind-swept Orkney Islands is a leftover from the days before cell phones.
But maybe Bill and Ted had just landed.  And I missed it.
I don't know.  What's your take?
Write the story, if you like. :)

Writing Prompt Photo: The Shoe Tree

(Yes, Max already posted about this.  I know.)

West of the Salt Lake Valley, out past Tooele (if you're not from Utah, you probably can't pronounce that correctly), we have the West Desert.  On the highway to the abandoned town of Iosepa (colonized by Hawaiians in the 1800s -- because somehow that made sense to someone at the time, putting folks used to tropical weather in a desert and asking them to farm productively), there is a shoe tree.  And this, folks, is a picture of the shoe tree is a snow storm.
Yup, a tree hung with shoes in the middle of the desert in the snow.  Looks like a good writing prompt to me. :)

(Don't forget to click on the photo if you want to enlarge it.)

Because Truth Really Is Often Stranger Than Fiction

File this under "If I wrote this scene into a novel, people would scoff at it as 'unbelievable.'"

In ninja gear and claiming to be polygamists, women invade Utah home

Police: » Suspects in attempted robbery claim to be sister wives.

By Pamela Manson

| The Salt Lake Tribune

First Published Sep 19 2014 01:40 pm • Last Updated Sep 19 2014 01:49 pm

An alleged home invasion in Utah came with a bizarre twist: The suspects were dressed in ninja costumes and claimed to be sister wives, according to police.

The two suspects attempted to pull off a robbery just before 4 a.m. Friday at a West Jordan home near 9300 South and 4800 West, police Sgt. Dan Roberts said. He said the women — who are 18 and 22 years old and came armed with knives and a stun gun — attacked two adults at the house.

 

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The homeowner brought one woman under control manually, Roberts said. When the second woman produced the stun gun, the homeowner pulled out a ninja sword to subdue her, and the two suspects were held until police arrived.

No one was injured in the confrontation, but one person was checked out at a hospital, Roberts said.

The suspects and the home’s occupants are all part of an extended family, he said. The women claim to both be married to an uncle of a child living at the home.

The uncle has been accused of sexually abusing that child and is in jail awaiting trial on the alleged offense, according to police.

Police do not believe the women and the uncle belong to a polygamist church. They are not releasing any names to protect the privacy of the child.

pmanson@sltrib.com

Twitter: @PamelaMansonSLC

Lack Of Proofreading = Hilarity On KSL.com

Flash-flood chaser captures dangerous desert furry on camera

By John Hollenhorst

Uh, a furry desert?  I had no idea that deserts were mammals.
Or is it the camera that's furry here?  Wouldn't the hair obscure the lens, though?  Hell hath no furry like a photographer scorned.  (Furry Hell?)
Apparently, this was a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and furry, signifying nothing more than a lack of a decent copy editor.  (MacBeth with facial hair, no doubt.)


OK, I'll stop the awful puns now.  :)

Misdemeanors With Doughnuts: I KNOW There's A Book Plot In This Tale Somewhere.

From Yahoo! News:

Donut capers stymie police in Oregon

 

By By Courtney Sherwood14 minutes ago

By Courtney Sherwood

PORTLAND Ore. (Reuters) - Police in a Portland suburb have a sticky situation on their hands: for more than a month, mysterious vandals have been smearing pastries on cars, depositing donuts in lawns and leaving cakes strewn about the streets.

According to Hillsboro police, the baked-goods bandits first struck on June 1, smearing a maple bar across a car windshield.

In the weeks since, the pastry perpetrators have occasionally turned to healthier fare, leaving yogurt, bread and potato salad on vehicles and in driveways, although most of the incidents have involved sweets, said police spokesman Lieutenant Mike Rouches.

Amateur sleuths within the neighborhood collected frosting and sprinkles, and traced pastries back to at least two supermarkets in the area.

“We think the suspects probably went to a Dumpster where a grocery store had thrown out day-old pastries,” Rouches said.

Although only two residents of the suburban northeast Hillsboro neighborhood have complained to police, baked goods seem to have been scattered across multiple vehicles and yards. No permanent damage has been caused, and no individual seems to have been specifically targeted, Rouches said.

Police see the maple bars and chocolate donuts as an inconvenience, rather than a threat, but Rouches said that a crime has occurred – criminal mischief, a misdemeanor. Patrol cars are making more visits to the neighborhood, especially at night, although so far police have opted not to request surveillance video from local supermarkets.

“We believe the suspects are kids in the neighborhood,” Rouches said, adding that police don’t necessarily need to arrest the perpetrators and could settle for an apology, but would like the late-night capers to stop.

(Reporting by Courtney Sherwood; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Beech)

What Should My Protagonist Do Next? Help Me Choose An Adventure.

So, it's been a couple of months since I worked on The Chocolate Smuggler's Notebook, and, as I look over various outlines I've done in the past, I can't decide which (if any) to choose.  Your help is requested here.
When we last saw our 15-year-old heroine (Olivia, but goes as Oliver), she was pretending to be a boy who was escaping the bad dudes by dressing as a girl (Yes, I know; I stole it from Shakespeare.).  When the train is attacked by outlaws hoping to snatch the miners' payroll money, she mistakes them for the bad guys and barricades herself in the luggage car.  When the shooting begins, she hides in a trunk, thinking they'll never find her, but she passes out from lack of oxygen.  The outlaws will steal the trunk, believing its weight means it's filled with silver and gold coins.  These outlaws are rather of the Butch Cassidy sort, and don't like killing -- just robbery.  Also, the book is steampunk.
What should happen next?
a) She wakes up in a mining camp because the outlaws have found an ancient motherlode there and have driven off the Natives.  (Or is that too Lone Ranger?)
b) The outlaws are attacked by other outlaws, her trunk is stolen, and she wakes up
     1) in an airship factory 1000 miles away.
     2) with Chinese laborers working on the transcontinental railroad.
     3) in a secret submarine laboratory under the waters of the Great Salt Lake.
     4) in the Pacific Northwest, with men who poach tree octopi.
     5) having been sold as an indentured servant to pirates.  Or maybe air pirates.  Or maybe gypsy cowboy pirates who do voodoo in Baton Rouge.
     6) with a group of scientists on their way to find the North Pole.
c) She wakes up back home, having been rescued by her friends.
d) She regains consciousness during the outlaws' flight from the train and escapes but is left alone in the forest.  Or maybe the desert.
e) She is captured by the bad dudes and put in prison, as they have received instruction from the chief antagonist that she is worth more alive than dead.  (The bad dudes have already killed someone, believing it was Oliver/Olivia.)
f) She wakes up with the outlaws and decides to join their gang of ruffians as a way to escape the bad dudes chasing her.  She becomes a bank robber/train robber.
g) She wakes up to discover the outlaws are actually scientists plotting the overthrow of the local government.  She must join them or escape both them and the bad dudes employed by the local government.
h) something else that you suggest.

What's your vote?  What story would you most like to read?  Comment below or tweet me @lisamshafer.

Oh-So-Very-English Story Starter

Every once in a while, I pull a random picture out of iPhoto and use it as a story starter.  Here's one for today:

This shows a picnic meal of a scone with clotted cream and jam, accompanied by ginger beer.  (That's non-alcoholic, if you're curious.)  It just doesn't get any more stereotypically English than this snack -- unless it's tea and biscuits (cookies, that is) with the Queen.
The real story here is that I walked from Cambridge to Granchester one hot and sticky summer day in 2007, accompanied by a die-hard, born-again American Baptist fellow whose name I can no longer recall.  My enjoyment of the outing was rather diminished by the humidity and by his refusal to discuss anything other than his own narrow outlook on life.
However, the photo is a great set up for fiction.
What would you do with it?  Who's picnicking in the park?  Why?  When?
Feel free to share your ideas or link to your own post if you write something about this.
Have fun.

People Watching At The Jiffy Lube

In the same way I automatically correct people's grammar inside my head because I'm an English teacher, I also people watch -- because I'm a writer.  Today's trip to the local Jiffy Lube for an oil change provided me with some good character fodder.
First of all, in spite of the fact that there were some dozen drivers there, I was the only woman (besides the two working in the shop, that is).  Apparently, Saturday afternoon car issues are a mostly male thing.  (Come to think of it, most times I'm in Jiffy Lube, it's men who are the other customers.  I wonder why.  It's not like one needs any car knowledge to go to Jiffy Lube, so we can't even apply the usual gender stereotyping here.)
As I have a nasty case of bronchitis and a sinus infection, I took care to sit as far from the room's other occupants as possible, but it wasn't all that far, as the room was fairly small.
First off, there was the guy with the dog.
Now, it was not a guide dog, so we can make some assumptions about the selfishness of this man.  After all, a dog does not enjoy Jiffy Lube, with lots of strangers, lots of cars, and lots of commotion.  Also, it was a nice, sunny day outside, and the man could've easily taken the dog out to walk about on the grass.  But, no, he sat with the uptight mongrel on his lap, petting it over and over so that fur flew into the air.  I wanted to smack some manners into him, but I couldn't, so I coughed into my sleeve and tried to concentrate on grading papers.
Several people left, but Dog Guy remained, much to my annoyance.
Then Mr. Center of Attention arrived.
Now, I'm an extrovert, but I know when to back off.  No one appreciates someone who tries to draw everyone's attention to him in a public waiting area.
This man was 50-ish, wearing a fisherman's cap, and rather good-looking with silvery hair about his ears and dark eyes.  However, he clearly knew he was good-looking, and he wished to enforce his superiority on the world.
First, it was onto Dog Guy.
In a voice far too loud for the room, he began a conversation about the mongrel, his own yappy dogs and how they annoy his neighbors (Probably about as much as you do yourself, buddy), and how their annoying his neighbors was unimportant to him (I just bet your neighbors can tell).  This caused Dog Guy to preen over the attention and to pet the mutt more vigorously, which, in turn caused me to cough from the increased amount of dog hair flying in the little room.
Then Dog Guy was called into the shop area (yea!) to pay and leave, so it was just Mr. Center of Attention with me now -- and the stupid TV show going on about two idiots trespassing and hunting alligators for some reality show.
About 2 seconds after Dog Guy's departure, as I still sat green-penning kids' essays and wondering how it is that so many of the kids just can't seem to follow a model, suddenly Mr. CoA bursts out with a fake laugh and a loud comment about the show.
Dude, you are desperate, I thought.  But I didn't look up.  The man was not flirting -- as he'd gone on and on about his wife to Dog Guy -- he wanted my attention only to feed his ego, not to flatter mine.
I thought he'd calm down, but, apparently miffed that I ignored him, he got up and went into the shop area, leaned on a railing, and yakked at the mechanics for about 10 minutes.
Mr. CoA's car was finished long before mine was, although he arrived later than I did.  I understood, however.  The Jiffy Lube crew just wanted him out of there.
In retrospect, I wonder how the man is married.  How could his wife tolerate that all the time?

Somewhere, I will work these two into a plot; I just know it.

Random Photo Story Starter 2/9/14

Here's a great little photo I snapped a few years back, then tinkered with on a couple of different apps.
Perhaps it will inspire a story or two from readers.  (If it does, do let me know.)

(Remember to click on the pic to enlarge it.)

PS I don't even know who these girls were, except that they were college students and over the age of 18.  (I asked before I took the photo.)

A Random Photo As A Story Starter 2/8/14

I haven't blogged much lately.  Sorry about that.
Today, my excuse was battling dust bunnies and grading essays.
So, here, have a gratuitous and weird photo to inspire your writing:

Oh, yes.  There's a real story behind it.  But the point is that you create the character, or rather that you create a fictional version of someone who is clearly already a "character."
Have fun.

Writing Inspiration Photos: Tourists in China!

Okay, it's January, the most blah month of the year.  Plus, I've had the flu.  Plus, it's the end of the term, and soon I'll be swamped with grading and frantic requests from parents who haven't bothered to check their kids' scores for weeks but are now suddenly interested.  Yuck.  Double yuck.
So, let us divert ourselves with amusing photos to inspire stories!
What you do with these is up to you.  One of my cyber friends wrote up a whole blog post on one of my photo sets.  And I know my cemetery photos last October drew hundreds of hits to this blog, so someone must've wanted some inspiration for something.
For today's set of photos, I've pulled up some blurry digital pics of old snapshots.  I'm not sharing these because they're such great photos; I'm sharing these because they might spark a story in someone's mind.  All of the original photos were taken by me in October of 2001, while I was on a UNESCO-sponsored dance tour in China.
Ready?  Let's begin. (Don't forget to click on any photo to enlarge it.)

Not for all the tea in China.....
Yeah, that's an American gal picking tea on a farm in China.
Maybe you've never seen tea being grown before.  I certainly hadn't until the day I took this picture.
I will leave the rest of the story up to you.

Here, an American child poses in front of a statue of a Chinese warrior.  (Yes, I blurred her features slightly on purpose, but enough time has passed that this little girl is now an adult anyway, so I'm not too worried.)  You can make up the story yourself, but I will tell you that, in 2001, a beautiful African-American child was enough of an oddity in large cities in China that she attracted attention everywhere we went.

This is a photo of a photo of selections from one of our meals.  Items on the plate include broccoli, a mushroom, a pea pod, noodles, a bamboo slice, an unidentified object shaped like an olive (but it wasn't an olive), and the head of a baby bird (complete with beak).
Before I went to China, I used to tell people that I liked Chinese food.  Nowadays, I say, "I like Chinese-American food."  It's much more accurate.  :)
I could tell you many a tale here, but that's not the point.  I'll let you be inspired to write your own story about this.

If you are an American and have not traveled outside of your homeland very much, you've probably never seen one of these before.  We always called them "Squatty Potties."  They used to be very common in Italy -- although there they often looked more like shower stalls that flushed -- and these were some of the very nicest public toilets available in China in 2001.  This particular one was (obviously) even clean enough to warrant a photograph.
The rest of the story is yours to create.  (Heaven knows I've got enough true ones of my own!)

And, of course, no photo essay on China would be complete without mentioning the signs.  Even back at the beginning of the present millennium, China had, in touristy places, many signs with English as a second language on them.  The trouble was that no one ever seemed to have bothered to have a native speaker of English check any of these signs.  This one, for example, reads: Protecting Tree: Please Not SIIINNG.   Hence, we came to refer to this language as "Close Enough English."
The rest of the story, my friends, is yours to create.

Have fun!  And if you do get inspired to write something thanks to one of these photos, I'd love to know about it.  Just post a comment.

Winter Tales Writing Inspiration Photos #2

This time it's a Jeep!
Not just any Jeep, but a vintage and restored WWII-era Jeep that Max and I found in the parking lot at the ski resort.

Look at this thing:

(Note: I color-enhanced the interior photo just a bit to help fend off the sun's glare.)


Someone (someone with $$$$$) has restored it to look very much like it did 60+ years ago.  Why?  How?  Where did they get it?  Where has it been kept?  Did it ever see action?  Was it in the Pacific or Europe?  Or is it in good shape because it was one that never made it out of the States?  And who owns it now?  Why did s/he buy/inherit/restore it?  Who brought it to the ski resort?  While it's good for mountains, it's not very comfortable for snow and cold weather.  The flags seem to indicate they want folks to notice it.

I have no answers to these questions.  I'm merely asking in case you need a good story starter.
Write on, people.  Write on.