I have two new stories in anthologies and they make a nice contrast in answering the age-old question: Where do you get your ideas?
For instance, I was biking one day and saw a phone lying in the street. It was still functional but it was locked and there was no way to contact the owner. I put up a message on NextDoor and got no response.
Eventually I brought it to the local shop of the service that ran the phone. I don't know whether they cracked the code and contacted the author or cannibalized it for parts, or just chucked it in the trash, but I had done all I could do.
Except.
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| A Nurse Log (National Park Service) |
I could write a story about it. "The Nurse Log" appears in Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy: Thirteen Tales of Murder, Mystery, and Master Detection, edited by Gay Toltl Kinman, and Andrew McAleer.
I would call this story the result of an inner spark. I was reacting to something that I experienced.
Sometime after I wrote that story I received a call from Colin Conway. He writes police novels set in Spokane and has edited three anthologies, with each story and set in Spokane.
He asked if I would like to write a story for his fourth anthology. Each tale would involve someone finding a gun (always the same gun), using it in a crime, and then leaving it somewhere where someone else could find it.
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| Spokane Convention Center |
I thought that was intriguing and wrote back that I would try if he would agree to two points. 1) I had only been to Spokane once and that was for the World Science Fiction Conference, so I would focus my story on the Spokane Conference Center. 2) I wanted to avoid the obvious gun-related crimes (shooting or threatening to shoot someone).
Colin approved my plan. The result was ""The Book Deal," a story about a publishing conference and two editors dueling over a new book my a hot influencer. it is now available in Lost and Loaded: A Gun's Tale.
So that is an example of an external inspiration: Someone other than me suggested the topic for the story.
I prefer the internal ones, since they tend to be close to my heart. But it can be fun to work from another writer's suggestion. And hey, it's nice to be wanted.
Afternote: I have since found two more cell phones. In neither case could I get them back to the owner.
Congratulations on your new stories. I hope the subsequent finds have proved equally inspiring.
ReplyDeleteLike you, my brother has found several phones. One rang after he picked it up, and he was able to return it to the wife of the firefighter who somehow dropped it while riding in his fire truck. The others he turned over to police. Many people have "find my phone" apps installed or phones that come with tracking so some police departments have a place to hold items for people to come find them. This leads to a funny story I heard from a police officer about a young woman calling the University of Texas Police Department to complain that one of their officers had "sticky fingers" because her tracking app showed that her Airpods were at the police department. I hope she was embarrassed when they told her to come claim the Airpods from their "Lost and Found."
ReplyDeleteI have never, ever lost my phone—until a few days ago, when it dropped out of a poorly designed one-piece silicon holder-on-a-strap in the New York subway. I didn't notice till I'd exited the subway, crossed busy Lexington Avenue, and was about to get on the crosstown bus to the Upper West Side. I retraced my steps to the subway, where an MTA employee told me apologetically that someone had found it, but she had to tell him that it was against regulations for her to take it and he'd have to hand it in at the booth on the other platform (booths in both directions having fallen to budget cuts). So at least I had the hope that someone would call. I had names in my emergency directory, and since I never lost my phone, the lock screen wouldn't activate for four hours. Sure enough, my husband received a call from iLiz while we were on the bus from the person our Good Samaritan had handed my phone in to, not at the booth at East 86th & Lex, but at Hunts Point in the Bronx, presumably the GS's destination. Back to the East Side, back onto the train to Hunts Point. Our phone wasn't there, as the woman we'd called was "busy doing her job." Could we wait? We could, albeit tired after a long day, hungry, and in my case, dying to sit down. Half an hour later, she phoned again. Could we possibly take the train to a different stop? We could, although we found the train we boarded was delayed by an "incident." We had to wait for her again at the new rendezvous. The "incident" and "her job" were probably the same, as the person who finally showed up with our phone was a lovely young policewoman. Whew! I did have backup for everything, but my ability to ride the bus and subway at senior rates, among other things, were lost with the phone, and that created delay and complication. When I got home, I found that if it had been more disastrously lost or stolen, I could have locked it from my laptop (both Apple devices) and that (without my setting anything), my name and email address would have appeared on the lock screen so I could be contacted. I was very grateful to get it back!
ReplyDeleteWow, Liz. You should be able to get a story out of that1
DeleteRob, very smart idea to drop the phone off with their provider. Every cell phone carries kind of a 14-15 digit software serial number called an IEMI (or MeID). You can learn that unique number on any phone including your own by punching in #06# .
ReplyDeleteIf I may offer a practical warning if your phone displays its number on its locked screen. If someone calls you to say don't worry, they've found your phone and will drop it in the mail, always have your provider totally disable your phone. Unscrupulous finders have been known to call the owner as above hoping the owner will relax his/her guard and not remove service. Said Samaritan then phones Russia, Turkistan, or Bolivia on your dime. Further, your phone may contain the keys to allow them access to your bank account. What's your favorite color?
Rob, congratulations on the stories!