I have only one blurred photo of my dad, from the year he met my mother. This is also the year that he left her and disappeared forever, from our lives and (as I would discover when I went looking) from the world itself, to all appearances. In the photo, he's of middling age, not quite young anymore but not old either, though his hairline has started creeping back at his temples. He wears a punk leather jacket, and he's shooting a photo with an antique brownie camera. The camera is the only thing left of him, and my mother presented it to me ceremoniously at my high school graduation. I've never used it. I'm not really a camera freak, and even if I was, I'm too broke to afford specialty film and the cost of developing the photos. Cellphone photos snapped and sent through Instagram is more my style, if I have a style. I guess I do. I try not to be one of those people who only posts pictures of their food and their friends having more fun than they are. I take pictures of the people that other people look past. Homeless people, crazy-talking guys on street corners, the dangerous-looking thugs who hang out at the corners, that people look away from in case they look back. Like looking away from trouble would ever help anything. I don't get a whole lot of comments on my snapshots, though once some lady who ran an art gallery in a hairdressing saloon said that she'd do an exhibit for me, if I wanted. At the time, I mostly wanted a job sweeping up hair, and I sure didn't have the money to get big prints made of my crappy little cellphone photos. It's not like I have a top-of-the-line cell, either. I'm lucky the thing even has a camera. Forget megapixels and sensor size, it could be a shadow box for as modern as it is.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gauthierdumonde/9901186963/
Story potential: High.
Notes: I do like where this is going. And it positively reeks of symbolic resonance.

"Thunderstorm coming."

"Yup."

"Think she'll find it this year?"

He shrugged. "No saying. Her ma got dropped off in that very cornfield thirty years ago, and that's the story she told the girl from the time she was old enough to walk. Just makes sense the child thinks that's where her mama went now, even though we saw her dead and buried in a coffin in the ground. Besides, she always told me that she was from Peoria, before the storm picked her up and deposited her on my land like a present." The farmer looked a bit sad, staring at his worn and roughened hands. "Best present a man could ever get in his life, tell you that much. My girl, she was a present to both of us. I reckon any parent'd tell you the same thing, long as they weren’t of totally no account themselves. My girl, she's also a handful and a half, trouble in her eyes and danger in the way she looks at the local boys. I tell you, it's a miracle I haven't had to get out my shotgun to run them off yet or to get her out of some pickle."

His friend laughed. "Buddy, you haven't had trouble with the local boys because they know you've got that shotgun. Who hasn't seen you shooting at crows in your fields? You get 'em, too. You may have come back from the army and settled down to be a farmer, but a little bit of that's still in you."

He shrugged again. "M'wife hated crows. not sure why. When I found her in that bathtub, she was surrounded by a ring of 'em staring at her like she was their next meal. I reckon that’s enough to--"


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/closetartist/8355786204/
Story potential: High.
Notes: Could make an interesting rural fantasy.

The bluebells hadn't been there yesterday, she knew that. Yesterday, the long expanse of green had been a golf course, carefully manicured and groomed. The grass that grew on it was barely recognizable as grass, and certainly nothing as untameable as bluebells had been there. But his morning, with the mist hanging over the green, a wide path of bluebells curved over the hills, leading into the mist. She took a hesitant step forward. Part of her, however silly, was thinking, "But this can't be magic, because I'm wearing a polo shirt and khakis."


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinpearce1/7320955842/
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Eh.

It's not all it's cracked up to be, being a prince from fairyland. First thing, there's only one prince. Sure, I know the media around here call all of us "princes" and "princesses," and we try to match that for any public appearance or declared fairyfolk. Coronets, clothes of silk, waist-length hair, the full nine yards, as your saying goes. Every fragment of belief we get is precious. Think of it as if you owned some acres deep in the woods, and you found out that every child you could persuade to believe in Rumpelstiltskin resulted in a gold nugget appearing somewhere on your land. For a while we were all over the world, trying to persuade you all. Then we settled into fairytales and haunt stories. We were taken by surprise by your Industrial Revolution.


Inspiration: Weezer's "Beverly Hills" - otherwise not a particularly enjoyable song, and really not a good fit for the station it showed up on, Pandora....
Story Potential: High.
Notes: I guess I like the idea that it's basically a bunch of starvingly poor and desperate people whose survival depends on convincing everyone around them that they're rich, glamorous, and magical.

Do you have your cider, child? Are you cozy in your blanket? Come, scoot a little closer to the hearth. There. You liked the stew for dinner? Good. Because this is a story you must hear, but one that you should only listen to when you're inside, and safe, and warm, and full of good food, and with a warm mug of something good to hold in your hands. Keeps them from shaking, you see. Because this story is true as my arthritis. And they--I'll get to who "they" are later--well, they notice, a little bit, when they're talked about. And they notice a *lot* when somebody's scared near where they're being talked about. So this is not a story you should ever tell around a campfire to scare the children, do you see? I first heard it at just such a campfire, and it was only luck that I had more to travel that night and left early. They found the burned-out campground, and the bodies, the next day. Scared, just a little? Good. Now put that feeling aside. Curl into your blanket. Sip some hot cider. Enjoy the heat from the fire.

Inspiration: Just feeling all Fall-like.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: But it better be a hell of story to live up to this intro. And something that will make a reader look at her surroundings/friends sideways.

She nursed her own child as long as she could, but it didn't take very long before the child was full and sleepy and her master noticed. Then he sent for his dogs. She did not want to watch as they suckled at her breasts, but eventually, she did, if only to wince and brace herself for a nip from their teeth if she moved wrong, or to push them away if they started getting rowdy--her master allowed her that much, at least. In time, she could not help herself from noticing the differences in the faerie hounds, their silky ears, and the way their eyes turned to her, sometimes, when the master scolded them, as if they asked her for help. She began to not fear their feeding time so much. She would whisper in their ears, stories of what might happen once her child was weaned.

Inspiration: News of the Weird: In Uganda, "for seven years had been forced to breastfeed her husband's hunting dogs as she was nursing the couple's own children. Farmer Nathan Awoloi of Pallisa explained that his dogs needed to eat, and since he was forced to send Jennipher's family two milk cows in order to win her hand, he felt his demands were reasonable. "
Story Potential: High
Notes: Well, it's creepy enough that it could work pretty well with a dark fairy tale.

The riparian nomads were known to the water spirits, and vise versa. This did not help their popularity in the communities that they visited. Anyone untouched by the same kind of drownings, sudden floods, and other waterborne calamities was not viewed popularly, no matter that their caravan barges held all manner of useful things and their plays, put on by torchlight on the wide boards of their barges, brightened dull lives. Oh, they were looked forward to, but they were not exactly trusted. Who knew what evil bargain they'd struck with the sylphs to allow them free reign of the rivers? The sylphs knew. So did the nomads. They knew, and their eldest sons knew. Sometimes the boys came back from their year beneath the water moonstruck and unable to concentrate on anything else until they fell over the railings--

Inspiration: "riparian" - related to or living on the bank of a natural river or watercourse.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: I like the idea of a culture of water-gypsies with a dreadful bargain, but that's background, not a story. Basically, I was writing along and naturally the locals are suspicious of the outsiders, and the outsiders are poor misunderstood--but no, wait, what if there *is* a dreadful bargain?

I'm laughing discreetly. He defied me completely. How--entertaining. It's been centuries since somebody had that kind of brass balls. Of course they all wait to see my response, and I musn't show my amusement or they might get the wrong idea baout what's allowable. And if they do that, it would all fall apart. The pain would sweep back over me and I'd be in agony for centuries. Or minutes that felt like centuries. At a certain point, they said the pain would kill me, and it was getting steadily worse, so it all depends on whether it continued to accelerate during this pause, or if it resets. I like him, so I don't want to kill him, and I *definitely* want to keep him around, but--I know. Though--

Inspiration: "Red Light Go" by Mea.
Story Potential: High--tentatively.
Notes: It's not a horribly new idea, but I feel it unrolling, so it gets high potential anyway. His punishment is that she makes him her companion--and at some point, she'll have to choose the pain as a way to save him from--something. Or to save herself. Or something. Though that seems too predictable, so something will have to muddy the waters.

You need a hole in your head to see them, you see--or, well, you don't, and that's the problem. Cause they can still see you, and they'll get you whenever they feel like it. If you got a hole in your head--like me--you'll be able to see them and stay away. Staying sane is a different matter, but what can I say? You pays your money, you takes your chances. I got my hole by accident, when I was fighting in Iraq, but other people, they sometimes get their holes in car accidents, or surgery, or some proper ritual designed to let them see, well, them. Old shamanic tradition, dontcha know. Some gobbledygook about it opening you up to the universe, letting you see the beauty of it--that's what they used to say.


Inspiration: "Hole Solution" Android Lust
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Mmm, trepanning, shamanism, some sort of (?)faerie/(?)demon--tasty stuff.

The cemetery fairies were lonely. Nobody buried the bodies in winter, and it made them restless. Not to mention the cold made their wings stiff and likely to tear if they tried to move too fast. The fairies made little snow fairies over the graves, they cleaned away lichen that was stiff and dried, and they recited the names and lives of the people buried beneath them. That only took a little of their time, however, so most of the time they spent huddled inside urns and pine trees and mausoleums, their wings wrapped round themselves to keep the cold from getting too intense. They weren't weak Southern fairies, to drop off into hibernation at the touch of a chill breeze, but--

Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/piedpiper1/3058008086/
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Not really a story here, but I like the idea of cemetery fairies. Must remember it when I write a fantasy world.