Everybody needs a brag page. Or a bookshelf, or a trophy display case, or something. C'mon, even serial killers tend to keep little boxes of molars or left shoes or something to help them remember what they've done. Me, I know it's bad tradecraft to do things like that, and my cover sure doesn't allow me to have anything on display in my home, but I couldn't...quite...resist. I have a web page, a web page that I designed as best I could to keep people away and not interested in it, but still, a web page. I keep the appearance trapped in the early '90s, I put in the code to chase away search engine spiders, and I only update it in anonymized browsers at places other than my own home. Heck, I only ever update it from places that I've never been before and never will visit again. Had to delay updating once because I liked the bakery's croissants so much that I wanted to be able to go back. I called it "The Selected Works of..." and gave it a name that I've never used as an alias and never will, although I confess I do have a certain fondness for it now. It'll confuse anybody who sees it, because the links and the text I post don't mention the name I used on the website anywhere.


Inspiration: Random web page generator landed me on http://www.mattneuman.com/
Story potential: High.
Notes: I like the idea, but what would a person be doing to have to do this? Esp. since I'd want to keep this in the spec-fic category?

"What? You mean to say you knew this was a suicide on the first day, and you kept using departmental resources for the entire week to dig into it and figure out every last bit and tittle?"

"Yes, once you figure that by bit and tittle you mean the possible beginning of an epidemic of suicides."

"Epidemic, what epidemic?"

"The one that hasn't happened yet. Or is just starting to happen, depending on how you look at it. I think it’s either something in this place or a deliberate alteration. My money’s on some environmental factor, maybe linked to some sort of actual virus that spreads. I saw signs in her friends and enemies and work acquaintances of the same thing. Hell, I'd suspect that I have the same thing, but I'm a damn detective, so I've clearly been depressed and suicidal for a very long time. Now that I've talked to you, you should gt yourself checked out regularly and isolation Me, I'm going to go check into a hotel and refuse room service and ask them to leave the food at the door and try to avoid talking to anyone for at least a week. I've already warned everyone I interviewed or interacted with that I can remember."

"You've warned--you've started some kind of crazy health panic because one unstable woman committed suicide?!"

"She wasn't."

"Wasn't what."

"Unstable. She wasn't unstable. She was sent up from the Republic of Uzbek, and you remember how they insisted on all their representatives passing what was basically astronaut-level screening for psychological and physical health and competency? That was because they could afford so few representatives. She passed all the tests with flying colors. I would have been proud to have her at my back."


Inspiration: A series premier with a suicide mystery.
Story potential: Medium-high.
Notes: There's some hints here of space stuff, but that wouldn't be necessary.

A scrap of blue cloth twisted in a thorn bush, that was all it appeared to be, and who knew how such a thing could come to be? It could have blown away from somewhere else until it got stuck. It could have fallen from the pack of a passing peddler. It could have been torn from the bright blue dress of a shepherdess who was attempting to be more scenic than most. He knew all these possibilities, but he also knew, without a doubt, that it had been torn from the hem of her shirt. He remembered her laughing about how thin the fabric had got when she was sitting by the fire attempting to mend it. She complained that she wouldn't get even one more year’s wear out of it, and it was all the fault of that peddler for selling substandard cloth, and that the only place it was fit to wear these days was out on the range where nobody could see her. He plucked the scrap of blue cloth out of the bush with trembling fingers and turned it to and fro in his palm to see if he could identify anything else. Sure enough, it was of fabric so thin that you might be able to read through it, and he recognized the neat stitches trying to hold it together along the edge. She always crossed her end stitches to help tie down the thread, a thing that he'd--


Inspiration: "Blue thorn" search on Flickr -> http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidselvam/4476355874/
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Nothing unique and interesting enough on its own here for me.

San Francisco was emptied by the Big One. Fault lines, ley lines, whatever. People could stand living with the risk of their building collapsing around them or a sudden magical geyser streaming down [NAME] Street. What they couldn't live with so well was seeing a perpetual shifting history. It's hard to navigate the layers when you're likely to walk into a building that wasn't there 100 years ago, or to follow a subway path to a station that was closed decades ago, only to find yourself barred in with the ghosts. Experts still come in from all around to figure out what caused the permanent shifting landscape, why it didn't settle down after the aftershocks, like most leyquakes do. Scavengers come in to try and make their fortunes, or to retrieve family heirlooms. Homeless too bewildered to find their way out and too poor for the government to care about. And then there are people like me.


Inspiration: Gorgeous, eerie composites. What would it be like to live in a world where this is what you actually saw? http://burritojustice.com/2012/08/29/ghosts-of-1906/
Story Potential: High.
Notes: This could be an awesome setting for an urban fantasy story, but I'd need to figure out what the plot actually was. Also, this would be a good place for a legally blind protagonist with limited vision. Not sure how well this would combine with other urban fantasy story ideas. Not sure how much I want to write an urban fantasy. But it could be quite good! Although there would be a shit-tonne of historical research. At least SF's history is pretty well-documented.

All they found of my brother was a golden spray-painted hat and a bottle of water set inside it. That's not as weird as it sounds; he was a statue. That's not as weird as it sounds, either. He was one of those gold-painted mime actors who pretend to be statues until somebody puts money in their hat, and then they rotate around and entertain. A bottle of water makes sense as a gift, too--it's hot out there. Nobody would have thought a thing about it. He's the third statue to go missing in a week, though. The first two were a boyfriend-and-girlfriend pair, so most people assumed they just ran off together somewhere.


Inspiration: A "found object" photo of a gold hat and a bottle inside it.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Meh.

Hearts in a bowl. Tiny, delicate, pink-and-white hearts, perfect in every anatomical detail, but looking so pastel and sugar-coated that she was tempted to reach out and take a bite. She knew they would be delicious, would explode in her mouth in a burst of sugary deliciousness and a rainbow of good feeling. They would be so good that she wouldn't be able to resist another, and another, and another . . . and she would end up in the mother of all diabetic comas, or become a serial killer. Or both. There were three men and one woman who hadn't been able to resist, who were in the hospital right now. They would die if it wasn't for life support, and it would be with a smile on their lips. Fairy hearts.


Inspiration: Valentine's Day is coming up, there are pictures of hearts all over the place.
Story Potential: High. I thought medium, but with the seasonal tie-in to Valentine's Day, could be a good thing to start writing around Christmas of next year....
Notes: Good note for another urban fantasy, but nothing to set it apart in and of itself.

Going for a stroll along the ramparts of the plant, he smiled behind the breath mask. He would have sighed with satisfaction, but he'd found early on that it made him sound too much like a sci-fi movie villain, and so he abstained before his employees started calling him Darth Boss. They might not have heard his sighs--the plant was noisy, everyone wore masks and earplugs, but why risk it? It was such a small community that any such nickname would have spread like wildfire. Anything new was treasured. Even gossip that people would have turned their noses up at back home. There had to be strict rules about what was and was not allowable for practical jokes.


Inspiration: This flickr picture.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: This is mostly setting, but I like the idea of taking what would seem to be an easy pollution-bad/industry-boss-evil frame and switching it around a bit. He's a good guy. The industry is incredibly foul, but somehow not actively damaging. And it's very isolated. Extraplanetary colony? Something. An interesting setting for many things. Like Antarctica.

The eight jobs of Mama Koi were legendary around the station, even though nobody knew what the sixth, seventh, and eighth were. She wouldn't tell you, just smile a little and say, "Maybe you find out someday." Nobody knew if that was a threat or a maybe-if-you're-good. Turns out the sixth job of Mama Koi was a little bit of both. The first job of Mama Koi was in the hydroponics, where she grew big orange tomatoes so delicious that you forgave all the strange bulges and just bit into the little sun in your hand. Never failed to lift a person's mood. The second job of Mama Koi was backup ship captain, which nobody knew until the voyage had been underway for--.


Inspiration: Reading a writing article, "The 8 Jobs of Modern Writers."
Story Potential: High!
Notes: Man, I love this title. And I don't know where this is going, but it's got simply scads of potential.

"Let me get this straight. He started a band, chose that occult name, and slaved until he wore his fingers to the bone, all so that he could get popular enough to have an auditorium full of people chanting that name?"

"Looks like it."

"Why didn't he just make a flashmob event like the rest of the wannabe demon summoners who need a hundred or so pawns?"

Lenny shrugged. "Maybe he needed the faith, too? Maybe he was just old-skool and didn't follow fads much. There's a good tradition of using music cults to get power."

She shook her head. "And that's the reason why I only listen to obscure bands and never, ever go to concerts!" She looked around her at the path of torn bodies that led up to the stage. "Looks like he may have regretted his approach, too. Isn't that his body up there, impaled on the guitar?"

"Yes and no."

She looked at him. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

"Depends. How do you feel about sacks of flesh with the skeleton missing?"

"Fuck."


Inspiration: "Dragula" (live) - by Rob Zombie. He gets the crowd chanting "Zombie."
Story Potential: High-ish?
Notes: The voices just started talking in my head. That's usually a good sign.

"Don't call me, daughter," he said, placing his hands on my shoulders. "The picture will remind me." I wasn't even in the picture, but I knew why, and I knew why he didn't want calls. Any leverage, any leverage at all, and I might be in danger. The picture was just of a beach, with an outcropping of rock to one side. When I was six, I'd climbed there and fallen and skinned my knee, but I didn't cry, and I wouldn't go back up to the house. I'd stuck my lower lip out and insisted that we had to stay and have fun. And against all the odds, we had. When we went back, the doctor took one look and said that I needed stitches. My dad was embarrassed and proud at the same time. And that was the way it went. I was stubborn and wouldn't let go. So when my dad called me out of the blue, twenty years after he left, I knew something was very wrong. And because I hadn't answered the phone--

Inspiration: "Daughter" - Pearl Jam
Story Potential: High
Notes: Think it's pretty much all there in the story....