The object of the game was to capture the state, and the way it was played was by wagering everything: family, money, power, and love. Love, you say? Well, as much love as a person of discipline would allow themselves to have when they were playing the game of states. That is what I would have said before I met and fell in love with her, the gorgeous ragamuffin who (I thought) could never help me in the game of states. I thought I could keep her on the side, so that she wouldn't influence anything one way or another. It wasn't as if she would expect someone in my social position to marry her, after all, or to marry any other woman, for that matter. It might be legal now, but it would be a social faux pas. I had not built my life to operate as an "eccentric," and a non-standard spouse (to put it mildly) wouldn't fit in with the persona that I'd built since I was old enough to have it explained to me what a persona was and what the goal was and why I was one of the only people who could play the game and why it was so deadly important to win it.


Inspiration: Googled "Seize the Day" -> Policy Research Paper, "Seize the State, Seize the Day: State Capture, Corruption, and Influence in Transition."
Story potential: High.
Notes: Politics and power are always fun. Throw in a forbidden lesbian love and there you go! Novelish.

Who hunts in the middle of a crowd, without being seen? There are a lot of answers to that question, but it boils down to "someone in the service industry." Taxi driver, waiter, secretary, hairdresser...all the service industries, or servants before there *were* real service industry workers. It's an easy way to figure out where I should aim my career, devote my talents, and pickup side jobs along the way to prepare for the next time I need to shift personas. Following the trail of illegal immigrants is also a good way, although some of the jobs they take I can't, not without sticking out like a sore thumb. I envy the Chinese immigrants and the string of Chinese restaurant jobs that trail across America. Being a traveling farmhand that goes where there's seasonal work is only a real option for those times when I look like a total and thorough bum, and when I do, people are less willing to bet that I'll actually work instead of earning just enough for a bottle and then sleeping under their grapevines.


Inspiration: Rewatching Sherlock, A Study in Pink.
Story potential: High.
Notes: The minimum wage life is an interesting side to various kinds of urban fantasy hidden world lives, if you think about it. Could really add a different POV to it. Theoretically, I could even get a couple of part time, minimum wage jobs to get more background.

The flowers were gorgeous and purple and ruffled and quite unlike anything she'd ever seen before. And they were sitting in front of her door. Being the security-conscious type of person that the security chief should be, she disciplined herself and ran a full scan over the flowers to make sure they were clear of any toxins, poisons, explosives, psychedelics, or any other residues that might make it a trap. high level gang ring of rickletons had made her a little wary, since they were known for holding grudges and keeping high level scores of who was ahead and who was behind and sometimes they had the nasty little habit of evening the playing field by killing whoever was at the top. She had a wincing suspicion that doing her job had put her pretty high up on the list, and she was hoping that something else would rise up to capture their interest (and points) very, very soon. She also hoped that it wouldn't be on her station, because she'd had enough trouble for a while and all she wanted to do was relax. That wasn't enough for her caution to make her not pick up the flowers--they were lovely, and real biomass, not one of the scented simulacra!--but it was enough to have her arrange them in a lovely vase and then set them in her fresher. She'd be able to see them regularly, and if they happened to explode or do something else interesting, then the door would add an extra level of shielding.


Inspiration: The gorgeous purple and unidentifiable flowers that I got at the farmer's market. No idea what they are, except purty.
Story potential: High.
Notes: And somehow this is the first step in getting the main character in a dynastic marriage to one of those trouble-making, rule-breaking, score-keeping aliens. Also, not sure yet if the dynamic would be more interesting if it was a male main character (dealing with unusually aggressive females and ending up with the usual female dynamic) or a female (because more fun). I confess, this also made me think of B5 quite a bit.

"Thirty million dollars if you earn it at the old plantation house down by the bayou." That was the inheritance in her aunt's will. Maura stared at the lawyer, waiting for him to make a joke and say, "No, actually, what she says here is that you can have her collection of Mardi Gras beads. She says that you could probably sell them for a couple hundred dollars, but she hopes that you'll keep them because of the history involved." And Maura would nod and smile and take the beads and keep them, because there's poor and then there's so poor you sell your own history, and she wasn't the latter, not yet. "Thir--thirty million?" she asked, stunned. "That's what its says right here, Miss." "I'm sorry, but my aunt was not a wealthy woman." "Ah, yes, this next line explains that. It is your heritage, though you don't know it yet. It was my heritage but I did not succeed in the last test and so became only a caretaker living on an annuity--and a very poor one at that. I fear that after my dear husband died I ceased to even be that, since the memories associated with our old house were so very painful that I could not bear to live there. I moved away to Arizona and boarded the old place up. I recently asked a young acquaintance to go visit the house before I wrote this will, and I'm afraid I must warn you that time and vandals have not been kind to the old place. Yet you must live there for a period no less than one full year, covering both solstices, before you can inherit, and you must do your best in regards to the old place. Your best has always been better than--"


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ant_43/9308207938/
Story potential: High.
Notes: I like this. I'm thinking there's lots of cleaning up and culture shock moments and history and fun stuff to be done here, plus a whole variety of paranormal *something*--and I think the thirty million is an estimate of earnings doing some job associated with the place over the course of her lifetime, not a lump sum to be handed out. Hotelkeeper to things from other dimensions? Something. Maybe that's too cliche. Some kind of guardian/servant of a higher power? Also cliche. Could be a lot of fun, though.

Anansi thought werewolves were not so bright. They were definitely more driven by their instincts than ordinary humans, who were dumb enough, and their instincts were not so smart as those of coyotes. Coyotes he could respect, and he understood why his Trickster cousin loved them so. He looked around the room, seeing the half-drunk, loud men, constantly hitting on the women who were not properly modest, easily making friends with each other until bar-closing and then never seeing each other again or fighting. That was not so different. But Anansi's acquaintance, the hand-shaking man, would have harvested the whole bar before they knew what was going on. A busty brunette wearing dull black, even if it was shiny and too tight, her hair undone and hanging down uncared-for, strode into the bar. Anansi saw the sword hilt protruding between her shoulder blades and sighed. Another one.


Inspiration: Can't recall. Found a post-it sitting on my desk with the basic idea.
Story potential: High.
Notes: Culture clash time in urban fantasyland! Woo! Take bog-standard urban fantasy tropes and throw in an alternate mythology (African?). Stir and watch culture clash do interesting things. Could do in small, but might try to be a novel.

Light travels at a different rate in the mountains. First it covers the peaks and slowly it creeps down the side of the mountain until it reaches the valley. It leaves in reverse, letting shadows sink in to cover us first. So sometimes if you get a really paranoid person who habitually wakes up and tunes in to the radio before the sun reaches that valley floor, if you hear a broadcast screaming at everyone to get out of the light, to hide and not let it touch you no matter what, and if you have fifteen minutes before the light touches the valley, well, you may survive. If you're paranoid, if you believe the broadcaster, or maybe just if you make it a habit to believe every paranoid threat because someday it's going to be right. Not many of us types live in the valley, of course. We favor higher spots up on the mountain, where it's harder for people to get to us. The advantage of high ground, right? But my daughter was 8 months pregnant with her second child, her husband had to work long hard hours, and she needed a hand with the kid. I knew the house well enough, and I believed the radio broadcast. I might not be at home, where I had the full supply stocked, but I did set up an emergency go bag as soon as I got in. Just reflex, really. I knew that my daughter would be the problem. Too many false alarms as a child. She'd never listen in time. But pregnancy's lack of sleep and hormones made her suggestible first thing in the morning. First thing I did was grab the radio and my go bag. I ran to my grandchild's room and lifted her out of bed. As she complained sleepily, I carried her down the steps and into the basement. There was one room without windows and I put her in there and then squatted down and said, very sternly, "You MUST stay here, do you understand? If you leave you will be in a whole lot of trouble." She nodded her head, scared. Good. Now to trick my daughter.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53400673@N08/8201465748/in/faves-aswiebe/
Story potential: High.
Notes: Light is bad, and maybe vampires are involved somehow, or not, and...not sure if this is actually a good story idea or if it just pulls at all my post-apocalyptic triggers!

"Dead Inside: Do Not Enter" read the sign on the door. She flinched away from it as soon as she read the word "Dead," her hands scrabbling against the walls, whimpering in unthinking panic. The attack took a while to pass. She knew she would have been dead herself, if the dead had been able to escape, if they'd clawed through the door, if they'd--best not to think of that. The door shuddered under their weight. They'd heard her, oh, yes they had. But the stout oak held, and the thick padlock chain could keep the dead inside until judgment day. She tried not to think of what would happen if she encountered a pocket of untrapped zombies. She had all the weapons a girl could want, and all the protective gear, and all the knowledge. If a pack of feral survivors came at her with the intent of rape or cannibalism or old-fashioned beating to death, she could hold off an infinite number. But if she saw one zombie.... She paused for a second, considering that. Maybe that was the key. If she could only think of the zombies as feral humans!


Inspiration: Book cover for "Dead Inside: Do Not Enter."
Story Potential: High!
Notes: Because yeah, there would totally be people who had this kind of shell-shock. And what happens when she *can* think of zombies as feral humans? Could be great for a head-twist, post-horror sorta thing. Could be novel. Could be short story.

The skittering outside her window warned her. She hesitated, and then threw open the shutters. A gargoyle's stone head swung to look at her, and then he continued climbing down the castle wall. She stared. He sank into the moat and, in time, crawled out the other side and disappeared into the forest. More skittering. She leaned back and stuck her head out--and gasped. All the castle gargoyles were leaving, climbing down the stone ramparts they'd guarded for so long and crawling back into the forest, heading for the stone caves they'd come from. Thunder cracked in the distance. She pulled on her dressing gown, seized the lamp, and ran to tell--

Inspiration: Skittering things outside my window when a storm was coming.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: It's not really a concrete story idea at all, but it's a ferociously bad omen! Not sure if it's a physical storm they're fleeing. Also, smells like a novel.

She went insane, we thought, when she started living in the doorway of the hotel. It was a fancy one, too, and we never could figure out why they let her stay there, her in her ragged coat, with her shopping cart that held the few things she kept, including the cat carrier that the stray she adopted slept in (she'd removed the door long ago so he could run if young punks decided to mess with her). It wasn't the front door, of course, but we figured even the side door of a fancy hotel would be policed. And yet, they let her stay. More than that. They brought her blankets in the coldest part of winter, and she often ate better than we did--the chef had a particular affection for her.

Inspiration: "Cemetary Polka" by Tom Waits
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Some sort of protection? Or an evolving urban dryad sort of thing? That could be fun to play with. ETA: See also http://penthius.livejournal.com/265882.html for another POV in the same kinda world.

"And what does he do? Or is he another of those who won't be specific about his job?"

"No, he will be very specific--much more specific than you want. Believe me, you do not want to know."

"Why--does he steal children?" he joked.

"No," the man in question said jovially, "only young women over 18."


Inspiration: I was cooking, and this conversation unrolled in my head, so I wrote it down on the back of a printed bus schedule.
Story Potential: High? Medium-high?
Notes: Russia, fairyland, female trafficking, crap it's a book.