One of the interesting things about staying with Bruce Holland Rogers is that he is a fairly prolific short story writer. I was only there for two and a half days, and in that time he started two new stories. Consequently, next time someone at a reading or convention asks that favorite question of fans, “where do you get your ideas from?” I will actually know one answer.

I’m not actually going to Bruce’s secret away, because it is quite amusing and he may want to use the joke himself at some point. However, the real answer is, I think, that you get story ideas by observing the world around you. Just consider my journey home today.

Walking through Queen’s Park on my way to the tube station, I happened to see a young girl with a bag full of nuts holding court to a group of eager but nervous squirrels. All sorts of possibilities immediately came to mind. For a mainstream story, perhaps the interlude in the park is a stark contrast to an unhappy home life with squabbling parents. But it is much more fun to put on the genre lenses. In a science fiction world perhaps the girl is the pampered daughter of a successful politician or businessman. The whole park would be a construct, of course, and the squirrels droids, but maybe they have been subverted by criminals intent on kidnapping the girl, or a revolutionary who wants to turn her against her father’s cruel policies. Or try the fantasy lenses. Perhaps the girl is an apprentice witch who is learning the language of squirrels in order to interrogate them about the state of the forest, which could lead to either an incursion by dark elves, or a global warming parable.

Then I got to Paddington to discover that all of the trains were delayed by a “trespasser on the line” at Ealing Broadway. Listening to some of the railway workers chat, I discovered that the miscreant was drunk, but why was he there? What urgent missions might be critically delayed by this buffoon?

Basically I think that all you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open. That and the fact that you must desperately want to write. As with everything else in life, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Blockbuster novel ideas don’t just fall into your lap without any work on your part.