Where do you find inspiration for your stories? From what personal resource do you draw from to create something unique, something that can only be told by you? Or do you draw from an experience more communal, yet shared amongst but a limited group?
I watched a documentary a while back titled “The Klondike Gold Rush”. A story embedded within the story is of a woman seeking to find out about her great great uncle who had died in the mad rush of tens upon tens of thousands of fortune seekers. Her uncle had been highly spoken of amongst their family and she was driven to uncover his fate. Her trek eventually lead her to a cemetery, most of the graves unmarked, for those killed in an massive avalanche.
The hardships and demands placed on these fortune seekers, many completely unfamiliar with wilderness, were incredibly difficult to overcome. The hidden gem of the documentary is why this woman’s uncle went to the Klondike. He was an aspiring writer. He was one of many who made the journey not for fortunes in gold but for fortunes in inspiration, in stories. Some others, whose names you may recognize, include Tappan Adney, Robert Service and Jack London.
Jack London in particular was an unpublished author who quickly became the best paid and best known author in the United States. His stories were renditions of those told to him by others in the bars of the Klondike.
But inspiration can come from any aspect of one’s life if a person is willing to add some stretches of the imagination. I can list a whole stream of mundane facts, experiences over just this summer, and from them weave a tale of suspense and intrigue.
I had promised some mid-month excepts from my upcoming books. This may not really qualify but I hope you enjoy it and it spurs you on to find inspiration in everything around you.
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A list of facts, nothing but the facts:
I was out in my yard late one night this spring, letting the dog tire, when I heard a startled voice, as if one waking from a dream. Our alley is lined with close fit homes,some known as alley houses. The start was followed by two quick thuds. A short time later there were a few flashes across some window panes. Someone taking a picture with a cell phone? Most likely the flash of distant lightning.
Why would anyone offer you their hand in greeting with goo on it? Can’t say, but after speaking over the fence with a live in guest of one of my neighbors he offered his hand. Wanting to shake in the more hip fashion of a thumb grasp I quickly grabbed his hand in a more traditional fashion. Some big spot of clear goo on his hand was smeared upon a rough part of my dirt covered hand (I had been working in the garden) rather than the porous topside. I went in and washed my hands. I saw the gentleman the next day. He looked neither friendly nor happy. The following day he had a motorcycle accident, my wife told me, that left his right hand heavily bandaged.
I like O’Doul’s; that non-alcoholic brew of Anheuser-Busch. So we bought the bottle’s at the grand opening of Meijers; one of their first stores in the area. I hadn’t bought any non-alcoholic beverages in many months. We got home and I put one in the freezer to cool it down quickly. It was all that much better because it was so cold. I had another the next day, making note that it was nearly as cold as the one I had from the freezer. I also thought that I better not be drinking these everyday or they will run out soon. Some days later I reached into the refrigerator for another and grabbed one up. About to close the door I froze. I looked at the bottle in my hand and the four on the door. Yes, …four, plus one in hand is five. We had bought six and I had already drank two. I checked with my wife. She assured me, unusual in itself as her usual response is “I can’t remember.” that I had drank two. She speculated that we had bought an eight pack. Such packages for bottles don’t exist. The empties were not in our recycling bucket so I assumed she had taken them out to the trash.
Being out late the night before, I awoke this morning to the sound of conversation outside my window. A conversation topped off with a loud statement, “Your going to be dead.” I stirred and rose from my bed and the voices dropped to mumbles as sounds of people unknown to me headed back towards the alley, passing beneath my open second floor window.
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So, those are facts, nothing but the facts. Simple everyday occurrences that we never give a second thought. But being a student of the human condition and with the exercise of my imagination let me share a potential tale of fiction of truly dark suspense.
The Story:
***{
“He’s following us.” Frank turned , setting his hard blue eyes upon his wife as their Chevy Malibu waited at the light. The muscles in his forearms bulged tight under thin skin as he gripped down on the wheel.
“Really.” his wife Trudy giggled back, her blonde bangs swinging above her green eyes as she looked over and back. Both were susceptible to teasing the other with suspicions of impending terror.
At the next stop sign they turned. “He’s still behind us.” Frank said, not amused, “Should I turn right to see if he follows?” They were headed to the left but a right turn would be taking them back the way they came.
“Yes.” Trudy agreed with amusement fed by a thirst for adventure “Let’s see what happens.”
Frank put on his blinker. So did the motorcyclist. “He’s still behind us.” Frank said in his own excitement driven by his wife’s eager longings for a thrill. Frank moved to the right lane. The motorcycle passed. “Now let’s follow him.” Frank smiled.
“Yes.” Trudy was outright giddy.
The motorcyclist soon turned. Frank followed in their white Malibu. The motorcycle sped up and shot away, turning into a light industrial area in the distance.
“He’s going to work.” Trudy sighed.
“Yeah. It’s about time for shifts to change.” Frank’s tone dropped subdued by his own disappointment. Still, he had to wonder. That gooey handshake a few days ago that he quickly washed off, followed by a cold greeting the next day by the same neighbor gave him the willies. Those sounds in the night that he decided useless to report to the police, a department incapable of even respond to a rape complaint for three hours, still haunted him. ‘They’d most likely admit me for reporting that.’ he had concluded. He came to the same conclusion when he reflected over his mysteriously multiplying bottles of beer.
‘Could someone be trying to kill me?’ The thought came to him as a joke but soon drew his mind to a dark and sinister place.
Without a why the idea that someone would try to kill him, even want him dead, seemed ridiculous, but was there a why? Suspicious sounds in the night couldn’t be it. They were too long past and without ramification. The sounds could suggest that someone capable of killing another without a second thought lived somewhere on his block. ‘Ridiculous’ was the conclusion he kept coming to.
‘But if someone wanted me dead? And someone in my neighborhood was a hit man or willing to be?’
It all came back to why? His brain kept churning over the impossible. He almost backed into another car as he attempted to turn around in the parking lot he had pulled into.
“That was almost twenty years ago.” Frank realized.
“What?” Trudy looked confused.
“Our trip to Brazil.”
Trudy paused. “Okay.” she brushed him off as he looked lost in thought.
Frank and Trudy had been heading for Brazil via Atlanta. An announcement came the speaker system from the pilot that they had forgotten to refuel the plane during the quick layover and would be landing in Miami. The passengers disembarked and were all treated to a meal, except for Frank and Trudy. They waited for their order as the others finished their meals. Hours passed. Finally three men approached within ten feet of their table. They stared at Frank for several moments before the taller of the three said, “That’s not the guy.” and they turned and left. The flight attendants immediately hurried everyone back onto the plane, leaving Frank and Trudy to starve for the next twelve hours until they reached their destination.
‘I was in Florida for a while.’ Frank kept thinking. He had been accused of being a felon at points in his career, something he never gave any heed to as he had never committed a felony, or even been changed let alone put on trial for one. Still accusations against his character bothered him. His response to such smears had always been the judicious purchase of a firearm, with its corresponding background checks. ‘I have built up quite an arsenal.’ Frank reflected. There was nothing more unusual than that in his life.
‘A prosecutor? A Judge?’ Could their have been some kind of mix up. some kind of malfeasance that had people’s careers and livelihood, possibly their freedom at stake. He laughed to himself again at his foolish paranoia as he pulled the Malibu into the Casino parking structure.
}***
See what one can do with a few miscellaneous facts? Well, maybe not a few. That part about forgetting to fuel the plane and all that followed are as it happened. And the purchase of firearms and why is fairly true to life. And someone from the neighborhood did follow us on his motorcycle just as described, all be it at the time most industries change over shirts.
After Frank is nearly being run down by an errant vehicle our story continues.
***{
“I’ll have an espresso.” Frank told the waitress as he sat in front of a coffee house at a small table on the sidewalk.
“I’ll be right back then.” the waitress smiled.
A multi colored umbrella shade him from the sun. Hidden behind dark plastic sunglasses, his eyes instinctively followed the dark olive legs of the young girl who who had taken his order.
His eyes, for reasons he couldn’t comprehend, suddenly shot down the street. He sucked in a breath.”Who was that.” he whispered to himself. He thought he had recognized a woman, much closer to his own age, disappear around the far corner of the block, a block lined with one and two story commercial establishments of Cuban flare.
“Thank you.” Frank smiled back as the waitress placed his espresso before him, “Is there anything to read?”
“I’ll look for something.” she swung away happy to be of help.
Frank sighed. It was hot. It was humid. He hoped he wouldn’t have to wait long for the lawyer to show up. After his latest brush with death Frank had borrowed his friends old lapyop, promising to install all the updates and upgrades for him that would allow his friend to again serf the Internet. And that is exactly what Frank did, as well as take the borrowed laptop to numerous hot spots to conduct his own search of the web. He would fight money with more money. If what he felt he couldn’t afford to treat as delusions had anything to do with Florida there was much more money behind those who would find it beneficial to expose any prosecutorial malfeasance than behind those trying to protect political careers.
‘I must be crazy.’ Frank had a deep desire to just get up and head back for Milwaukee, ‘but if I’m not…’ He placed his hand on the side of his chest. feeling the steel of his latest back ground check. He casually gazed about to observe his surroundings. It had been thirty years since he had been in Florida. Exposing thirty years of convictions under a discredited judge or prosecutor could free a lot of people. A lot people who would have turned to just the type of law firm Frank had tracked down.
‘Where’s that lawyer.’ Frank whined to himself.
}***
Few facts in this last bit, but see how the story progresses under an active imagination. And there is always Google Maps if you want to be exact about the description of a coffee shop and its surrounding street anywhere in the world. Now let’s jump to the end of the story. Spoiler alert? Currently I have no plans to write anything else along this storyline so… here we go.
***{
For once Frank had finally gotten the rest he needed. He loved Korea. He felt comfortable here. He had lived here for four years in his youth. He still had friends here. Friends he had sent copies of drafts of some of his works of fiction, more as a gesture of respect than in expectation of any useful feedback. One in particular he believed would have made a great graphic novel and in the east the popularity for graphic novels was beyond what western graphic novelists could ever dream for.
“Trudy will come back.” Frank spoke to the ceiling of his hotel room as he lay in bed. The house was gone. He had burned the last of their money on this trip, what would necessarily be the last of many trips that had now spanned half the globe in his three month search for the why. “Trudy will come back.”
‘What else could it be.’ his mind having raked over every possible scenario. An innocent sharing of his work with a Korean graphic novelist turning into a surprise source of millions was his theory, though he had no facts to back it up. ‘But last Winter they kept watching me from the other side of the bar.’ he continually debated with himself. Two Koreans, speaking Korean had never approached but they had seemed fixated on him. ‘Why?’
‘Why? Why? Why? Why would anyone want me dead?’ kept running through his mind. ‘For a fortune ill gained already spent? Technically Korea recognizes our copyright laws. Money is always a motive.’
Frank hadn’t told his Korean friends, one in particular, a successful business man, that he would be arriving. He didn’t want to give them time to prepare their answers. He knew it would be difficult for them to lie to him if their was anything behind his suspicions. He also knew they would have no qualms not informing him from halfway across the world of his popularity if it meant one of their friends would suffer, or if any fellow Korean would. That is why he had to come in person. That is why he needed to see all of them face to face.
“There was that musician living on the streets of Detroit who had millions in unknown royalties in south Africa, or was it Australia.” Franks spoke to himself in the shower, trying to convince himself he had reason for his suspicions. Then there was that post he received from another of his Korean friends years back; “I think you are doing very well now.”
‘Why? It always comes back to why.’
‘Coffee, coffee, coffee.’ was all Frank could think of on his way down on the elevator. He didn’t want to go to the Hotel restaurant so he stopped by a nearby bakery on his way to the subway station, preferring to save the expense of a cab. It wasn’t that far of a walk to his friend’s place of business from the station and he wouldn’t have to switch trains.
‘I’ll be there in no time’ he smiled to himself as he headed on foot for the nearest station.
Then he saw her. He didn’t exactly recognize her though he knew he should. He had thought he had caught glimpses of this familiar yet unfamiliar figure several times, literally in every country he had visited over these last three months. Here, her strawberry blonde hair and velvet eyes, a form he found hard to describe as anything but perfect, stood out like an apple in a bowl of bananas.
The woman walked straight up to Frank. Their eyes met drawing an involuntary smile across his face.
“Hello Frank.” she smiled as she walked by.
Frank felt a prick in the side of his chest. His entire life flashed before his eyes. “Oh!” Frank gasped, just before his body dropped dead to the ground.
He knew why.
}***
Doesn’t it always come down to a woman for us men? There is quite a substantial mixture of fact in this last section. I spent quite a bit of time not in the Klondike but in Korea.
What’s that you say after all I have shared. You bet I haven’t written a word all month and I’m just trying to catch up on my word count goal with some insignificant screed of paranoia?
If that is what you think, if that is really what you think of me, you are wrong. I wrote yesterday also, about Donald Trump of all people.
If you want to share your sources of inspiration here in the comments feel free. Even stop by our home if you’d like. I can offer you a cold O’Doul’s.
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My short stories are available for free this weekend if you have an e-reader. Click on the first book in the sidebar.
Hack from the Depths of Hell; I couldn’t keep reading and that is almost impossible for me.