illustration - devon smith - young women to write about

If anything can inspire a story, it's these illustrations by Devon Smith - women
riddled with melancholy, apathy, determination, suspicion, and yearning.
Devon enjoys reading old science fiction novels.  She relates to two truths that
seem common to most breeds of artist: that you must create for yourself alone,
and that a common struggle will be your audience not matching your
enthusiasm for a work.

Take a look and see if any of her illustrations prompt a story for you...

illustration - johanna ost

Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated, for the simple
reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond
the reach of time.   - Walt Disney Company

The same is true of these illustrations...

View Johanna's gallery here.

from unexpected places - willow holster

So there's this fascinating book edited by Jeff Vandermeer called
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities.  It's full of short
stories posing as real anecdotes of Lambshead's life and collection.
What was extra fascinating to me were these little blurbs in the back
- more anecdotes, but little paragraphs of mystery and eccentricity
instead of full-on stories.  Let the imagination bleed; I was very
inspired by these and I think you would be too.  Here's one:

Silence, One Ounce—Origins unknown. Found amongst the
possessions of the recently deceased Frank Hayes, thirty-four, who
tragically lost his life when he stepped in front of a public bus that
failed to stop. Its provenance is thought to include M. Twain, W.
Wilson, and the Marquis de Sade. Handle with care, not to be
administered more than one drop at a time. Silence is golden, but
too much will kill you. (blurb by Willow Holster)

By Tess

illustration - jennifer healy

When I see Jennifer's work, I'm reminded of the art often
accompanying short fiction on tor.com.  These could easily be
paired with some serious fantasy and SF stories with striking
female protagonists or villains.  Her work certainly inspires
me to write those kind of stories...

a dreamer's wisdom - henry miller

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a
heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master
and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we
stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers,
our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets
quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is
capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same
source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all
part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to
open up, only to discover what is already there.

- Henry Miller

By Gary Simpson

from unexpected places - pretend vintage magic

These photos - whether real, photoshopped, or manipulated in
some way - are stunning, capturing a vague and compelling
feeling of magic.  Rapunzel, the borrowers, tinker bell, wizards
and witches.  It's interesting to see magical images caught in
photographs instead of illustrations for a change, photos
treated to feign being fished out of your grandmother's attic.
Maybe one of these could inspire a story - what magic and
whimsy is being glimpsed here?

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother
to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

By Charles B. Carma

By Joanna Pallaris

illustration - tatka

Tatka's work is very much about the wonder secreted and
reserved for those on the fringes, for those who go off on
their own and find some special part of the world that few
others know about.  I love the bits of stories she puts before
us and am immediately provoked into daydreaming about
their ends and beginnings.

I learned about the sacred art of self decoration with the
monarch butterflies perched atop my head, lightning bugs
as my night jewelry, and emerald-green frogs as bracelets.
- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

the well written - thomas pynchon

Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried.
No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a
moment she’d wondered if the seal around her sockets were
tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the
entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of
the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted
through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet
unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry.

- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

By Yoda Navarrete (Lady Orlando)

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Happy new year, everyone!  May 2013 be full of
achievements, steps in the right direction, ideas,
dreams, busy hands and fingers, well written words,
and wonderfully told stories for all of us.

By Sith Zam

illustration - the well written - a dose of holday

Below are offerings from deviant artists spanning many genres -
fantasy, science fiction, high fantasy, adventurer, and even a
little horror.  Enjoy and happy holidays!

Something woke him up – a strange noise in the living room.
For a moment he lay in bed wondering if Santa Claus might
have come, but then he remembered it was still three days until
Christmas.  Still, he could definitely hear something moving, a
kind of quiet fluttery sound.   His brothers were both sprawled in
boneless, little-boy sleep across the mattress they shared, so he
climbed carefully over them and made his way out to the living
room.  At first he saw nothing more unusual than the small
Christmas tree on top of the coffee table, but as he stared, his
eyes trying to get used to the dark, he saw the tree was…moving?
Yes, moving, the top of the pine wagging like a dog’s tail.
- Tad Williams, The Sugarplum Flavor

Myth became life. No one really believed in the Santaman until
he came with his tattered red robe and his dripping red sword. No
one really believed in his undying love until he burst into our
direst need to carve us a new home from the bones of the world.

We looked up at the whistle of his wolf-stallion. “Why do you
weep and whimper?” the Santaman asked from the back of his
mount.  “We whimper for the end of our world,” one of us said.
- Ken Scholes, If Dragon's Mass Eve be Cold and Clear

By Guilherme Maueler

By Andrew Mar

the well written - boris pasternak

About dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of
something that has made a particularly strong impression on you
during the day, but it seems to me it´s just the contrary. Often
it´s something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague
thought that you didn´t bother to think out to the end, words
spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are
the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they
become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been
ignored during waking hours.

- Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

By Paolo Domeniconi

a dreamer's wisdom

Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn't a
song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own
words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that
we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too
foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their song instead.

- Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

By Karl Wennergren

the well written - thomas pynchon

Death has come in the pantry door: stands watching them,
iron and patient, with a look that says try to tickle me.

- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

By Charlie Quagmire

illustration - asahinoboru

These are from a series by deviant artist asahinoboru entitled
"I Wanna Be a Witch" and they're absolutely amazing.  Along
with each addition is a little statement that she connects to that
particular witch like, "I wanna be a witch who is serious about
living."  It's all pretty wonderful, drawing you in to not only the
stories of her witches, but to the story of their maker as well.

I was born on the night of Samhain, when the barrier between
the worlds is whisper-thin and when magic, old magic, sings its
heady and sweet song to anyone who cares to hear it.
- Carolyn MacCullough, Once a Witch

a dreamer's wisdom - johann wolfgang von goethe

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move
the hearts of men.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

By Corinne Reid

on writing - why editors reject stories

David Farland's four reasons why an editor will reject a story:

1)  The idea for the story isn’t particularly fresh or interesting. You
may not realize it, but the basic concept of your story has probably
been done before. For example, let’s say that you decide to write a
story about “Zombie Sharecroppers.” Great. You might write it
beautifully, and I might get through the entire tale and enjoy it. But
ultimately I have to look at it and ask, “Is the basic tenet of the story
fresh and original? Did the author give it a surprise twist that lifted it
above similar stories?” If the answer to both of those questions is no,
then it will probably not get higher than an honorable mention.
You’ll need to come at me next time with a fresh idea.

2)  If the idea is good, then it may be that your execution is off. Very
often I’ll get stories where the idea intrigues me and the story is
written pretty well, but the author still has a few problems. Maybe
the author uses too many weak verbs, or has word repetitions. I had
one a couple of days ago that was set in Haiti, and while interesting,
nothing about the character’s voices suggested that the author had
ever listened closely to a Haitian. The accents just weren’t right.

By Giorgio Baroni

a dreamer's wisdom - dale carnegie

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished
by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no
hope at all.

- Dale Carnegie

By Guillem Mari

the well written - f. scott fitzgerald

You will walk differently alone, dear, through a thicker atmosphere,
forcing your way through the shadows of chairs, through the
dripping smoke of the funnels. You will feel your own reflection
sliding along the eyes of those who look at you. You are no longer
insulated; but I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

By Emily Humphries

the well written - hermann hesse

How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One
should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible
sometimes, but they're much more right than men...They're never
in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to
behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They
don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars
in the sky.

- Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

By Laura Siadak

illustration - tran nguyen

Tran's paintings bewitch me.  I feel they are metaphors touching
on the weight of an individual on a landscape, a people, which
is exactly what all our short stories and novels try to do.  Each of
these is filled with mood, emotion, even beginnings and endings,
all in a single image.  She uses brushstrokes; we use words.
May we learn from each other.

And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person.
One moment at a time.
- Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing