People often ask me how I come up with my story ideas. THIS is how I come up with story ideas. The following is a true event. I woke to the sound of the doorbell ringing and glanced at the clock. It was 2am. I thought I had just woken from a dream. Then my husband rolled out of bed and stood up to stare out the bedroom window. I mumbled, "What's up?" He said, "If you can believe it, the doorbell just rang." "So it wasn't a dream," I said. Our front doorbell had chimed at 2am in the morning. Our front door is downstairs, we were sleeping upstairs. The husband was staring out the bedroom window which overlooks the driveway, but I don't need to get up to know that we can't see down to the front door. I gave him the most logical explanation I could think of at 2am in the morning. I said, "It's probably the battery dying." He agreed, and we both did a quick look out the front and back windows before heading back to bed. I never we
science fiction and speculative fiction for avid readers