One other thing about Aliens and Cowboys...

One thing I mentioned to Lisakit as we watched the film: in the scene with the medicine man, I leaned over and said, "You know, for a guy living in a hard-scrabble desert environment, his fingernails are in great shape." Indeed, perfectly white, polished and perfectly formed, he had obviously just come from the salon. It was amusing as heck.

How to find a story idea

Omaha and I were out in the back yard, dismantling the pile of rubble that had once been the kids' treefort. The supports turned out to be rotten, so it was a good thing that I was taking it down. The main space was wasp-infested, and the kids didn't go up there anyway.

Our neighbor offered to take the untreated wood off our hands so he could burn it in our shop, and we were pulling the nails out of the various 2x4s and 4x4s. The guy who put this thing together was a dwarf in a former life: hundreds of nails made the treefort insanely difficult and dangerous to disassemble.

At one point, I pulled out a 6-foot 2x4 that had come free from some frame. Fifteen rusty ten-penny nails stuck out of it at various points along its length. "Another orc club," I commented to Omaha. She snorted.

That thought led to: "I'm not just the president of the Orc Club For Men, I'm also a client!"

Which led to: "Huh. A client at the Orc Club for Men. Sounds like a man-for-man escort service in Shadowrun."

That's where story ideas come from.

Now the trick is to incorporate all three ideas into the same story.