Sea shells and favorite books

Sea Shells are like art. I love sea shells. They are so beautiful and fragile and functional all rolled into one. Check out this guy: Mr. Spiny Oyster... makes you think twice before snuggling up to him, eh? I don't know if you can tell from this picture but those spines are, like, three inches long. And some are broken! I have to admit there are some days (like today, er..Friday mornings when I don't want to go to work but want to stay home and write....grrrr!) that I know exactly how Mr. Spiny feels. I read somewhere that these particular oysters only exist off the Baja coast - but I'm not sure if that's true and accurate - so don't quote me! But kind of cool to think they have developed their own little secret society hidden in the briny depths, as it were.


Which leads me to my next shell - The Lion's Paw. (Camera panning slowly to the right please....) This shell became one of my favorites in part because of a book I read as a child aptly entitled 'The Lion's Paw' by Robb White. To this day I still love this book, though it is out of print and very difficult to find. I secured this copy, at great personal risk on ebay, (cough cough, make that financial risk - the tattered old 35 cent paperback doesn't sell for 35 cents anymore...go figure...). Can you see the knobby knuckles and the flanges that look like the paw of a lion? Cool, huh?

Which then leads me to the notion of inspiration in writing. Great books like The Lion's Paw are a huge inspiration for me. Books that I love, still, many (many) years later and will never forget. That's my goal with my writing - to make the characters so real and the story so magical that someone remembers it, fondly, many years later. What do you find as inspiration in your writing or if not a writer, in your world?