My stories, believe it or not, mostly come from my dreams. Well, possibly in part or as part of the germination. Usually, two or more ideas come together to form a story.

I was attending some creative writing courses years ago in New Orleans, when one of my creative writing teachers told all of us that if we're short on ideas for a story, to turn to everyday items and occurrences as a base for a story.

Well, it just so happened I needed a new story. I was going to work one day and it was a nasty, rainy, cold, January day.

The day was dark, miserable, cold, and just a day you wanted to stay home, eat chicken noodle soup, and read a good book wrapped up in a blanket, with classical music playing in the background. Okay, that is my idea of what to do on a day like that.

Anyway, I was driving to work on that horrible morning, and along side of the road was a pregnant woman with a flat tire. She was short, petite, pregnant, and beautiful. She had black hair with bangs, and I am a sucker for a woman with bangs. She was my idea of the perfect young woman.

Okay, maybe not pregnant, but she was a real dream come true. So naturally I stopped and changed her flat tire.We talked briefly and she thanked me profusely and wanted to pay me for changing her tire, but I naturally declined.

We both got back into our respective vehicles, and went our individually ways.

The image of this woman stuck in my mind. For the next few days I dwelled upon her image and wondered about how I could use her in a story.

I was watching a story on ancient aliens that comes on almost nightly trying to connect extraterrestrials in the past with the way our civilization is now, and that these ancient extraterrestrials were the reason that our science and such is at the point it is now.

Some of this made sense to me, but my sci-fi brain took it a little bit further. I created the story “Flat Tire”, which is on Amazon E-Books, and the plot included the black-haired beauty that I helped change the tire.

flat-tire-barry-begault

“Flat Tire” is about a doctor who goes to visit his sister once a month to get away from the city. His sister and her husband are environmental scientists, who are documenting the effect of “global warming” on the deserts of the US.

One weekend after his monthly visitation, he leaves their laboratory home to go back to the city. It's on a Sunday, and the sun is setting. He has to travel the twenty-five mile dirt rode back to the main highway, and has no cell phone signals.

Half way to the highway he as a flat tire. Soon afterward, a flying saucer lands in the desert near his car and a voice calls out that medical attention is needed. He enters the saucer, goes through decontamination, and makes it to the pilot's seat.

Once the cumbersome suit opens up, there is a beautiful, black haired, petite, human alien as the pilot.

She works for an interplanetary FedEx company and took and illegal drug to endure the long space flights, and had to land on Earth because she could no longer pilot the space craft.

They fall in love, and she has to leave but promises to return.

This was the first science fiction story I completed and published on Amazon.

Barry Begault

BestFictionWriter@gmail.com     

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Radu Balas

Radu is the Founder of Publishing Addict and author of "Sell More Books Using Your Author Website | The Easiest Way To Brand, Build, Market, and Manage Your Authorship" Soon available on Amazon.