Happy Friday Junior! Hoping these weird news stories can get your writer’s block, unblocked.

Aquatic Aliens

This purple dude has scientists stumped.

An alien invasion perhaps? Or a new species? (The latter is more likely, the former is more interesting).

Death Metal Grandma

Q: “What am I doing today?”

A: “SHOUTING!”

This 93-year-old Holocaust survivor-turned-death-metal-grandma is Betty White meets Marilyn Manson, except a billion times cooler. She NEEDS to be a picture book, stat.

Her music’s messages include: “Don’t destroy what you can’t replace”; and “You can’t destroy death, so laugh about it.”

Aquatic Trash

It’s GARBAGE ISLAND meets Picasso’s Green period.  Jo Atherton, I would encourage you to take a page from Ransom Riggs‘ playbook (see what I did, there?) and write some stories based on your trash murals.  Or someone else can take it, as long as it becomes a book.

Abandoned Mansion

The pixel gremlins fought me on uploading these fascinatingly creepy photos, but the story remains:

• A gorgeous mansion in a wealthy part of NYC was abandoned in maybe the early 70s.
• It doesn’t appear to be haunted or occupied by squatters, although
• Nobody knows why or the story. I need to hear the story, even if somebody makes it up.

Happy writing!