I recently visited my husband’s family in New Mexico, and I heard a lot of stories. One of them goes like this:

My husband’s grandparents’ house alarm went off while they were away. Their daughter and her son got the call and went to check on things. The back door was wide open, but when the grandson went inside and searched the place, he found nothing out of the ordinary. So, he and his mother went back around the front of the house, only to come face to face with two different gun barrels and a raised shovel.

“Oh, it’s just you,” one of the three weapon-bearing neighbors said.

They’d come to the rescue. It can take the police 2-3 hours to get out to their small town of Bosque, NM, so the neighbors had come to serve justice themselves. The daughter thanked them and said, “It’s awesome of all you guys to come out an help,” to which one of the neighbors replied, “Oh, this ain’t nothing; we’ve got six guys up on the ridge there.”

Sure enough, the daughter and grandson looked to the ridge to see six guys waving at them.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but I think that’s pretty badass, and it actually started the ball rolling on my new novel idea (something I haven’t had in a very long time), so I thought it might work to inspire some of you as well.

If you’ve been sitting in front of a blank page for a while, itching to write but unsure where you want to start this time, maybe this will help. Why was the back door open? What’s it like to live in a secluded small town such as this? What are the people like? What would have happened if someone had been inside the house? Feel free to use all of the details provided here or merely use the basics as an inspiration for your story.

If this prompt helps you write a story that you like and post on your blog, send me a link and I will reblog it. For more writing prompts, visit my Writing Prompts page.