Garry Rodgers, a retired homicide detective and coroner who now writes mysteries, recently posted a picture of some of the inspirational mementos, or tchotchkes, he keeps in his writing studio. Rodgers borrowed tchotchke from the Slavic word for trinket. Among the objects in his office are a rotary phone, an Underwood No. 5 typewriter, and “a framed photo of some floozie who’s my idea of the perfect femme fatale,” which he says help fire his imagination when he’s stuck in a story.

That got me to thinking about the weird stuff I keep in my writing loft. The falcon above isn’t Maltese, but he’s regal and mysterious, just the attitude I need to spark new ideas.

Here are some of the Native American artifacts from my collection, which includes a sandstone tobacco pipe in the shape of a frog, an ax, a (reconstructed) sling, and an arrow. The fossils add just the right amount of primeval ambience.

And here’s the shelf above my laptop. It’s easy to imagine various expressions in the contorted driftwood bookend. Depending on the slant of light, you can discover all sorts of shapes shifting around on the patina of the battered candlestick. On that candlestick is the key to an old German pie safe my wife bought. A few months ago, gazing at that key sparked the idea that it opened the door to a haunted house. Who would want that key? That little germ of an idea blossomed into my latest sale, which I expect to be published this summer.

What other story ideas lurk in these strange objects?