Story Titles from Song
Titles
Inspiration for story titles
I was listening to a Billy Joel song one day called "It's All About Soul."
This was a reference to music, but I started thinking about it and
wondered what might happen if someone wandered into an afterlife and found
out it wasn't quite what he'd thought. The result was
"It's All About Soul,"
which eventually appeared in American Atheist, Volume 41, Issue 2.
It wasn't planned, but several years after I
wrote that, I was listening to another Billy Joel song called "Sometimes a
Fantasy" in which he sings "It's just a fantasy / (Whoa-oa-oa-oa) / It's
not the real thing / (Whoa-oa-oa-oa)." I got to thinking
about how one had inspired "It's All About Soul." And I started thinking
about the current Billy Joel song I was listening to, and I started
wondering about what might happen if a man couldn't tell what was reality
and what was fantasy—and thought of a twist to that idea. The resulting
science-fiction/horror tale
"It's
Just a Fantasy; It's Not the Real Thing" was born, and sold to the
anthology Blood, Guts & Psychopaths by Maniac Press, to be
published in late 2006. (However, that anthology canceled and the story
was released... so, so much for that example! By the way, the same thing
would later happen with my Evervale example.) Note:
I really do like Billy Joel, but as a die-hard Meat Loaf
fan, it seems I'd have done Meat's song titles as stories. Maybe something
to consider in the near future...
Update: And now I do. Appearing in the anthology Enchantments:
The Many Facets of Magic is "Execution Day," which is the name of the
leadoff track on Meat Loaf's 1984 album Blind Before I Stop. |
