My story, “Stranger Than a Swan,” is about bonding deeply with something… scarce… when you’re too young to realize, leaving you looking for it for the rest of your life. For me, it was Brian Wilson’s music.
And now, I can make my own music…
The song version of “Gerty and the Doesn’t-Smell-Like-a-Melon” turned out so well that I ended up making the style into a persona and using it for the entire first half of The Necromouser.
Seriously, it turned into such a charming little song.
An editor friend challenged me to write a story for an anthology he was editing with a deadline in eight hours, while I was single-parenting for the weekend… and “Sheeperfly’s Lullaby” happened. The song version turned out really pretty.
My story, “One Night in Nocturnia,” was inspired by Owl City… all of Adam Young’s ridiculously lyrical lyrics combined with that super evocative band name…
Anyway, the song version has none of Owl City’s vibe, but it did turn out pretty cool & catchy.
My favorite part of the song version of “The Otter’s Mermaid” is the refrain, “not a thing to be fixed with gears and bolts and metal sticks” — I just love how the music shifts down for it, really giving it a groovy, cool vibe.
If you want campy, cheerful, sing-a-long fun check out the song version of my story, “The Canoe Race” co-written with Daniel.. The original story won a Coyotl Award!
The song version of my story, “Fox in the Hen House,” is probably the catchiest bop I’ve managed to create in my extensive two week history of music producing. The story itself was nominated for an Ursa Major Award and won a Coyotl Award.
I’d forgotten what a wild story “Frankenstein’s Gryphon” is until I was turning it into a song… both story and song really go places…
“The Freedom of the Queen” is one of those weird flash factions I dashed off while feeling really tired and overwhelmed by parenting… and it turned into such a gorgeously haunting song.