What's in a Name?

A few days ago, someone told me that I always have "snappy" titles for my stories. I felt some pride, but also a lot of humble gratitude for what I see as a lucky streak of stumbling into a title. 

It got me thinking: where do these titles come from? How did I get lucky with snappy ones? Here's a quick run-down...

THE FIRST KID ON MARS

• This is the story that brought me back to writing (a story that I still need to tell here), and the title fell out of the sky halfway through chapter one. All I knew at first was that there was a young girl in a classroom. When the principal called from the office, I found out that the girl, Abby, had been picked for a mission that would make her the first kid on Mars. I did a quick google search to make sure no one else had already used that title, and that was it. 

SEVENTEEN MINUTES OF RAIN

• This story started out as a Twitter joke and took on a life of its own; I discovered new details about it every day, and about a month in I discovered that the 2016 World Series was an important event for the main characters. The 2016 World Series finished with a dramatic rain delay in the 9th inning of a tied game 7. Nobody knows exactly what happened in the locker rooms, but after seventeen minutes of rain the Cubs came out to rally for the win.

BLUE SKIES

• I was invited to contribute a short story to an anthology of time travel authors (I still can't believe this really happened), and jumped into a story that starts with a skydiving accident and time hops to 2142 and back, so a dad can help his daughter save the world. I looked up skydiving lingo and found "blue skies" - a phrase that can mean hello, goodbye, and good luck in the skydiving community. And then it matched up with the lullaby dad used to sing to his little girl, so it had to be the title.

LOOKING FOR KISMET

• I saw a book on a table at the school I teach at, part of a messy pile of books next to a note that said "FREE!" The title of the book grabbed me - Searching for Serendipity - but I didn't grab the book. I did let that phrase kick around in my head for a few days, until it was joined by memories of my old cat Kismet, and an imagined story of neighborhood kids looking for Kismet when she runs away. 

Looking at this list, I guess I do feel like I've gotten pretty lucky with snappy titles. Any other name might not smell so sweet.