Stories of Genesis (Volume 1)
by Chris James
Available from Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Smashwords.
A new kind of fan fiction. Five original short stories inspired by characters which feature in songs from the rock band Genesis.
In Mr Magrew’s Incredible Journey, the creature from A Trick Of The Tail recounts his adventure over the Hills of Night, to a strange land where the natives had neither horns nor tails.
The Chat Show Host, inspired by the song Duchess, sees TV interviewer Jason ‘JJ’ Jones about to host the singer Duchess on his show, as she promotes her comeback album. But JJ knows her dark secret, and plans to destroy her comeback so his own career can finally take off.
In One Regret, the narrator from Dreaming While You Sleep reaches the last day of his life, and relives the moment twenty years earlier when he fell asleep at the wheel.
The Final Battle tells the full story of Supper’s Ready, as the guardians of Earth are forced once again to do battle with the Eternal Sanctuary Man. Unknown to the guardians, the Eternal Sanctuary Man has a new and powerful army. The guardians are all but destroyed, and the Eternal Sanctuary Man drags the few survivors to his farms. Only one guardian, Captain Amon, can thwart the Eternal Sanctuary Man’s plans – if he can survive long enough.
In The Agent Lunges, inspired by the song Down And Out, an author receives a phone call from a copyright agent, who gives him a nasty surprise.
Original concept, original stories. Excellent read!
Thank you, Jo! 🙂
Loved them all, but especially Mr Magrew’s story. 😀
Thank you! 🙂
I love this! I’m currently doing something similar, writing flash stories based on each of 80’s singer Nik Kershaw’s songs. I think the inspiration you can get from a song, and the personal twist you put on the lyrics, is a great way to pay homage to a favorite artist.
I’m curious though – did you contact the band about this at all? Have you run into any copyright issues?
The last story in the book is a satirical riff on the copyright issue.
I took lots of legal advice from lots of places, and I recommend you err on the side of caution. You shouldn’t directly quote even one line of a song unless you’ve paid the copyright holder for a licence to do so.
I didn’t, and in my book I deliberately paraphrase and misquote the most relevant lyrics (as writers, twisting words is really part of the job description). Some of the stories have only a passing relationship with the words of the song anyway, but the two stories which do follow the “plot” of the song, I took a lot of care not to quote anything directly, such as omitting or changing a word in a phrase, or adding extra words to distort a line from the song.
The only thing worth remembering is that titles can’t be copyrighted, so you can quote the song title without a problem.