Need Title Suggestions!

[celesta]

What would be a good title for a collection of short stories? I'm going to self-publish two or three collections of short stories in April. What should I call them?

I write mostly Sci Fi and Fantasy. In some of my stories there is also some Christian content. Some of the stories are like fairy tales. Some of the stories are romantic. I have quite a few stories about the end of the world. Initially I was thinking "Stories by Celesta" volume 1 and 2 but now I realize how incredibly boring that sounds not to mention it does nothing to tell the reader what kinds of stories are in the collection.

What kinds of groupings should I make, like what types of stories should I put together? I also want to try to have some keywords in my titles so people might find me through a search on Amazon. All ideas/suggestions are most welcome!

[celesta]

Here's what I've thought of so far:

Inspirational Speculative Short Stories
Inspirational Fantasy Short Stories
Inspirational Science Fiction Short Stories
The World’s End - Inspirational Short Stories
Overcoming Darkness - A Collection of New Fairy Tales
Spaceships and mermaids – A Collection of Very Short Stories
There’s Still ‘Happily Ever After’- A Collection of New Fairy Tales

[metalikhan]

Since it looked like you'd thought of using "Celesta" as part of the title, why not play with that some more? It's a lovely musical instrument, so you could use some musical teminology:
The Celesta Cadenza
Sonata Celesta
The Celesta Quartet (or Quintet, Septet, Chorus -- depending on how many stories are in a particular volume)


If you wanted to, you could add a subtitle to indicate the genre: A Short Story Medley; SFF Ad Libitum, and so on, depending on what you want to emphasize about your stories.

Or some non-music possibilites:
The Celesta Incunables
From Celesta Scriptorium

Just thinkin'.

[celesta]

I'm not musical at all, unfortunately. And I've come to the conclusion that using key words in my title could be very beneficial in that people will find my stories if they search for those things on Amazon. "Short Stories" for instance.

[j2starshine]

Oh I love the imagery of "Spaceships and Mermaids"! Though I am partial to mermaids
If you wanted to include your name you could do something with the cosmos... I'm assuming that Celesta has something (or could have something) to do with the celestial, but I could be wrong Is there a common theme that might link your short stories together?

[celesta]

Yeah, Celesta means heavenly and has to do with the stars/etc. I don't know how I'd work that in, though.

There are lots of different themes in the stories and I have enough to make 2 or 3 collections of stories. But I don't know which themes I should use to group them. I also have some stories that would be better for teens, maybe. It seems like there are too many options. I've been pondering this for a while not and don't think I have thought of suitable titles yet. I just don't know.

[Kessie]

Totally group them by a common theme or element. When I've shopped for story anthologies, they're always grouped by genre, like fantasy, or horror, or steampunk, or what have you. Or they'll all contain dragons, even though you have mystery, romance and fantasy stories.

Sometimes it'll be the story with the catchiest title with "and other stories" amended to it. "These Wild Magics and other stories".

[yoda47]

I really have nothing to add here. I'm horrible at titles.

The ones that sound most interesting to me, based soley on the title, are the last two ideas of yours.

I'd read a story about mermaids on a spaceship... that sounds interesting... (No, I understand that they're most likely diffrent stories..)

[celesta]

That would be interesting, wouldn't it? Space-faring merfolk.

[celesta]

Ok, what about this:

Escaping Darkness and Other Apocalyptic and Dystopian Tales

[celesta]

And this:

The Days of the Dragons and Other New Fairy Tales

[celesta]

And:

Mind Sync and Other Science Fiction Short Stories

What do you all think of those three titles for my three short story collections?

[Kessie]

Oh, those are all really good! Escaping Darkness, Mind Sync and Days of the Dragons. :-)

You might want to Google those titles to make sure there's not other books out there with those titles. It'd make yours less visible.

[tris]

One of my favorite collections of short stories was called "Get off the Unicorn" by Andre Norton. She had originally titled it "Get of the Unicorn" but a typo landed her with the other. And come to think of it there wasn't a single story about unicorns in it! Go for something outrageous and catchy rather than tied in to your name or short stories or even the type of story. Readers will remember the title easier.

[yoda47]

Weird, Anne McCaffery also has a book of various short stories called Get off the Unicorn..