It was the Beattles song. I have the dubious distinction of being inspired by the same song that inspired Charles Manson. Believe it or not, I didn’t even know the story about the Blackbird-Charles Manson connection, at the time. I was sitting at my computer, thinking about The Myth of Merula, listening to the Beattles White Album. At the particular moment when Blackbird came on, I was trying to decide what sort of character the main character would be. Would it be a man or a woman? What race? My imagination defaulted to a white, male, American astronaut as the main character. I had difficulty imagining another kind of character, but I hesitated about choosing my imagination’s default type of character. “Blackbird, fly…,” crooned Paul McCartney in the background. continue reading »