I can talk about titles in three areas.
First, my ancient Egyptian paranormals are all “of the Nile”.
It’s my little inside nod to Mara,
Daughter of the Nile, a YA by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, which I read in
elementary school, and which inspired me to write my own Egyptian stories much
later in life. It’s also a nod to “Princess of the Nile,” one of my all-time
favorite 1950’s B movies with Debra Paget and Jeffrey Hunter.
And it’s a pretty good bet anyone searching for a novel set
in ancient Egypt will correct identify my books as something they might be
interested in.
When it comes to my scifi romance titles, I’m a bit all over
the place frankly. My first published SFR was Wreck of the Nebula Dream, because really, what else can you title
a novel about an interstellar cruise liner coming to grief?
Besides that book, my original plan was to title each book
in some sort of alliterative fashion and include the name of the planet. This
worked for Escape from Zulaire, Mission
to Mahjundar and Trapped on Tlanque.
Well, which is to say it worked for me. I was at a big conference early in my
career as an author, doing a book signing, and met a number of my readers,
which was fun and they were very excited about the books but after watching
every single person have a problem with my tongue twister planetary names, I
flew home and said, “Time for rethinking titles going forward.”
Then I hit upon labelling the series STAR CRUISE and having
a short title after those introductory words – Outbreak, Marooned, Stowaway,
etc. I think that strategy worked out all right.
When I was writing my story about kidnapped alien empaths
forced to work for the interstellar mob (and how they escape and who they fall
in love with), I went for sort of retro scifi titles – Danger in the Stars, Two Against the Stars, etc. This was my secret
nod to Andre Norton, who inspired me to love science fiction and want to write
it as my main genre.
Now, with my Sectors New Allies Series about genetically
engineered warriors, the Badari, I’m following a current trend in the SFR genre
of just giving each book the hero’s name as the title – Aydarr, Mateer and Jadrian
(the latter to be released shortly, followed by Darik, Gabe and more titles yet
to come, I hope!).
Yes, I am ALL over the place with titles. I don’t try to
imbue them with any deep meaning or magic. I don’t agonize over them much
(obviously). In my head I refer to them via a kind of shorthand or nickname
anyway, which sometimes confuses people when I’m talking with them about my
books.
Which brings me to the third bucket of titles – what do I
label my Work in Progress files?
It varies. Are you surprised?
Sometimes I give a new book file the hero or heroine’s name
as a working title. Sometimes that name changes but the file name never does.
So for instance, JADRIAN began as Hadir, so that’s the file I open on my
computer when I need to work on the manuscript.
Sometimes I give the file the planet’s name. I have one
planet name that went through three iterations along the way but the file still
has that original, first stab at a designation moniker.
Occasionally I give the file the name of the main concept of
the plot.
There are times when I’m looking at my files and I have to
laugh because anyone but me would have a hard time finding the right set of
documents. Since no one but me needs to carry out that task, it works. I’ve
always been a bit idiosyncratic in my filing methods, which used to drive my
office assistants a bit up the wall when I worked at JPL. I’m not the most
organized person in the world but I do have my own quirky structure underlying
my efforts.
Works for me!
I can promise the book will always have a title when
published. Fortunately Fiona Jayde provides me with gorgeous cover art
(with a few of the earlier Egyptian covers from the incredible Frauke) so no one’s too focused on
how the title parses anyway, right?
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