Sneak A Peek: Favorite Thing in Current WiP

Hello, Sunday Readers!

Jeffe's off partying hard with the SFWA at their Nebulas Weekend. If that sounds like a mash of mystery words, well, come back on Tuesday for Jeffe's lowdown on hobnobbing with the likes of Peter Beagle and the Muppets.

That leaves me to kick off the week's topic of "What's Our Favorite Thing in Our Current Work in Progress (WiP)."

I'm working on Book 4 in my Immortal Spy series, THE HANGED SPY. So far, my favorite thing is deepening the relationship between my protagonist and her primary romantic interest. They have a long history she can't remember and he's cursed to not speak of. Like many long-term relationships, there have been good times and times they tried to kill each other. Third parties who knew one or both of them "back in the day" pop up throughout the series to nudge them back together or to prevent their HEA. My favorite parts are the private moments between them when there's nobody meddling in their lives. They have a lot of fun needling each other as they navigate their new normal.

Excerpt (that may or may not make into the final edit). For context, my protag is a kind of magical transporter who has a habit of relocating herself when she sleeps:

Bix jerked her attention back to him as her temper woke. “If I wanted you in my bed, Tobek, I wouldn’t stoop to tricking you with aphrodisiacs. Enthusiastic consent or nothing at all.”

His brows shot to his hairline. He took two steps to close the distance between them. “When it comes to you, I am an endlessly patient man. However, do not confuse my patience for being obtuse. You may not understand the complex emotions you feel when it comes to me or the interplay of what exists between us. I cannot help but be keenly aware of my feelings for you as well as your feelings for me…as quixotic as they are.”

Her surprise lasted a heartbeat until she remembered his Eternal Knot, etched beneath his layers of ink, was anchored to piece of her that existed within him. Samesies for the Enteral Knot hidden on her chest that anchored a piece of him within her. It was an emotional conduit meant to help the woman she'd once been understand empathy and cope with emotion. She hadn’t really spared a lot of thought for what Tobek got out of the deal.

“I too will accept nothing less than your very vocal and enthusiastic consent. Dithering isn’t going to be good enough. Neither will be mustering courage nor naïve curiosity. I too have standards.” He grinned. “Besides, sweetheart, you have no idea how many times you fetch me to your bed. You’re too sound asleep.”

The Title's Not the Thing For Me

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?

Titling Purgatory

Titling novels is a magic I do not possess. My stories are all filed under the character names. Even after they're published.

I swear to you, there is this paranormal historical thing I did last year - finished it. Subbed it. Got the rejection letter. There's a series name. But the book title? The manuscript went out without a title because I got nothing. I think it said Book 1 of Artifacts of the Aegean. The file folder still says 'Sinclair', which is the hero's name. Now granted. The book has a few fatal flaws that have to be corrected before it sees the light of day again. Maybe it'll find its title somewhere in that process. But this is me. Not holding my breath.

Yes. I did come up with the title for Enemy Within. Don't ask me how or why that title volunteered. It did and attached itself to that story. Berkley's marketing folks didn't like it, though. So we went through the titling motions, which look like this:

1. Email from your agent saying 'marketing would like a list of title options.'
2. You cry.
3. You call your friends, beta readers and anyone who is tangentially aware of the story being a thing that exists to ask for suggestions.
4. You try to come up with a list of 20 title options.
5. You fail at number 8.
6. Your TRUE friends get on line with you and in a chat window, they throw out title suggestions based on your characters, the theme(s) in the story, and/or whatever black magic happens on their sides of the chat windows.
7. You email your list of 20 to your agent, who forwards it on to the editor.

The marketing team then picks one of your title suggestions or comes up with one of their own. Or. In the case of Enemy Within, the editor comes back saying 'we're sticking with the original title because no one could come up with anything better.' 

Nice.

Makes it easy for the rest of the series, though. All of the titles will be Enemy something. That doesn't help my poor, forlorn historical paranormal weird series, though. And I somehow don't think my chances of getting better at titles are very good. My stories start with characters, not concepts, and I tell myself that the people who are good with titles are the concept people. Please don't shatter my illusions.

Choosing Titles

Titles are a strange beast in this business.  On some level, they're immaterial to the book, in and of itself.  The title is there for marketing purposes, a quick and easy way to set the tone of your book.  The shortest version of your elevator pitch.

But on the other hand, I think about them for a long time.

Almost every one of my books had some working title that didn't survive contact with reality. The Thorn of Dentonhill was just "Tools of the Trade" in draft.  The Holver Alley Crew was "The Fire Gig".  An Import of Intrigue was "The Little East".  And many times that working title is definitively and only a working title, one that I knew even then was not for public consumption.  Imposters of Aventil was merely "Wingclipper", as the original one-paragraph concept focused more on one of the antagonists. 

About the only one that lasted all the way through: Lady Henterman's Wardrobe.  For some reason I always knew that was the title of the second Asti & Verci story.

I've mentioned that the books up to People of the City (original working title... is a spoiler) marks the end of Phase I of Maradaine things, and if you know me, you know I'm a planner, and yes, I do have a plan for Phase II and Phase III.

And those Phase II books have tentative titles.  They still may change between now and when they are written and released, but that's the plan for now.

So, how about a little contest?  Below I'm going to put eight hints for eight prospective Phase II Maradaine Novels. And so we're on the same page, these titles each would represent Book Four and Five of the four respective series, but I've mixed up the order so it's not completely obvious what's what.

Email your guesses to me before AUGUST 1st, 2018.  The entry that is the most correct (or, barring that, most entertaining in incorrectness) will win an ARC of THE WAY OF THE SHIELD, limited to mailing in US and Canada.  Sound good?  Here goes:

The Q_____ G_____
The A_____ of C_____
The S_____ of the C_____
An U_____ of U_____ M_____
The C_____ of the C_____
A P_____ of P_____
The N_____ K_____ of R_____ S_____
A_____ and D_____

Happy guessing!

All the Truly Nasty Titles I've Thought Up

Okay… titles, huh? I’m going to have to punt on the expertise here because I’ve never successfully titled a work. Let me explain.

I have two books out. The first was a cyberpunk romance featuring a BladeRunner-type android assassin, and in my overwrought newbieness I called it On the Squeeze. Note the singular lack of cyberpunk or romance imagery there. To my ever-patient editor I submitted more than twenty terrible titles, each terribler than the last. Don’t believe me? Feast your giggler on these gems:

• Lost Things
• Hard Drive
• Hard Wired
• Guardian Machine
• Full Metal Seduction (<-- Seriously, I sent this. Amazing SFR author Cara Bristol had just done a poll on Facebook asking readers what words in a title were appealing for romance, and "seduction" was the clear winner. So I guess I thought I was being marketing savvy or something. Am blushing with embarrassment now, though. Pretty sure this was not the context the voters had in mind.)

Finally, in the last batch via email, I said, um, maybe Wired and Wanted?

At that point, either I’d worn down my editor with the sheer volume of badness or that title was close enough to what we needed. She switched it around to Wanted and Wired, and voila.

But wait! The follow-up book was going to be even more fun to title, for both of us. And by “fun” of course I mean agony. My working title for book 2 was Claws in Chrome, which, again, wasn’t super romancey, but at least it had a cyberpunk feel and called out the robot cat, who is a pivotal character in the story. (I had in my mind the cover image of a shirtless cowboy facing away from the camera, a la Daniel Craig on that hot Cowboys & Aliens movie novelization cover by Joan D. Vinge, only with a creepy robot feline peering over his shoulder, possibly in full ears-back hiss mode. THIS IS WHY VIV DOES NOT DESIGN COVERS.)

My poor, poor editor. 

None of the titles I suggested were even close to suitable, and just in case you don’t believe me, here’s the complete list I sent with the launch paperwork:

• Fire and the Fall
• Desire and the Desperado
• Spurred and Smitten
• Trust and Treason
• Tampered and Tempted
• Bliss and Bravado
• Riled and Ready
• Claws in Chrome
• Evils and Angels
• Passion and Power
• Outlaw and the Oratrix (<-- OH YES! Clearly targeted at readers who always have a dictionary handy!)
• Shadow Trust
• War and the Wild Things
• Fire of Forever
• Best of the Beasts

The title we ended up with, Perfect Gravity, has nothing to do with the book, but lordy is it better than anything I submitted. We may have gone back at revisions and added a couple of lines about the pull of gravity, or the heroine’s magnetic personality being like gravity or something. Regardless, it’s a pretty cool title.

That I would never in a zillion years have thought up.

So that's my unimpressive track record so far. The third book in the series has a working title of … (wait for it)…Bits of Starstuff. And okay fine, I love it and it’s so appropriate for my noncorporeal, sentient-chatbot heroine Chloe. So what it isn’t romantic. So what no stars actually explode in the story. So what it’s punny with “bits” having two meanings, and no one likes puns.

We’ll have to see what happens with that book, but hey, if you have title ideas, please feel free to pass them along. They can’t be worse than the crud I’ve thought up.

Titles: A Story in 5 Words or Less

Tell me a story in five words or less. That was the first bit of advice I got on how to title a book. A little tidbit about me: I struggle to keep a query letter under 250 words and the back copy of a book under 200. Now you want me to do it in FIVE? FIVE? Are you nuts? No. It's sound advice, a great starting point.

It's not really how I do it, though.

Instead, I opt for what makes the novel...novel. Does it work? If by "work" we mean "drives sales," I have no idea. No reviewer has ever said, "I bought this because of the awesome title." Similarly, no one has said, "I skipped it because of the crappy title."

For my high fantasy series Fire Born, Blood Blessed, each book is named after a god/his eponymous nation. The titles are also the path our heroine takes on her journey. While each book is/was easy to name, those names do not tell a reader unfamiliar with the series anything about the book. I hope the made-up nation names at least hint that the book is fantasy. It certainly doesn't meet the SEO standard that Jeffe mentioned on Sunday (though SEO bears consideration in future naming efforts); however, the series name might.

As for my Urban Fantasy series The Immortal Spy, I went for the classic naming convention of adjective + noun. There will be seven books in that series, and the first four were easy to name because I already knew the rough plots. The titles reflect the spy for whom our protagonist takes up the mission that drives the plot. The titles also stay within a certain character limit (as in number of letters, not body count) so I don't dork up the layout of the cover.

The Burned Spy, The Plagued Spy, The Captured Spy, The Hanged Spy

I opted for straightforward naming with the UF and went weird for HF because I think the genres support them. I kept the titles short to be easily remembered and allow the cover art to hold greater presence. I used the series names to supply information the titles didn't and cover art to fill in where the words failed.

Coming up with Titles

I am remarkably indifferent about book titles. I like something that makes a point and is hopefully catchy, but beyond that...Meh.

Some of the best titles on books I've worked on come from Charles R. Rutledge, my frequent author and good friend.  We've done three novels together and I love every title. BLIND SHADOWS, CONGREGATIONS OF THE DEAD and A HELL WITHIN. He came up with all of them and he has even found appropriate Bible quotes in all cases. He's good like that.

My first boom was called UNDER THE OVERTREE I thought it was catchy and it correlates to the name of the lake in the story, Lake Overtree.

SEVEN FORGES, THE BLASTED LANDS, CITY OF WONDERS and THE SILENT ARMY are all titled from the main focus of the novels. Really, that's about as crazy as I go. Not a lot of research, etc. Currently I'm working on BOOMTOWN, SPORES and the first draft of AS WE KNOW IT.

Those titles are subject to change at a moment's notice.

Coming Up with Titles: the Pain and Glory

Spring has sprung here fully into summer and the flowers are so lovely! This is my pink anemone clematis that I'm training to climb up the grape vine in the arbor. Love how it's coming along!

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is "How do you come up with your titles?"

I might have as many answers to this question as I have published (and unpublished, for that matter) works. And a single work can have multiple titles by the time the final one goes on the cover. So much so that I can have mass confusion looking through my various files and documents for versions of stories. I'm pretty organized, but that can get crazymaking, especially keeping things consistent between email folders and those in Dropbox.

So, the short answer is I often choose titles initially on instinct. Some of them come to me before I start writing. Like "Wyoming Trucks, True Love, and the Weather Channel" was a title I thought of first, then wrote the essay, and then we ended up calling the entire essay collection that. Sometimes I write on a book for a long time before I figure out the title. Some are called "Story" for a significant amount of time.

One cool trick I learned is to pull the title from a line or phrase in the story. Grace Draven likes to draw from poetry, which is how we came up with "Amid the Winter Snow."

When you work with a traditional publisher, they very often want to change the title. So, here's a story about the title of the first book in the new trilogy I'll be doing with St. Martin's Press, out August 2019.

I called this book "New Story" for about a week while I worked my way into it. Once I had a handle on it more, I started calling it "The Slave King." That lasted about a month until I apparently decided my heroine needed to share top billing. Then it became "The Slave King and the Flower Queen." I had those images for the hero and heroine, which resonated with the core idea I worked from. When I sent my agent, Sarah Younger, the first rough fifty pages, that's what I called it. We have a number of back-and-forth emails with the subject line "TSK/TFQ." Which should've been a hint right there that it was a cumbersome title.

By the time we went out on submission, Sarah suggested taking "The Slave King" out of the title. I get that descriptor for him in the story, but she was concerned that it would be possibly offensive as an email subject line out of context. She proposed

Throne of Flowers, Throne of Flesh
Throne of Flowers, Throne of Fire
 Throne of Thorns, Throne of Fire
 Crown of Thorns, Crown of Ore

I came back with (inspired by her) "Throne of Flowers, Throne of Ash." She polled everyone in her agency and they voted for that.

And sold it to St. Martins! (along with two sequels to be named - literally, as we still haven't titled those...)

Once we signed the contracts and started digging into what my editor, Jennie Conway, envisioned for the series, she relayed that the SMP marketing thought that my title would get lost in SEO. (That's Search Engine Optimization for the lay people - and means that they worried my "thrones" would get lost with all the other "thrones" terms people might type into Google.)

She suggested:

Book 1: A Throne Veiled by Orchids
Book 2: A Throne Bound in Shadow
Book 3: A Throne Carved from Embers

Sarah riffed on that, coming up with:

Book 1: A Throne Masked by Orchids
Book 1: A Throne Hidden in Orchids
Book 1: A Throne Built by Orchids
Book 1: A Throne Shadowed by Orchids
Book 1: A Throne Covered with Orchids
Book 1: A Throne Disguised by Orchids

Book 2: A Throne Bound in Shadow

Book 3: A Throne Carved from Embers

Marketing came back with a No on anything starting with "Throne," because of how SEO works, and also avoiding the words "ice," "fire," and "ash," as they're overused with "throne."

After a lot more brainstorming, we all finally settled on THE ORCHID THRONE as the title for Book 1. You can no doubt see the evolution of that. As for Books 2 and 3, we decided to wait until I wrote more of Book 1 and saw how the story was developing.

So there you have it! My answer in this case to "How do you come up with your titles?" is "over months of effort and with a bunch of really smart people weighing in."