Tuesday, September 24, 2019

My next book is having an identity crisis.


It’s my husband’s fault.  Sort of.  I’m totally blaming him regardless.  Here’s what happened.  Sort of.  This isn’t a story so much as backstory. 

There’s a pattern to the titles in the Love in Andauk series.  You’ve noticed the pattern, right?  Raise your hand if you noticed the pattern.  I will explain in case there’s someone in the back not raising a hand.

The titles are parts of familiar sayings.  Not clichés.  They come from familiar, wise sayings because that sounds a whole bunch better than pointing out that my titles are all clichés.  If that was your answer when you raised your hand, you can put it back down.  Everything Old finishes with is new again.  Out of the frying pan comes before Into the Fire.  The third book was going to be called Mind Over Matter. 

I settled on that title some time ago.  I think it fits the book very well.  Recently, my husband pointed out that mind over matter is a complete saying and not only part of one, therefore, it does not fit the theme.  I knew that by the way.  I decided it was more important for the title to fit the book than to fit the theme.  I thought it was close enough.  But my husband was having a hard time letting this go.

The fact that it didn’t quite match the other titles started to bug me, too.  And it didn’t only bug me that my husband kept bringing it up.  I really didn’t want to start over.  I already went through a hundred or so sayings trying to come up with something I liked, and going back would mean admitting I missed a good one the first time.  But if the titles are going to have a theme, they all need to work within the theme.  I reluctantly went back to the figurative drawing board. 

I came up with two possibilities.  This is a case where two is not better than one.  I only needed one title, which meant now I had to choose.  The first one, By Its Cover, felt more like it went with the story.  The second one, To Those Who Wait, just looked prettier.  When I slapped those titles on any of the fifteen or so different cover backgrounds I’ve created, the capital Ts and Ws have similar loops and show up in pairs and line up without any descenders trying to intrude on the lower line.  It’s so much easier to place.   

That’s really not a good reason to choose a title.  I might as well pop random letters on the cover until something looks nice.  By Its Cover isn’t necessarily an ugly title.  It just isn’t playing nicely with my non-artist’s eye.  The y wants to drop down and punch the C in the face and the I is overpowering the tiny word it's leading and that last word is an awkward length because I can’t figure out if it’s too long or too short.  Of course, when I asked for help I got conflicting opinions.  Guess how much that helped.  And at least one person insisted I should keep Mind Over Matter.  So helpful.

I am confident, however, that those words will start behaving as soon as I stop being cranky at renaming the book at such a late stage.  Because that’s also the good news.  It’s late enough that one way or another, somehow or other, by hook or by crook, this cover will soon be finished and the title permanent.