All In a Name

Names of books are so hard to do. When I titled my first novel String the Dark Pearl, I contemplated shortening it to “Dark Pearl”, but I was afraid that people would be looking for a Johnny Depp fan club anthology. Some authors like to spill the whole plot in their title, so mine could have been, “Always Check behind You When You’re Getting into Your Car on a Snowy Day”. Confused? Read the book. Another option is to give it a one word title, like “Kidnapped” (taken), or “Pearl” (also taken). Some authors go with themes like naming every book after a laundry soap. “The Tide Cometh,” is a good one, followed by “No Gain, All Stains”, and finally “Gasping for Oxyclean.” Some of the best titles have little to do with the book at all, but they create a poetic intrigue that makes you want to buy the book to display on your shelves whether or not you ever read it. If you do read it, you spend the entire book trying to figure out what the author meant by the title, when the answer may be simply that it “sounded neat”. For instance a book called “Beans in my Pants” may have nothing to do with beans or pants, but it sort-of makes you want to find out. It has also become popular to title a book “The Someone’s Wife”. Fill in whatever profession you want – The Teacher’s, The King’s, The Mechanic’s. These books are often about women searching for who they are apart from their spouse, so really the books should be called “If I weren’t The Someone’s Wife”, or “My Heavens, Why did I Marry the Someone?”. The working title for my new book is “Say it Twice Softly”. Don’t ask.