Welcome back!
Launching my debut novel feels like inviting friends into a house that’s still being built. So watch your step, and I’ll try to keep the tripping hazards to a minimum. Grab a drink, relax, and let me introduce you to my writing process.
Ever tried to settle on a name for your baby? Your pet? Your imaginary friend? (Hey, no judgement here.) Book titles are tricky. They need to intrigue, be memorable, and fit your genre. Oh, and be unique. It’s no problem if you know more than one Noah or Hannah. But more than one Mistborn?
Consider. Would you buy this book? Small Guys With Big Hairy Feet Fool a Dragon. How about clicking on this crime drama? The Guys With Guns Solve Another One.
Lots of writing advice offers title templates. Some fantasy ones are: A Noun of Adjective, An Adjective Noun, or Noun of Noun. Sound familiar?
I considered these:
-Stones of Pain and Promise. Too reminiscent of A Song of Ice and Fire.
-A Deplorable Wondrosity! Fun but ambiguous.
-Scandalon means the part of a trap holding the bait, which meshed well with the treachery in my series. You guessed it – already taken.
–A Wager of Dreams. The Dream Wager is an actual sports betting podcast.
-Bondbreaker. In real life, a substance applied to prevent two surfaces from adhering to each other.
-A Depth of Treason
-The Glorious Dungeon
-Vengeance of the Hawk
-The Relic’s Daughter
-The Rest of Freedom
–A Ransom of Stones. (The stones here are sapphires, whose discovery creates huge chaos in my story world. My smirking partner suggested Damn Sapphires. Right.)
One-word titles are my favorites. Yet how to evoke a book’s essence with a single word? Your turn. Pick one word that adequately describes your life. See? Also, Professor Google kept informing me that someone else had already grabbed my perfect title for their novel. Sigh.
The titles mentioned here might change. Stay tuned. For now, here’s the tea on the current titles for this series.
Book One: Stoneslinger. One word? Check. Memorable? Check. Genre appropriate? Check. But if you’ve ever done any landscape construction, I can hear you chuckling. A stone slinger is a specialized conveyor truck that spreads bulk materials (sand, gravel, soil & mulch) up to 100 feet away.
Book Two: Strongbow. If you’re a fan of hard cider, you’ll recognize this as a popular UK brand.
Book Three. Stonewager.
Book Four: Goldspindle. Probably a keeper.
Book Five: Stonestill
Nothing’s set in stone yet. I’d love to hear if any of the titles mentioned here resonates with you.
Ciao for now,
Kai