It’s no secret that I’m awful at titles. There are some authors who are so good. I see their titles and I think, man! I wish I was that quick and clever. Unfortunately, I’m not and this is something I struggle with on every single project.
My latest title saga begins with the synopsis I wasn’t supposed to be working on. It’s for a project that I want to get to next, but not now. Now I’m supposed to be writing the Work In Progress (WIP), but instead, I wrote a synopsis, revised it, and got it ready to send out to my writing buddy. But I need a title for this project that I’m not supposed to be working on.
My first thought was Screaming Like Demons. Yes, I was listening to Nickelback. Hey, music helped before! In the Midnight Hour got it’s title from Rebel Yell by Billy Idol. I was desperate, okay? 
I never thought it would stick with the book, but it did. I’ve had more people tell me that they start singing Rebel Yell when they see that particular book. Could have been worse. At least the radio station didn’t play REO Speedwagon or the Little River Band.
But back to my current saga. So I thought about “screaming like demons” only my h/h are demons, so that didn’t really work. Okay, I thought, what about “Demon’s Scream?” Um, no go there either since there’s really no screaming involved. “Swinging From the Ceiling?” Okay, I decided, it’s time to turn off Nickelback.
Maybe some word with demon. I tried a variety of different combinations and I actually came up with one that I like and that fits the story on two levels. And then I began wondering if it sounded too much like it belonged on a horror story. Sigh.
For now, I’m using it, but I’ll continue to try to come up with something more paranormal romance and less horror. I’m not holding out much hope.
Tags: titles
Hi
Thanks for posting a fun and informative blog post.
Do you have much control over the title of the novel? I heard the publishing industry likes to change it a lot if Marketing Dept. decrees it to be so.
A title that works on two levels is very good though!
Love from Canada
twitter.com/RKCharron
xoxo
Well, I was hoping Marketing would take over the titling of my books, but unfortunately for me, about half are my original working titles. The ones I have to claim are:
Ravyn's Flight
In the Midnight Hour
In Twilight's Shadow
In the Darkest Night
And for the short stories:
Blood Feud
The Troll Bridge
The ones I can partially claim, as in I offered up suggestions to my editors and they picked one, are:
The Power of Two
Edge of Dawn
The ones that were titled by my editor:
Through a Crimson Veil
Eternal Nights
And the anthology title came from Joely Sue Burkhart, who replied to a plea for title help on this blog. She came up with Dark Awakening.
Patti