Patti O'Shea's Blog

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.

Book titles. Sigh. I’m awful at putting a name on a book. My working titles used to be one of the character’s names and a descriptive word–for example, Ravyn’s Flight. Now I might go with the character’s name–Shona’s Story–or with something that I think represents the book–Dragon’s Dawn.

What I want for my titles is something snappy, something that grabs the reader and makes them pick up the book. No matter how hard I try, I don’t seem to come up with those. I should be able to, right? After all, I majored in advertising copywriting–the epitome of snappy. The problem is that different types of writing (and I guess titling a book can loosely be called writing) requires different brain muscles. My ad copy days are far enough behind me that the talent has atrophied. I do have lots of practice, though, at writing 450 page manuscripts.

Which brings me to the title for my latest book. I must have sent three dozen suggestions to my editor. Today, she sent me an email with the three finalists and asked me to pick. The choices were:

When Night Falls
At Dawn’s Break
Edge of Dawn

I knew I didn’t want “Night” in the title because I’d like to use it on my next book. It fits it perfectly. In fact, I already have what I think is a great title for it–which will not be revealed unless and until that becomes the official name of the book. Don’t want someone else grabbing it when I worked so hard to come up with it.

Anyway, that left me with the two “Dawn” titles, which jives with what I’d been using as my working title. I couldn’t make a decision and wanted some input, so I emailed one of my writing buddies, hoping she’d see it right away and reply. That didn’t happen. Then I remembered–Twitter! I’d ask my Twitter friends what they thought.

The unanimous consensus? Edge of Dawn

So I just emailed my editor and said let’s go for this one. Hopefully, it’s snappy enough.