Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Title "quiz" answers

Not really a quiz per se, but here are the final titles for the working title list I posted last week:

1. Fall From Olympus
Dear Irene,
2. Under Deep Sky
Hocus
3. Harm
Bones
4. Three Kind of Lies
Remember Me, Irene

5. Season of the Witch
Sweet Dreams, Irene
6. Imperfect
Kidnapped
7. O'Connor's Tale
Bloodlines


I just remembered that Harm was a title suggested for a time by an editor who left Simon & Schuster before the book was published, so I didn't come up with that one.

As Elizabeth Foxwell noted last week, it isn't hard to figure out where the title for #7 came from.

The others? Today has become a little jammed up, but tomorrow I'll post more about those.

2 comments:

Louise Ure said...

Hi Jan,

Seeing these changed titles is stunning to me. I have to lock in on a title before I can throw myself into the writing. If, after months of identifying with that name, the publisher changed it on me, it would cut me to the quick. (Hasn't happened yet. Fingers crossed.)

Having said that, I notice that I far prefer your original titles to the ones that wound up with Irene in the name. But I guess that's what building a series and a brand is all about, huh?

Jan Burke said...

I hated the addition of her name to the titles -- it caused a lot of confusion among readers. And there was another series out (by Carole Nelson Douglas) that used the name in it.

But except for the Irene-in-the-title years, I haven't minded working on the titles mutually with my publisher. I know writers have different -- oh, it's late, so I'll just say -- talismans for their books. Something that initiates the book for them, or which is key to them. Fortunately, titles aren't that initiating point for me.