Kate Flora: I’ve been spending a lot of time lately on Facebook and thumbing through
books–Shakespeare, Barlett’s Familiar Quotations, and books of poetry. Why? Because I have a new book–dark police procedural with a brand new protagonist who goes up against a brutal serial killer–and the book needs a name. The working title, Gutted, does not please the powers that be.
From the outside, choosing a title for book seems easy. Just figure out what the book is about and then choose a title that matches, right? Not so fast. Sometimes editors and agents don’t like the ones we choose. Sometimes, the zeitgeist being what it is, we pick a title that a lot of other writers have already used. It turns out there is no copyright in titles.
Once, years ago, I wrote a stand-alone suspense novel under the pseudonym Katharine Clark. The working title of the book, with deals with a kidnapped child, was The Stolen Child, a title I’d taken from a Yeat’s poem. Alas, my editor didn’t like it. So I sat down with the above-mentioned tools and made a list of about thirty other possible titles and sent them to my editor. I waited. She called me and said she didn’t like any of them. I was standing by the phone, utterly discouraged, when my then-thirteen-year-old son Max walked by. “Mom,” he said. “You look unhappy. What’s the matter?” So I told him the story of the thirty rejected titles. “Oh, just call it Steal Away,” he said, and walked away. The editor loved that and the book became Steal Away.
Another time, the fifth book in my Thea Kozak series, titled Death in Paradise, came out
at the same time that another, more famous author published a book by the same title.
The books in my Burgess series have titles with religious resonance: Playing God, The Angel of Knowlton Park, Redemption, And Grant You Peace, and Led Astray. In my Thea Kozak series, each one has death in the title. Now I am waiting for inspiration, and those powers that be, to respond to this list of possible titles. What do you think, dear reader? Do any of them resonate with you? What if the book becomes part of a series? Does that make a difference? Does these inspire you to suggest new possibilities?
Possible Titles for Gutted:
Picking Up The Pieces
Her Worst Fears
The Homicide Diet
Twisted Justice
Bad Choices
Love You to Pieces
Pieces of You
A Puzzle in Pieces
Piecing It Together
Cutting Edge
The Butcher’s Tale
A Slice of Death
Another Kind of Justice
Courting Death
Severed Ties
Dark Inheritance
Dark and Bloody Ground
Darkness Upon You
Shadow of Death
Darkness Falls
Chasing a Shadow
Guardians in Darkness
Led Away to Death
Days of Danger
Suspected No Danger
Dangerous Edge
Cold Hand of Death
The Face of Death
Death’s Disguise
Gone to Her Death
Mister Death
Hunter in the Dark
Gone A’Hunting
Borrower of the Night
To Spite the World
No Cure for Death
Death Has His Day
Evil Days
In An Evil Hour
Chasing the Beast
Knives that Serve or Cut
Kait Carson
Charlene D’Avanzo 
Knives that Serve or Cut is edgy and there are interesting possibilities lurking behind it.
No Reasonable Man (or Woman)
No Reason
I like several of them. (But none of the ones that imply the slicing and dicing of the bodies that seems to be the killer’s method.)
In an Evil Hour
Dark Inheritance
Darkness Upon You
Chasing the Beast
Dangerous Edge (yes, this does imply the knife as weapon, but it’s not as gruesome)
Chasing a Shadow
Another Kind of Justice (if that’s what is actually happening in the book)
If there will be more with the same characters, I’d look for a theme in the titles as you have done before.
Thanks for explaining how you go about coming up with titles! I’m in the midst of a trilogy and don’t have titles for books 2 and 3. Now I can try to tie them together by the titles and I have some idea how to do that.
Peace or Pieces
I enjoy sharing this process with readers, and gotten a lot of great suggestions from my friend. I may yet have to consult my son…we shall see.
Kate
Friends. Not friend. My keyboard and I are currently at war!
the butcher’s tale
I kind of liked “In an Evil Hour,” but there were lots of good titles. I always have a problem with titles, too, , especially the last two books. Gary Goshgarian suggested Chased By Death for the last book. I had drawn a complete blank. The upcoming book was also hopeless. I had a weird techie title that no on (almost) would understand. It had a double meaning. My husband and I were looking at possible cover photos, and all of a sudden it came to me. Murder In the North Woods. What could be simpler? Raced out to Google expecting to find it. Nope, it was good. Titles are really hard and I think a good title on a good cover can help sell a book.
How did you ever think of so many?
I asked my Facebook friends
As an avid shelf browser, I agree totally that a good title and cover can help sell a book. It gets one to stop and take a look and read the fly leaf copy. Maybe even flip a few pages.
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