More about titles…
I want to expand a wee bit on what I’ve said about titles in this blog (much of that is contained in my little course “Writing Fiction,” a PDF available as a free download—see the webpage “Free Stuff & Contests” for other free PDFs and download instructions). In particular, I want to discuss series titles v. book titles and how they should shake hands if possible (big caveat there). I’ll use my own oeuvre for examples (both good and bad) because I know it best, and I know what thoughts I had when I created the series and book titles. Believe me, I’ll learn from this analysis too. (If you feel that this is a veiled marketing effort, you’re wrong. It’s more in line with “confession is good for the soul.”)
My detective series is called “The Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.” Donna Carrick, of Carrick Publishing, the publisher of this seven-book series (maybe there’ll be more), and I often call it “C&C” for short. That title accomplishes two things: it tells the reader it’s about two detectives—NYPD homicide detectives, in fact—and it fixes in their minds the main characters. That’s all and good, but it fails in one respect: their cases often become national and even international; in other words, they often go beyond NYC where they usually start. That international aspect is an important of the series and makes it much more than a series of books about police procedural, but I’ve chosen to emphasize that national and international aspect in some of the titles.
Consider Aristocrats and Assassins: while there are wannabe aristocrats in the U.S., especially among one-percenters, the true aristocrats are in Europe. In this novel, that’s where all the action takes place. On the other hand, I failed miserably with Family Affairs and Gaia and the Goliaths because the titles don’t indicate that much of the action is international or has international implications, and it is and does.
On the other hand, these last two titles work in other ways. Family Affairs is all about families—Detective Castilblanco’s, Detective Chen’s, and another character’s (although you have to wait a wee bit for that twist to appear). And if you recognize the word “Gaia” as the Greek name for Earth, you might make the leap and conclude that the novel has an environmental theme, and that is international. Authors can make these trade-offs between series titles and book titles. I don’t know how well I’ve done that, but it’s a lot better than one-word titles that don’t say much—another “Gone…” book or alphabet book (“A is for…”). We need to put some thought into series and book titles.
Mixing things up can become a bit confusing, though, so we have to be careful. My “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” takes its name from the first book in the trilogy, Survivors of the Chaos. In both cases, “chaos” implies dystopia, at least to me. Nothing wrong with that because that’s where the series begins, but I blew it with the next two books titles. I created a dance/music theme, thinking about dancing around the cosmos, so they’re Sing a Zamba Galactica and Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in your Hand! (The dance theme is continued with Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape, a collection that contains stories set in the same universe as the “Chaos Chronicles”). The second two titles aren’t great, though, especially the third, which is too long. The “Sing a Zamba” is OK because the zamba is an Argentine song form; and “Galactica” implies galaxy, which in turn implies sci-fi (remember Battlestar Galactica?). For the third, you often dance the Colombian cumbia on the beach with a candle in your hand (you’re supposed to move only from the waist down, something I could never do), so I imagined a wee bit of salt water in a character’s hand reflecting the Milky Way. Yeah, a bit of a stretch! I doubt that any reader got any of that, so two-thirds of the titles fail. Titles change, though. Consider The Death of Grass and No Blade of Grass, the same book with different titles for the U.K. and the U.S. (My entire trilogy is now bundled into “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.”)
“The Clones and Mutants Series” works as a series title because it tells the reader what the whole series is about. The titles of the individual books don’t enjoy a good nexus with the series’ title, though. Full Medical was considered by one reviewer to be an attack on Obamacare (I don’t extract quotes from that review!). Although the book is somewhat related to the healthcare crisis projected into the future, it’s really about cloning, so the title is a failure. Evil Agenda is OK as a book title, but it’s a bit too generic; the book is about—are you ready?—clones and mutants, among other things. No Amber Waves of Grain is a nice title; it describes one theme in the book. The other theme is about problems in a post-unified Korea when an industrialist born in the North decides to get even. While this last title isn’t a bad one by itself, none of the three titles mesh well with the series title.
My final series is “The Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” Like my detective series, this does a good job of identifying the main character. But like most of my mysteries, there are thriller elements in these books. In some cases, a book is more mystery and less thriller; in other cases, just the opposite. There are many thrills to be had in the tales about Mary Jo, so, in this sense, the series title fails. What about how the books’ titles mesh with that series’ title? Maybe they’re OK as far as book titles go, but there is no relationship! In fact, the titles are too generic. Muddlin’ Through describes what Mary Jo does in #1 in an extreme sense, but it fails to describe where she does it. The novel hops around the world. Silicon Slummin’…and Just Gettin’ By continues the muddlin’ theme a bit and does succeed in describing where most of the action takes place—the Silicon Valley. The book that will make the series into a trilogy, Goin’ the Extra Mile, also continues the muddlin’ theme, and maybe implies a lot of travel, but again the action is international as well as national. Now I think a better choice would have been to title the series “Mary Jo and the MECHs” and add “: MECHs #1” and so forth to the book titles. (The MECHs, or “Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans,” play roles in all three books.)
It’s not an easy thing to mesh book titles with series titles. I probably have given more thought to book titles than series titles. I’ll have to work harder on the series titles. Part of my problem is that I never write a book thinking it will be the first in a series. That adds to my difficulties. Writing is a continuous learning process, as is most of life.
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The Secret of the Urns, by A. B. Carolan. Set in the same sci-fi universe as A. B. Carolan’s The Secret Lab, this new young-adult sci-fi mystery explores a Jupiter-sized planet’s satellite in a faraway solar system where human scientists are studying local flora and fauna but behaving badly until a teen who wants to study the satellite’s ETs comes along. She teaches them tolerance and shows that cooperation is better than xenophobia. In the process, she discovers that the ETs’ beliefs go far beyond ancestor worship. Available on Amazon in ebook and print format and on Smashwords and its associated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc) in ebook format. Ideal summer reading for young adults and adults who are young-at-heart.
In libris libertas!
