I stink with book titles. I really do. I mean, for years I simply referred to each of the separate books in the fantasy series as Book One, Book Two, Book Three… Well, you get the point, on up to Book Nine. Hell, mentally, I still refer to them by their number. I have a list of their titles around here somewhere, but other than the first three books, I couldn’t tell you the names of any of them. Honestly, I better be able to at least tell you the title of the first; I’m not doing a book signing this weekend without knowing it! Still, even with titles for the fantasy series all said and done, I still can’t help but feel like they’re rather lacking or even uninteresting. I’m just not good at coming up with descriptive or witty titles. That’s why my thesis title was so plain and bland: French Pejorative Suffixes: Meaning and Morphology. Vanilla. Truly, vanilla.
Not that there’s anything wrong with vanilla, per se, but I’m more of a chocolate mint sort of person. Hell, I’m more of a peanut-butter-salami-American-cheese-Granny-Smith-apple sort of person. Hideous, I know, but I want my titles to be as intersting, or at least eye catching. Now that I’m working more heavily on the romance, it has become more apparent that I’ll eventually need a title for this silliness. While chatting with the husband, I decided I liked the idea/imagery of hurdles. After all, Nick is a track coach, and the majority of the book is about the pair of them jumping over the metaphorical hurdles in their lives, overcoming the obstacles of being closeted gays who are atheist/agnostic in a small town in the middle of the country. With this in mind, I’d come up with various permutations of The Final Hurdle, Jumping Hurdles, Life’s Hurdles, and Making the Last Hurdle. I decided I prefered The Last Hurdle, and have tentatively dubbed the book that in my mind.
Tonight, while chatting with the husband again (odd, we do that a lot anymore), we were discussing the cover of the book after having had a discussion about the linguistics surrounding the word “minority.” We had chatted about Venn diagrams, and it occurred to us that the cover would be kind of cool with a Venn diagram on it. The center is more or less a pink triangle (GAY PRIDE!) with three uneven circles forming it on a black background. After some toying, Ian got a mock-up done in Photoshop, and now I’m liking the idea of The Center of a Venn Diagram as the title of the book. It’s not fair. Normally I have fits trying to come up with titles, and now I have two that I rather enjoy. To be truthful, I feel that The Last Hurdle makes more sense with this particular novel because of the sports-related themes that pop up now and again (funny, isn’t it, because I dislike sports affiliated with schools so vehemently), but I still like the image of the Venn diagram. Perhaps if I don’t use the Venn diagram for this book, I’ll do so when I get around to writing a romance novel with two lesbians as the main characters. Heterosexual relationships are just so…vanilla. *Snicker*
At any rate, I’m trying to write about 1,000 words a day so I can get the romance done by the end of August and can therefore spend October and September working on the second novel in the fantasy series (currently titled Two’s Company, Twenty-two’s an Army) before NaNoWriMo in November when I plan to work on Book Four in the Solennelle & O series. Not sure what the name of that one is. I’d have to look it up. 😉
"…Nick is a track coach…":
Another gay coach? Sounds cliche to me… Whatever it's your book.
As for titles… The first one looks alright. It kind of feels like one of those titles you have to read through the book in order to understand the meaning behind it. Or it could be. Whatever fuck it!
As for the second one… I don't follow it. On one side of the diagram you have heterosexuals and on the other side you have homosexuals. That means in the middle there should be the bisexuals. That's the impression I got from it. They are supposed to be "full on" gays, right?
[i]Two's Company, Twenty-two's an Army[/i] Why does it have to be twenty-two? I don't remember.
Titles that you could use: [i]The Crooked Line Between Us[/i] Opposed to the straight line between couples. That was bad. You could always use [i]Two Dudes, One Bed[/i] That's worse.
Anyways, have fun with this. Not that you aren't already.
Uh, you know lots of gay coaches, I take it?:
And I think I'm sticking with the first title, though the second might be nice if I ever write another book. It actually refers back to the original idea of having two women (first minority) who are lesbians (second minority) and atheists (third minority). Though, I guess one of them is actually still trying to pretend to be Christian until her girlfriend points out that in doing so, she's making her life miserable. Still, it was a thought, albeit a hastily and ill-formed one. And the twenty-two has to do with something in the book itself which won't make sense until you get into it. Trust me, it really just boils down to "I suck with titles." And yes, [i]Two Dudes, One Bed[/i] is pretty bad, but I loled nonetheless. 🙂