What’s That Title All About?

I have a low threshold of boredom and a lot of empty hours in the day to fill, so I tend to keep a number of projects on the go at any one time.

Right now, I’ve just finished re-cutting a short video, The Cake, a slapstick silent-ish movie, which you can have a chuckle at below. I promise you the drink was only Irn-Bru.

Having done that, I’ve returned to writing novels and I have no less than three simmering on the burners.

First it’s a sci-fi thriller, working title 499. I’m better known for my light whodunits and ribald humour, so that will appear later in the year under the pen name Robert Devine.

Next is the fifteenth Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery, working title The Deaths at Squire’s Lodge.

It was originally planned as a Spookies novel, but I couldn’t get sufficient variation on the paranormal angle, and as a part whodunit, it’s fairly easy to transcribe. By the time it gets to Crooked Cat, it will be nigh on a year since we left Joe homeless, and the hard core STAC fans (yes, there are a good few) deserve a fresh volume.

Finally, it’s Midthorpe Mysteries #3, working title…

And that’s where I come back to the main thrust of this post. Set in a country club and spa, we find Raymond and Lisa up to their necks in chuckleworthy mayhem and dead bodies, but I couldn’t think of a suitable title. The Spa Murders or The Country Club Killings were fairly obvious, but because the Midthorpes stress humour as much as crime, I wanted something less Agatha Christie

Enter Trevor “I wrote Tracy’s Hot Mail and Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail” Belshaw.

Trevor has recently been plagued by Russian spam (aren’t we all) of the promiscuous kind, and he posted the text of one such laughable email last week. In it, the young woman (or old man posing as a young woman) indicated that (s)he was seeking “adequate man”

Note adequate man not an adequate man. As if he’s some kind of superhero. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No. It’s ….ADEQUATE MAN!!!  (cue stirring music from Superman, Batman, Indiana Jones, etc.)

We all had a good chuckle at it, and posted our tittering replies, but later, as I settled own to work Midthorpe #3, it dawned on me that An Adequate Man is the perfect title.

Why?

I’m not going to tell you. It would give too much away.

In the meantime, thanks to Trevor’s mystery correspondent, and keep an eye open for An Adequate Man, coming to an e-reader near you very soon.

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While you’re waiting, why not entertain yourself for a few minutes with The Cake?

Comments are open, so please feel free to have your say, and I’m quite happy for you to share if you so wish.

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