What’s In a Name?

Kate Flora: I’ve been spending a lot of time lately on Facebook and thumbing through

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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.

[image error]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[image error] 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