Exploiting Update

So remember when I asked you to brainstorm names for Rocky Start businesses? Bob came up with the idea of using one of those business names in each title. I’ve spent the past weeks trying to find a spy title and you’ve spent the past couple of days doing the same, and then he hits me with this and I think, “That’s brilliant” because this is another community book. My contribution was that the signs should be old traditional ones with one extra word graffitied over them to make the store names more about story. So the first book is now . . .

That’s not the cover, of course, Alisha will do a much better concept when we get these to her, I do like the old sign on the old painted wall with the graffiti slashing through.

So now we have to come up with two more titles. I like Excellent Oddities for the rhythm and because it’s offbeat, but it can also be the second hand store where Rose works, all the weird stores in town, all the weird people in the town, all the weird stuff in the shop, all the weird information that keeps turning up. Multiple meanings.

So thank you very much for letting us exploit you twice.

EDITED TO ADD:

For those who want to play along . . .

We think the business in the second book is either Coral’s bakery, Ecstasy, or Geoffrey Nice’s funeral home, Nice Funerals. Bob wants to use Coral’s bakery and the plot is about this rush to find gold treasure lost in the huge forest around this town. I want to graffiti “Very” across the top of “Nice Funerals,” but Bob’s probably going to win this one. No idea what word to use for the graffiti on “Ecstasy.”

The business in the third book is The Honey Pot (I’m thinking the graffiti goes over the bottom and is “Plot” so it’s The Honey Pot Plot), which is a store that sells local honey and beeswax products.

Maybe I can talk Bob into Very Nice Funerals if we do more Rocky Start books. It’s about death. He should be into that.