The Novel Without a Title - want to win a book?
The most important things, when it comes to selling a book, are the cover and the title.(Read
Debbie Bennet
on the subject) Which gives me a terrible headache - because I've got a novel that everyone seems to like (it's just spent six months in the top five of the 'best-seller' charts on YouWriteOn.com) but I haven't got a title - and until I have a title, it's very difficult to have a cover. So I thought I'd have a competition - whoever comes up with the 'right' title, will win a free copy of any book I've ever written as well as a free copy of the novel when it's published.
Cover 1The novel features two girls growing up in the 1930s. They meet by chance at a school in the north east of England and form a friendship that lasts through bereavement, failed relationships, internment camps and all the day to day discomforts of wartime Britain. They are very different - Tamar is quiet and reserved, having been dragged from lodging house to lodging house all her life by her itinerant mother - the beautiful and unreliable Sadie. Anna is more forceful, half German, determined to study art and become a painter. Her mother leaves Germany as soon as things become difficult, separating Anna from her father and grandparents against her will. Both girls are constantly seeking a place where they feel they can belong and the war takes them to some unexpected destinations.
Cover 2
One of my suggested titles is 'One Dear Perpetual Place' (from WB Yeats Prayer for my Daughter), but some think it's a bit pretentious.
I wanted to call it 'The Waters and the Wild' (a quote from Yeats that is the epigraph for the book), but someone has beaten me to it with a Teen novel. I could have 'Between the Water and the Wild', but don't like it as much.
'The Stolen Child' has also been suggested, as both girls have in a sense been 'stolen' from their fathers. But I think it would lead readers to expect a thriller, and it isn't.
'Where the North Wind Blows' is another contender, but I'm not sure about it. The working title was 'Travelling North' - which is inadequate. Then there is 'The Befriending of Tamar Fell', though the novel is also about Anna.
'The Hat Box' is another suggestion, since that is where Sadie keeps the papers that will reveal the secrets of Tamar's family history.
Any votes? Any ideas? Neil has put together some draft covers, some of which I like, but it's difficult not having a title!
Cover 3
Cover 4
Cover 1The novel features two girls growing up in the 1930s. They meet by chance at a school in the north east of England and form a friendship that lasts through bereavement, failed relationships, internment camps and all the day to day discomforts of wartime Britain. They are very different - Tamar is quiet and reserved, having been dragged from lodging house to lodging house all her life by her itinerant mother - the beautiful and unreliable Sadie. Anna is more forceful, half German, determined to study art and become a painter. Her mother leaves Germany as soon as things become difficult, separating Anna from her father and grandparents against her will. Both girls are constantly seeking a place where they feel they can belong and the war takes them to some unexpected destinations.
Cover 2 One of my suggested titles is 'One Dear Perpetual Place' (from WB Yeats Prayer for my Daughter), but some think it's a bit pretentious.
I wanted to call it 'The Waters and the Wild' (a quote from Yeats that is the epigraph for the book), but someone has beaten me to it with a Teen novel. I could have 'Between the Water and the Wild', but don't like it as much.
'The Stolen Child' has also been suggested, as both girls have in a sense been 'stolen' from their fathers. But I think it would lead readers to expect a thriller, and it isn't.
'Where the North Wind Blows' is another contender, but I'm not sure about it. The working title was 'Travelling North' - which is inadequate. Then there is 'The Befriending of Tamar Fell', though the novel is also about Anna.
'The Hat Box' is another suggestion, since that is where Sadie keeps the papers that will reveal the secrets of Tamar's family history.
Any votes? Any ideas? Neil has put together some draft covers, some of which I like, but it's difficult not having a title!
Cover 3
Cover 4
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