The Business of Titles

On one of my local writing organization forums, an aspiring writer, ready to start submitting his work, got worried when he discovered that the title he'd chosen was already in use. He immediately started trying to come up with a new one. I threw in my two cents, of course, and thought it might be useful to summarize my contribution.

Titles definitely matter. Titles set reader expectations. A title might be totally cool and unique, and yet totally wrong for YOUR book. Titles speak about genre and scope and epoch and most certainly the kind of read one might anticipate - humorous, serious, mythic, adventurous, fast, slow... Think Nymphos of Rocky Flats vs Ysabel vs Blood Drive vs Breath and Bone vs The Bell at Sealy Head vs The Fellowship of the Ring. All are fantasy. All very different.


Should I panic if my title has been used?


No. A quick check at an online bookseller (yeah, Amazon is really good for this) can tell you if the exact title or close variants have been used and how frequently. You can also get an idea of how relevant that usage is. That is, who wrote the books, when were they published and by whom (a publisher you would target?). Are they in the same genre as yours, and are they still in print? (If the works are not being sold "new" by Amazon, it likely means that edition is out of print.) If you're not familiar with the author, look him or her up. You can figure out pretty easily if this is a conflict that's going to bother an agent or editor. An older book or a book by an obscure author, especially in a different genre, likely poses no conflict IF yours is the perfect title for your work.

On the other hand, if the books are fairly recent, in your genre, and by a prominent author from a publisher you might target, there might be some merit in changing the title. Yep, avoid Carrie or The Da Vinci Codex. If you can think of something better...and by better I mean more original and more evocative - giving a better feel for the theme of your work - it would behoove you to do so.

You should always reconsider your title when you finish a book. That's when you actually know what the book is about. That's when you really know whether the book you started as a comic myth turned out to be an angst-filled, serious adventure. (Mine always do that!)

Bottom line - think, don't panic. If you can come up with something better, great. If not, it's not the end of the world and you can work with your acquiring editor to create something better.

Does the title make a difference when submitting a book to an agent or editor?

Well, sure! A good, evocative title can pique the interest of an agent or editor in the same way an excellent log line can, so definitely spend the time to come up with a good one. A good title shows that the author has a handle on both the marketing world and what the story is really about. Both are good signs when you are selling yourself as well as the book.


Will my editor change the title?

Maybe. Some editors will encourage you to rework a weak or conflicting title on your own. Some will suggest alternatives right away or will pass on suggestions from the marketing department. Titles are hard and some people are good at writing them and some aren't! In a big house, you can be sure that a book won't be published without a title that the marketing department approves, because titles ARE marketing. If you sell to a small press it will behoove you to make sure the research and "marketing think" that a marketing department might supply gets done. This might mean ditching your beloved title for something that sets the right reader expectations.


Historical note: Out of my 13 (11 published, two forthcoming) books, I've been asked to consider a different title for only two of them. In the first case, my UK editor thought the original title was more evocative of horror than fantasy. A moment's reflection told me he was right. In the second case, the original title was very close to that of another book already on the schedule from my same publisher. In both cases, being forced to THINK about it, gave me much, much better titles. The resulting titles were Revelation (the first case) and Breath and Bone (the second), two of my favorite titles.


Read more of this post!

Events and Deadlines and the Partridge in the Writing Tree

Hello, hello. anybody there? Yep, I'm alive. Poking my head up from the hole like the February groundhog after a seriously overwhelming few weeks. Last night I was feeling pretty awful about having written so little (deadline for The Soul Mirror 4/30) and blogged even less over the past six weeks, but then I started counting. Over the past seven weeks, I've done:

1. Nine bookstore events - two of them here my own town, one in San Diego, the other six elsewhere in Colorado. Each involved program preparation - whether it is readings or coordination with a couple of fellow authors who shared a few of the events - as well as email, snailmail, forum and facebook notifications, and coordination with the bookstore involved. Thank goodness for Shannon Baker and Janet Fogg, two author friends who shared the coordination of our four-stop Three Adventures Tour and made gorgeous posters, and launch party invitations, and to Karen and Julie, who organized the most fabulous launch parties in Boulder and Denver.




2. My first podcast reading for Broad Universe, a great organization that supports women writing fantasy and sf. This involved...
   
   ... downloading recording software, preparing a five minute reading - which is not simple - setting up microphone, learning to use the software, test reading, paring out words, more test readings, getting Exceptional Spouse help with setting up an amplifier so one could hear the reading, more test recording, paring out more words, editing out hiccups, etc. Now that I've done it all, it should only take a short time for the next one in April. Yeah, uh-huh.
   
   



3. A five-day writing retreat in Fairplay. OK, I did get good writing done those days.



4. Three critique group meetings with associated reading, of course.
   



5. One extensive written critique I had donated as a prize to a writing organization.



6. Travel planning for two convention trips.
7. Planning for a Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers March workshop, called Words Words Words, to be presented with my most excellent fellow writer Susan Smith (aka Mackay Wood.)
   



8. An extensive written interview for The Dallas Examiner and a shorter one for the Denver Examiner.



9. Writing up proposed back copy (one of the most difficult tasks for this writer) and cover ideas for The Soul Mirror, due to my editor for a cover conference.
   
10. Writing up workshop proposals for two writers conferences.
11. Four doctors' appointments, three days working on income tax, two screening procedures (all is well), and a partridge in a ...

Well, no wonder this felt like a fragmented season. That doesn't even count watching for reviews and references to the new book, and all those other things one should not fret about (but only non-humans could ignore).

So, with the schedule clearer for March, I hope to get back to regular blogging. In April, panic mode sets in with book deadline, Norwescon - doing not only the program of one of my favorite conventions but the Fairwood Writers Workshop, a terrific opportunity for new writers to get pro critiques - and the Pikes Peak Writers Conference - speaking at one of my favorite conferences.

Whew.

Read more of this post!

Release Day!

So the day has come. The Spirit Lens is released to the world. (Well, OK, some bookstores and online sellers have leaked it early. Lest you have mistaken me, I'm not JK Rowling, whose publisher enforces strict on sale dates so they know how many million copies a minute she sells.)


So how does it feel?

Scary. Exciting. A relief. A deep and lasting satisfaction, especially for a person who never in the world imagined she could produce a whole book, much less eleven of them. I wrote for a number of years just for myself, and that was fine. But knowing that other people will now meet the characters who live in my head is just excellent. Portier, Ilario, and Dante are out there.

For those of you who have followed the crumbs these past two years, thanks! It has been fun to share the development of the story with you. I hope to get back on track with the second novel of the Collegia Magica.

For those who have read and critiqued - you know who you are - and encouraged and spread the word, thanks so much!


Read more of this post!

News...

I have been terribly laggard with this blog of late. Apologies to all. The holidays and family gatherings have occupied lots of time, along with preparing for the launch of The Spirit Lens on January 5th. Preparations included:

• setting up events (see the schedule on my website)


• writing a piece for the Roc newsletter about the novels of the Collegia Magica and how The Spirit Lens took shape


• writing a piece for the Knight Agency holiday blog


• sending out postcards to bookstores


• etc. etc.

Should likely have done more, but I've hardly had time to write as it is! When a bit of minor surgery clogged up the works, my kind editor gave me an extension on The Soul Mirror, which is an incredible relief. I hope to get back to serious work on the book in the next day or so.

Meanwhile, in the hullabaloo surrounding the release of The Spirit Lens, I don't want to forget the Lace and Blade 3 anthology that should be hitting the shelves in mid-February with my Song of the Beast follow-on story called, "The Heart's Coda." Here is the lineup for the anthology:



LACE AND BLADE 3 Table of Contents

Kari Sperring, "Featherweight"
Sean McMullen, "Culverelle"
Sheila Finch, "Fortune's Stepchild"
Judith Tarr, "The Horned King"
Jay Lake & Shannon Page, "Embers"
Tanith Lee, "Question a Stone"
Dave Smeds, "A Swain of Kneaded Moonlight"
Rosemary Hawley Jarman, "Fire and Frost and Burning Rose"
K. D. Wentworth, "The Garden of Swords"
Diana L. Paxson, "Blue Velvet"
Samantha Henderson, "Outlander"
Carol Berg, "The Heart's Coda"

Whew! Is that a lineup or what? I am so pleased to be a part of this project. Should be seeing cover art soon!

I'll keep you posted, and get back to regular blogging as I get into the last third of The Soul Mirror development. You can catch more regular, brief updates on Facebook. I'm "Carol Berg, Northern Colorado."
Read more of this post!

ARC Giveaway

My publisher is giving away ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) of eight forthcoming Ace/Roc novels at the Dear Author blog today. Hie thee over there and you could win one of eight different new releases, including, as it happens, The Spirit Lens.


All you have to do is comment on the post, telling which are your first two choices and who among all Ace/Roc authors you recommend. Read more of this post!

Supporting Your Local Booksellers

I wanted to order a book this morning. A fellow member of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers has written a couple of mysteries about an elderly man with short term memory loss (Mike Befeler's Retirement Homes are Murder and Living With Your Kids is Murder)and I think one of them will be perfect for someone on my Christmas list. Ordering occurred to me when I got an email from one of my favorite independent bookstores announcing Mike's signing this Sunday. Unfortunately, I can't make the signing. So I promptly boinked my bookmark for Amazon.

Uh, what's wrong with this picture?

Don't get me wrong. I love Amazon. It's so easy. I can research book titles and availability instantly. I can get free shipping and discounts on popular books and films, notification when the price drops on something I'm hedging about. They have worked hard and developed a great online shopping model. BUT...



When I'm not sure of what I want, when I want to see what's new, what's captivating, which Italian cookbook has the prettiest pictures and easiest directions, which travel guide for France has things laid out in a useful way, I need to browse... I need to read the backs, flip the pages, compare, read a page here and there. You can do this at online booksellers, but it is actually slower (and much less satisfying) than having a stack of books at your side and comparing. The Amazon business and transaction model is primo, but the browse model falls short. And although Amazon will recommend "if you like this, you might also like this," it is the result of database tags and sales data and not the recommendation of someone who loves mysteries or fantasy or cookbooks.

So, one can browse a bookstore and then rightfully compare prices to get the best deal, right? Well, sure. Except that if we all do this, the brick and mortar stores will vanish right before our eyes. And they are doing that.

I just sent out about fifty packets of bookmarks and fliers to bookstores recommended by readers and fellow writers. As I had last sent out bookmarks in 2007, for Flesh and Spirit, I decided to validate the addresses on my list. Fully one-third of the bookstores on my list had gone out of business in the past two years. Many of them were independents who had messages on their dead websites: "After 65 years in the Bay Area..." or 50 years or 80 years, or "All of our stores in the DC area..." Many were Waldenbooks, small, friendly shops that a number of my readers mentioned had knowledgeable staff who loved reading. Borders/Waldens just announced another round of store closings last month.

And so, I left Amazon on this day, and bopped off an email to my friendly independent in Denver, asking them to get Mike to sign a book for me and ship it up here. It might cost me a few dollars more. I might have to pay for shipping. But I'm hoping Ron and Nina will be there next time I need to browse.

Buy at least one book from a local store this season. Chain or independent, big or small. Call it a vote for browsing!

Read more of this post!

A Writing Exercise

The past couple of days, I've been consulting with a friend who has been invited to submit some chapters and a synopsis to an agent. She sent me her first attempt at a synopsis. There are many good books and blog posts on how to write an effective synopsis (one is Pam McCutcheon's book Writing the Fiction Synopsis). All of them will tell you to
- write in present tense (no matter how the book is written)
- tell the whole story including the ending
- use your best storyteller's voice.
(A synopsis is not an essay.)

But here are a few of my own extra tips and an exercise I think can be valuable:

1. Highlight the goals, motivation, and conflict of your main characters. This is much more important than he went here and there and did this and that. That is, don't overload your synopsis with stage direction. It's more important to know what your heroes, heroines, and villains are trying to accomplish and why, than all the steps that get the result.



2. Don't overload with names. Name your protagonists and antagonists and the city/village/kingdom where the story takes place (especially if it gives a flavor of the story milieu - Chicago, Arbonne, Derzhi Empire). Be very selective about any name beyond this. Identify characters by roles, such as "Valen's sister, the diviner" if possible.
   



3. Even though you have limited space, don't minimize character introductions. Your characters and their conflicts are the heart of the story, and their personalities and problems are what will distinguish your "search for the lost sword" or your "werewolf in Denver" from someone else's. To give good character introductions means that sometimes you have to tell, not show. You don't have the space to slowly reveal character as you do in the novel itself. Don't be shy about using adjectives. "Seyonne's father, a gentle, scholarly man, wholly without magical talent, must accept the life of a farmer..."



4. Sketch out character and relationship growth. You do have in there, right? Highlighting it in your synopsis will show the synopsis reader that you know what makes a rich story.



5. Inject your passion. You only have room to show a few incidents, the turning points in the story. These are usually the pieces you like best as well. So use vivid language, not formal or stripped-down language. And consider carefully every incident you include. Trying to include too much detail in the synopsis leaches out the color and warmth.

Exercise Before writing the synopsis (or before tearing your hair out with one you've been working on) try writing the back copy for your book. Back copy, like the synopsis, is a sales tool. It needs to be vivid, and sketch out what's interesting about the protagonist, as well as the primary conflict of the book. In the back copy you're not going to give away the pasyoffs, which you must do in the synopsis, but that's ok. Read the backs of lots of books and feel the rhythms. Figure out what grabs you. The juicy bits, right?

So write your own. Let your critique partners read it. Then use it as a basis for writing your synopsis, layering in the secrets and the ending (YES, you must include the secrets and the ending in the synopsis) as well as the turning points in the story, including all the juicy bits and how they affect the progress of the story. I've found that writing sample back copy forces me to think about what attracts ME to the story, what I think might attract a reader to the story, and what sets my story apart from other books on the shelf. Think about it.


Read more of this post!

Momentum and Description

I've talked several times about working to regain momentum after life events, vacations, distractions such as revisions or proof reviews for earlier books. I usually have a few days of spotty work, where I'm easily distracted, trying to pick up the threads of plots and subplots, the dynamics of character understanding, of relationships, of evolving mysteries... At times words flow. At times, they're balky and spurty, like turning on the water after the main system has been shut off for a while and is full of air bubbles.

For me, three things contribute to word flow:

1. Familiarity with characters and situations; ie. not having to pry details of goals and motivations from a character, or invent that parallel world I've been putting into square brackets to look at later;
2. Knowing (and liking) where I'm going;
3. Having my mind immersed in the writing - the ability to focus

There are also some important intangibles, like having chosen the right starting point for this section of the book. If I hit a major block, it's usually because I've headed off in a wrong direction - see earlier postings on what I do when I'm stuck.

I'll also get bogged down in description, especially the first time I visit that particular place. Sometimes I go around in circles for not much reason, like the library at Castelle Escalon. Is there a need for this library to be all that different from other libraries I've described? Probably not. Back up. Go a different direction.

Sometime the thinking time is fruitful, like my time figuring out what I meant by "three water gates" to the Spindle Prison. It expanded what I thought was a throwaway scene between Anne and her hostage brother into something creepy and meaningful.


I wrote the first few paragraphs of her journey to the prison on my last wonderful, productive few days in the mountains with fellow writers. I figured I'd be done with the chapter within a days of getting home, as I had gained so much Momentum from the retreat. But completing Chapter 14 took me an entire week. The crucial reunion at the end of the journey kept moving further away. Why? What happened to Momentum?

As Anne was seeing the city of Merona after half a month in the closed world of palace life, I wanted her to witness more evidence of the changes that were happening in the city as a result of the Bad Things Rising in the world. Which meant, of course, that I had to figure out what they were. Something different, larger, creepier than the things she had seen fourteen days before when arriving at the city. That took a bit, but I was happy with what she discovered, like:

A few turnings farther down the hill, Duplais pointed out another deserted tenement. A cracked signboard, painted with three gold balls, dangled by one corner over the door. The windows and door gaped black like empty eye sockets. Air rushed into them as if they were sucking every breath out of the world.

Then we got to the Spindle.

It's important to judge how and when to describe settings in detail. Too much can slow the pace of the action. There are even times when the first visit is not the time to do it.

We visited the Spindle once in The Spirit Lens. Portier visited a prisoner there. The problem was, we were building up to the climax of the book. Portier was in a hurry, and I didn't want to reveal the details of his discussion with a certain prisoner. It would have been cheating to give readers a detailed description of the locale, and then skimp on the meat of the visit. The narrative is supposed to reflect the point-of-view character's state of mind. Portier was in a hurry to accomplish something on his visit. He was focused on that and not on the prison itself. So we learned that the Spindle is a grim tower prison, set on a nub of rock in the deepest channel of a river. And it has three water gates. That's it.

In The Soul Mirror, the atmosphere of the journey to the prison, the place itself, and what my heroine discovers there is quite relevant to the actual events that occurred inside, and her growing certainty that there is something BIGGER going on.

And, of course, there is. Poor Ambrose. Not a good place at all.
Read more of this post!

Fascinating and Depressing

Here is a great blog post about science fiction and fantasy's continuing struggle for literary recognition:


John Howell on sffmedia

As anyone who's ever heard me rant, this is a pet peeve of mine. I groan every time someone says, "Oh, you're published! What do you write?"


And I say, "I write epic fantasy."

And the face blanks out. "Oh, my kids read that."

Or, "Oh, I don't read that sort of thing. I like to read about real people."

And, of course, it doesn't help that fantasy is dissed by many hard sf writers in exactly the same terms as Atwood disses sf. "Oh, fantasy is nothing but elves, dragons, and unicorns. That soft and fluffy crap. Where's the tension, when any problem can be solved with magic?"

But, of course, such criticisms have to keep us honest. Bottle up those elves and unicorns. And don't let magic solve every problem!!


Read more of this post!

The Heart's Coda

Last spring I received an invitation to submit a story to an anthology of high fantasy. With such a tight schedule for the Collegia Magica books, I wasn't sure I'd have the time. (Still not sure I had the time!) The editor offered to send me copies of her previous two anthologies so I could see if I wanted to join in the third of the series.

The anthologies are called Lace and Blade, from Norilana Books, a small press that puts out absolutely gorgeous editions of classics, as well as some original works and these anthologies. Check out the luscious cover art for the first and second volumes.

Well, I read several of the stories in the two volumes, including the lovely novella, "The Night Wind" by Mary Rosenblum that had just been selected for this year's Nebula ballot. Not only was I impressed (and intimidated) by the quality of the stories, but I really wanted to have a story in the new one. So I told her yes. The due date would be August 1.

So, of course, the next thing was to figure out what to write. Length could be variable, wrote the editor. Write tight, but make it as long as it needs to be.

The only way I can produce short fiction while writing another book is to piggyback on one of my existing worlds. Which was quite all right, said the editor. And when I spun the bottle and got to thinking, the right project stared up at me.



Song of the Beast was not my first novel published, but I actually wrote it before Transformation. I always intended it to be a standalone, and I was happy where it ended. The primary story arc was complete and satisfying (certainly to ME!) But, in truth, I did leave Aidan MacAllister's world in upheaval. He had changed the world so dramatically that nothing would ever be the same. His personal story - a visionary musician imprisoned as his fame reached its height, released after 17 brutal years, unable to sing or play his harp or hear the voice of the god of music who had guided his musical development - led him into a wilderness where he hoped to repair half a millennium of injustice. And I never told readers whether or not he got the girl who helped him do what he had to do.

Needless to say, I heard from a lot of readers that they wanted to know what happened after. That was what I wanted to write.

But once I got to thinking about it, something unexpected happened. As I told the editor:

Like many authors, I don't believe that my heroes' and heroines' lives end on the last page of my books. Which means, of course, that when you check up on them long after the grand and terrible events are over, you occasionally discover that their futures haven't gone quite as you expected. Thus it happened when I looked up Aidan MacAllister, the visionary musician-hero of Song of the Beast. What I found compelled me to write "The Heart's Coda."

Forthcoming in Lace and Blade 3 from Norilana Books, February 14, 2010

Read more of this post!

The Proof is in the Pudding

One thing electronic copyedits did for my publishing schedule was to shorten the time from turning in copyedits until seeing proof pages! Well, it certainly seemed to shorten the time, because the Packet of Proof Pages from Penguin arrived last week while I was off having a great weekend at the Colorado Gold Writers' Conference.

Of course, just because they got them back to me quickly, it didn't mean I had a lot of time to work on them - about ten days. And darned if I wasn't just getting back into The Soul Mirror development! But, in general, reviewing proofs means one read-through and goes pretty fast. I just wasn't sure how things were going to look after my interesting experience with the copyediting.

So how did all those complicated copyedits hold up?



I was really impressed. Everything looked GREAT! It took only a few pages to realize that all the changes I was so worried about were correctly reversed, and all the tweaks I had made were incorporated smoothly.

Only one small thing did I notice (and, you observant ones will note, I mentioned it as a risk when I was writing about this process). Never have I needed to correct so much punctuation in proof pages.

The problem is that Word's TRACK CHANGES function draws lines from all these margin boxes to the place in the text where the change occurs. Just as when you're trying to type punctuation into an online form, the lines overwrite the punctuation, so you can't tell whether the period or comma is there just by looking. In TRACK CHANGES, you have to switch to FINAL mode (hiding all the layered corrections), to look for stray or missing puncs. And I just didn't have time to look at every line. So we're back to paper and pencil now. I mark them, return those pages, and that will be that.

The verdict: The Spirit Lens is done!

By the way, email me the name and address of your favorite bookstore and I'll send a batch of Spirit Lens bookmarks. We want to make sure your store is well stocked!!
Read more of this post!

A Gritty Myth Goes Live

So I don't write short stories very often. When our local non-profit writers organization, the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, asked me to contribute a short story to their anthology, Broken Links, Mended Lives, I hesitated. I was in the middle of working on The Spirit Lens, and I only had one piece of a story in my trunk. I really wanted to support the organization, though, so right after I turned in The Spirit Lens, I pulled out the fragment and spent a little time with it. If I could finish the thing in a reasonable amount of time, I'd submit it. Otherwise I'd pass.

The story was mostly a voice. A girl's voice. She didn't even have a name. But she lived in a pretty nasty world, and her story would definitely fit the theme of the anthology. Every "link" she had was broken.

As it happened, I had a lot of fun with it - and to my surprise, I was able to tell a whole story within the guidelines of 5-6K words. Well, here's how this nameless girl introduced herself:

My parents never told me I had Talent. Perhaps they thought it undignified for the daughter of a city magistrate, or believed it might frighten me or make me insolent. Or maybe they just left it too late, and had the lack of consideration to die of plague before warning me.

Now don’t think me unfeeling, but when one is ten years old and the whole world is dying of plague, or slaughtering each other for fear of it, or taking flight to escape it, one has little time to mourn, or even to recall why one should. When civilization has erupted into chaos, the next meal looms much larger in importance than past grieving.

Six years I spent scrabbling in search of that next meal before I trudged up a rock-blasted hill and through the iron gate of Fenwick Priory. By that time I had seen far more of men and life than was really necessary, and taking up residence with a group of similarly exhausted women seemed sensible. The sisterhood grew vegetables, kept to themselves, and did no good works to speak of. I had no illusion that this would be a permanent situation. The sisters didn’t seem that agreeable, and entanglement of any sort made me want to cram a shiv in someone’s craw.

"You'll tend a plot, Girl," said the bony Prioress, licking the beaded honey from a suckle blossom grown right out of the crumbled courtyard wall. "Each of us has one."

"Don't know how," I said and scratched my itchy foot on a cracked step. "Not opposed, but I never learnt. My parents called planting hireling’s work. I’ll scrub for you. Fetch and carry. Steal, if you want. I'm good at those."

"You don't tend a plot, you don't eat. Go or stay, as you will."

I stayed. The road had got tiresome of late. My boots had fallen to pieces, and a thieving tallyman had jacked my knife. Bare hands or sticks weren’t enough to fend off the skags now I was ripe. Last thing I needed was a squaller planted inside me. My own belly was empty half the time.

The story is called At Fenwick Faire, and I would call it a gritty myth.

The anthology is Broken Links, Mended Lives. There are some excellent stories in the anthology - some by published authors, some by authors who certainly should be. It is mixed genre - in keeping with the organization's membership - but I would estimate that more than half the stories are in the "speculative fiction" realm.

If you'd like to support an organization that works hard to educate and support aspiring writers, as well as catch some great talent, give it a try.

Read more of this post!