I had an amazing opportunity to spend some time with friends back in November and December — a real treat considering how COVID managed to disrupt most of my travel plans for 2020 and 2021. (2022 is shaping up to be another interesting year on that front, but I’ll save that discussion for a later time.). We’ve known each other for more than twenty years now, a friendship that began around all things Disney before blossoming into something my wife and I truly treasure.
I’m not sure I can entirely recall now how the discussion came up, but somewhere along the line we were talking about Peril and what lay ahead for my characters. Though I tend not to divulge my upcoming plots — even to friends and family — I did tell them I’d already settled on themes for the next five, and that the titles were a reflection of that. (You can see what’s coming on my Books page if you are curious.)
That led to the next question, which was one I’m sure every author gets: did I write the novels first, and then give them a title? Or did I give it a title, and write the novel after? My answer was appropriately cryptic, but the truth is I tend to come up with the titles first because they do reflect what the book is supposed to be about. I have the added difficulty of also needing to squeeze the names into the mystery genre, too, or at least what I feel would be an appropriate sort of title for a police procedural/murder mystery.
On top of all of that, I generally set myself an additional challenge: the titles all have to reflect the most obvious aspect of the story, but also need to tie in to the less obvious (but in many cases, more important) point I am striving to make with each edition. Blindsided, for example, definitely referred to the unexpected death of a key faculty member on the eve of an announcement of a major breakthrough in agricultural research — and the ensuing fallout in the small village of Windeport; less obvious, perhaps, is how that same term applies to the personal and professional challenges Sean Colbeth is forced to face while he works the case. In a similar way, the name of my upcoming novel, Ditched, directly references the murder scene Vas encounters fairly early in the story — but a solid case cold be made that it might more appropriately call back to the chaos of Vasily’s past actions, both in Windeport and Rancho Linda.
At the end of the day, I want the name to feel right to the reader; I have actually changed a title or two after a beta reader got done with my manuscript, but on the whole, most names selected prior to writing wind up sticking all the way to publication. It’s a fun exercise for me, one that has made me appreciate all the more the titles of books from authors that I enjoy reading.