It’s my husband’s fault.
Sort of. I’m totally blaming him regardless. Here’s what happened. Sort of.
This isn’t a story so much as backstory.
There’s a pattern to the titles in the Love in Andauk
series. You’ve noticed the pattern,
right? Raise your hand if you noticed
the pattern. I will explain in case
there’s someone in the back not raising a hand.
The titles are parts of familiar sayings. Not clichés.
They come from familiar, wise sayings because that sounds a whole bunch
better than pointing out that my titles are all clichés. If that was your answer when you raised your
hand, you can put it back down.
Everything Old finishes with is new again. Out of the frying pan comes before Into the
Fire. The third book was going to be
called Mind Over Matter.
I settled on that title some time ago. I think it fits the book very well. Recently, my husband pointed out that mind
over matter is a complete saying and not only part of one, therefore, it does
not fit the theme. I knew that by the
way. I decided it was more important for
the title to fit the book than to fit the theme. I thought it was close enough. But my husband was having a hard time letting
this go.
The fact that it didn’t quite match the other titles started
to bug me, too. And it didn’t only bug
me that my husband kept bringing it up. I
really didn’t want to start over. I
already went through a hundred or so sayings trying to come up with something I
liked, and going back would mean admitting I missed a good one the first time. But if the titles are going to have a theme,
they all need to work within the theme.
I reluctantly went back to the figurative drawing board.
I came up with two possibilities. This is a case where two is not better than
one. I only needed one title, which
meant now I had to choose. The first
one, By Its Cover, felt more like it went with the story. The second one, To Those Who Wait, just looked
prettier. When I slapped those titles on
any of the fifteen or so different cover backgrounds I’ve created, the capital
Ts and Ws have similar loops and show up in pairs and line up without any descenders
trying to intrude on the lower line. It’s
so much easier to place.
That’s really not a good reason to choose a title. I might as well pop random letters on the
cover until something looks nice. By Its
Cover isn’t necessarily an ugly title.
It just isn’t playing nicely with my non-artist’s eye. The y wants to drop down and punch the C in
the face and the I is overpowering the tiny word it's leading and that last word
is an awkward length because I can’t figure out if it’s too long or too
short. Of course, when I asked for help
I got conflicting opinions. Guess how much that helped. And at least one person insisted I should keep Mind Over
Matter. So helpful.
I am confident, however, that those words will start
behaving as soon as I stop being cranky at renaming the book at such a late
stage. Because that’s also the good news. It’s late enough that one way or another, somehow
or other, by hook or by crook, this cover will soon be finished and the title permanent.