One of the things I’m doing while I’m waiting to submit the manuscript (in addition to working a ton of extra hours) is trying to come up with a title. I don’t really like my working title, and titles in general have never come easy for me.

I see other books’ titles and they always (mostly) seem so perfect – the ones I’m looking at on the book cart here at the library are: Heretic, The Villain, The Ranch. Simple. Basic. You get an idea of what the book might be about (a heretic, a villain, a ranch).

Or titles taken from lines in the book. To Kill a Mockingbird, brilliant. Or from the theme – Gone with the Wind.  Or character names – Rebecca. *sighs* All the good ones are taken.

One thing for certain, though. I will NEVER title any book I write like this: Title: A Novel.

A Novel.  Well, la-di-da, isn’t that pretentious? You never see genre fiction titled this way – I guess mystery, romance, and SF readers are smart enough to know that what they’re holding in their hands is a novel, not an aardvark.