Fifty Shades of Hyde
For the first three weeks of my son’s life, his name was ‘Baby’. This should tell you something about my ability to commit to names. Granted, most of that was because his father wanted to name him after Leonard Cohen. Really? Sure, because Leonard seems like such a happy, well-adjusted man. Exactly the footsteps I want my kid to follow in.
Naming novels is just as hard as naming children. Perhaps even harder because there are no little pink or blue books with popular titles. And if there were, they’d all have been used before. To title a book, you need something original, something people will remember, something people can mention in public without blushing.
Authors often use a ‘working title’ while they are writing or editing a book. It may not be perfect, but it is something easy to say or refer to. For instance, my soon-to-be-released comedic-mystery is called No Experience Required because my heroine is perpetually unemployed. But “No Experience Required” proved to be too unwieldy a name to scream at my computer when a scene wasn’t working. And thus, its nickname ‘NERF’ was born. The ‘F’ stands for something, but you’ll have to use your imagination as to which word it is. ;)
The story of how I came up with the incredibly original title for my urban fantasy novel, is more complicated. Here’s the first shocker—it’s inspired by R.L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Big surprise, right?
The second surprise came to me recently. While looking through various documents on my hard drive, I found the very first blurb I’d written for the book. For those of you who don’t know, a blurb is the description found on the back of the book or on the book’s buy-page. And yes, there are usually many, many attempts before it’s right. Here’s the part that surprised me (ignore the melodramatic nature of all the words surrounding the title, which is in caps):
Mitch is confronted with the reality that there's good inside of him yet, and Eden learns that being good all the time is a complete waste of her time…and her life. They have to meet in the middle to discover life is always A SHADE OF GRAY.
“A Shade of Gray.” Huh. It goes with the theme of the book—dark and light, good and evil, black and white. But I’m pretty sure that title is similar to another book I’ve seen around lately.
Now, I chose that title back before there was such a thing as “Post Traumatic Fifty-Shades-of-Grey Disorder”. It was before you could find FSoG in bookstores, underwear shops, and hotels. It was even before the book hit the top 100,000 on Amazon, let alone the NYT Bestseller’s list. And well before hundreds of other books appeared with cute derivatives of the title.
It was a good thing I changed it, huh? And while “Shades of Gray” was the official title while my book was in its first draft, I still called it ‘Hyde’. And I just couldn’t think of it as anything else. So “Shades of Gray” was tossed. Phew, that was close. Imagine how confusing that would have been. ;)
Book two of my series will (everyone please knock on something wooden for me) be out by the end of the year. People have been asking what the title is. Probably because “Hyde 2” sounds pretty lame. I wish my answer was exciting and original, but it isn’t. The title of the second book is…
Jekyll
So simple, so not-shocking. Jekyll. I played around with the idea of just calling it the second half of the word: “Kyll” because I think it’s cool. Hyde/hide; Kyll/kill. Get it? Yeah, probably too subtle. But when I show you the gor-ge-ous cover of the book, I think you'll get it. Because it’s cool.
Jekyll
So there it is, in all its glory. A friend who shall not be named (but whom I’ll always adore) made the unveiling of the title a bigger deal than it should’ve been. Because, honestly, it’s just a title. And, while I’ve bought books simply because they had a great title, isn’t it all the words that are behind a great title and cover that matter? So I’m focusing on those words, to make those as memorable as possible.
Here's a little bit about Jekyll…
At the end of Hyde, Eden has changed. So if you’re expecting the same goody-two-shoes she was in book one, you’ll be disappointed. Sometimes a girl has to adapt, be flexible, and be willing to kick some ass to get what she wants.
Mitch has changed too, but not in the same way. He’s lost something he’d never thought he’d find to begin with. And the whole “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is a lie. A lie people tell themselves to make the pain go away. But the pain doesn’t go away, not for someone like Mitch. It festers. It grows. Until it can’t be held back, even by the bars of a cage.
~~~~~~~~~~
Please be sure to add it to your TBR list. Also, feel free to follow me on twitter and friend me on Facebook. I'll be posting updates and teasers as the book's launch approaches. And please send me an email if you'd like to be on my mailing list once I figure out how to get the mother-f*cking thing to work.
And as for book three's title? Hmm…I’m still thinking. Anyone have any suggestions?
