I’m almost getting to a stage where my next Radwinter will be ready to upload and publish. I am going through it one last time, checking, checking, double-checking, culling repetitions, dull passages, unnecessary verbiage, and soon, yes soon it will launch. However, despite at last making good progress, and with the end – literally THE END being in sight, I still have one major problem… I have no title. (I want to insert an exasperated emoji, I love emojis but I know others find them intensely irritating.)
This will be the eighth and possibly last novel featuring Thomas Radwinter; as usual there’s the on-going background story of his family – wife and children and to a lesser extent this time, his brothers. There are the usual small domestic events, and the “cases” he’s working on in his professional life. He now has two people working with him, and most of his undertakings are the usual things a small legal business would deal with. However, as ever, he has a couple of other commissions which lead him into more tricky situations. A friend is worried about her elderly neighbour who has disappeared, leaving her beloved dog behind. Another friend whose husband disappeared many years ago, presumed drowned, wants Thomas to make one last attempt to establish the actual facts about his disappearance, before she applies for him to be legally declared dead. The missing man seems to have had some connection with an abandoned and deserted hotel, which appears to have some mystery inhabitants.
So, as I’m coming to the point of uploading and launching, I am still struggling to think of a title which reflects the story lines, isn’t corny or stupid, and isn’t already used by another writer for their book. So… I thought about “All at Sea” – and as ever I checked Amazon books and:
- * All at Sea: Discover all the foul facts of Britain and Ireland’s seafaring heritage (Horrible Histories)
- * All at Sea: A true story of Race, Privilege, and Redemption
- * All at Sea: Can you solve the clues in the most fiendish new cosy crime novel?
- * All At Sea: What could possibly go wrong on a Caribbean cruise? . . . Everything!
- * All at Sea with the O’Maras: A heartwarming, laugh out loud story about one big Irish family
- * Annie Stanley, All At Sea: It’s like a big hug in a book
- * All At Sea: One man. One bathtub. One very bad idea.
- * All At Sea: A novella
- * Class Three All At Sea (Class One, Two & Three)
… and another six more which you can find on Amazon.
I think anyone would agree that fifteen books plus mine with the same or very similar title is really not the best idea. Another major location is the old ruined hotel which is called The White House, but of course that would be an absolute non-starter for a book title!
Another title I had for a different book several years ago was “Missing, Presumed…” – should I resurrect that? Absolutely not because there are at least twenty-eight (yes 28) other books with that title on Amazon. There are also many books with “Missing” in their title, several pages of books in fact.
As I’ve been editing my story again, I have deliberately kept an eye out for a phrase or idea which could be formed into an interesting, memorable and different title… so far, zilch
This very old photo of a very old pub is of The Angel, Woodhatch, Reigate, Surrey, a late seventeenth early eighteenth century inn, which I previously wrote about here:
https://loiselsden.com/2012/10/21/reigate/
Lois Elsden 