Red Is For Ick, or: How icky is that title?

I've been kidding myself with the name of one of my novel manuscripts. It's not that I was in love with the title: I was more in love with the possibilities the title represented.

Many readers are familiar with book series that have a progression in their titles. One For the Money, for instance, is followed by--well, what are the Stephanie Plum stories up to now? 27? And each numbered in order.

Sue Grafton has a letter in each title of her series, meaning that Z has to be her last one unless she starts throwing in subtitles, or something. AAA Is For Roadside Assistance might come after Z, but she started way back with A Is For Alibi.

When I started my young adult mystery novel, I wanted it to be a series, so I looked for something like that. Famous author names, cities, types of flowers, whatever. That would also make it clear to editors and agents that I was interested in a series, and series are big these days.

So, for instance, A Is for Asimov, or Boston Mystery, or Carnation Crime, or something like that. After thinking not long enough on it, I chose colors. For one thing, I could do those without going alphabetically. I'm not that good.

So I chose Red Is for Ick. I didn't realize at the time that all of Grafton's books have "is for" in the title, or maybe I'd have thought longer. But hey--red's the color of blood, and this novel would have a murder or two; and what would my fifteen year old hero, Cassidy Quinn, say about the blood? Yep: "Ick!" (You get to meet Cassidy, and briefly her father, in my YA adventure The No-Campfire Girls.)

It was brilliant.

Except for one problem.

The title makes sense when it's explained, but I just took three hundred words to explain it. You don't get that kind of space when you're querying an agent or editor. You need to cut to the chase.

I've been using this manuscript on the agent hunt, and got compliments and a few requests for the complete manuscript, one of them very enthusiastic ... but in the end, three dozen rejections. No, no one ever said they rejected it because of the title, and maybe the title's just fine and doesn't need explaining. But in the crowded world of publishing, you need every advantage you can get--starting with your title.

So what do you, the reader and/or writer, think? Granted, many titles are changed after the book is picked up, but (assuming you don't self-publish) you have to get the proverbial fish on the hook, first. Yay or nay on the title?

Here's a brief description of the book, if it helps:

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            Being a murder suspect will really cut into Cassidy Quinn’s summer vacation. When the teenager takes over her dad’s simple, safe surveillance job she becomes the only witness to the murder of her best friend’s father—except it turns out the victim is the father’s double, and only she saw the real killer. Now Cassidy must find out why her friend’s family disappeared, why strangers are stalking her, and how anyone making minimum wage can save up money for a car. Luckily her dad has the transportation, her sister the computer (and cookies), her grandfather the attitude, and Cassidy herself the wit and determination. The bad guys—and small-town Indiana—had better watch out.
Now, if you've read this far, yesterday Emily and I brainstormed title ideas, and we've already come up with a potential new one:

Summer Jobs are Murder

Opinions? I also considered My Dad's Going to Kill Me, something Cassidy thinks in the opening scene, but that's misleading.



http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"


4 comments:

  1. Okay, I prefer "Summer Jobs are Murder", but then I'm 72 years old so what do I know about 'ick'? I've been in a lot of discussions about the importance of titles, and when you think of the book titled something like "Life in a concentration camp and the search for existentialism", you can see why it didn't sell. When Viktor Frankl changed it to "Man's Search for Meaning", well, it's required reading in some courses. I think "Summer Jobs" especially targets young adults and "Murder" is a great clue. What more do you need? BTW, Grafton put in her will that no one could EVER go on with her books. It's a legal end. So her fans wear T-shirts that say "The Alphabet Ends With Y"

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    1. Yeah, I think we hit the jackpot with "Summer Jobs are Murder" ... now I need to find more agents I didn't already submit to under the old title! We brainstormed a list of about a dozen possible titles, and the last one was the one we picked. Some of them were ... bad ... but I guess we had to get them out of the way so we could reach the good one

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  2. If you have to explain the title, it's a problem.

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    1. Exactly my conclusion ... wish I'd convinced myself of that earlier.

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