Title Life Line - Throw Me One

Titles. Was this topic my suggestion? Was it? Cause I'm hopeless. I've been reading all week, hoping and praying for a silver bullet that would make me less bad at titles. Listen. Titling a thing gives me hives. More so even, than having to write the synopsis of the thing. 90% of the time, I file my story files under a character's name. All of my working folders are named things like 'Ari', 'Sinclair', or 'Heli'.

Even when I *do* name a story, at long, painful last, editors want to change it. No problem, I say, and I provide a brainstormed list of 20 other possible titles. But you know what happens? Every single time, so far? They go with my original title. And if you think that doesn't give me a complex about my titles, you're as crazy as I am.

Like KAK and just about everyone else, I want my title to convey both genre and some hint of what the story might be about. That isn't to say it's always achieved. Just that it's a goal. Usually, I have to write a complete story before a title that isn't a character's name offers itself up for consideration. Those of you who know my work already know that the working title 'Ari' became the book Enemy Within (which was also the title of a movie that came out several years before my book did, speaking of avoiding duplicate titles. This happened again with Enemy Mine - which was NOT my title - my editor suggested it. When I said 'Enemy Mine, you mean like the Dennis Quaid/Danny Glover SF movie?' She had no idea what I was talking about because that movie had been made right about the time she'd been born. Yeah. Ouch.)

I'll tell you what. I will lay bare my current titling dilemma. I have a manuscript in edits right now. The working title is The Incubus and the Asexual. *I* love this title. No one else seems to. I'm completely open to a retitle, but everything any of my crit partners and I have attempted to brainstorm has just not fit. So the book will go through developmental edits and we'll see whether it offers up anything that does as good a job of telling you the story, the genre and the tone as The Incubus and the Asexual. Unless, you know, you have suggestions. Bring 'em on. When you're as hopeless at titling books as I am, it's a relief when someone starts tossing titles like a life line.

Oops. Did I Say 'Never'?

My abject apologies for missing last week. Frankly, my brain melted. There were a few days in the hospital with my father. The vet used the phrase 'at this stage of his disease' in reference to chronically ill cat. By Thursday night, I'm not certain I even knew my own name much less what day of the week it was. (Dad is fine. The cat is holding his own. I now know my own name, thanks.)

I could tell you I swore not to mess up my blog posts again, but I clearly did. From a writing stand point?

Easy. Erotica. I swore I wouldn't write one. Not because I hate them. Quite the contrary - assuming they're well written and the sex is handled gracefully (Jeffe's books). My issue was that I *couldn't* write one. I was quite convinced I didn't know how. Couldn't see how I'd make it believable or integral to the story and character arc. I knew other people did. I didn't believe I could.

Jeffe disagreed. She spent a fair bit of time suggesting that I could, indeed, write erotica if I tried. Then she went and dared me.

And agreed to mentor. From a writing standpoint, you weirdos.

She did have to explain the psychology of certain BDSM elements before I could attempt to write them. And to be perfectly honest, I failed to write an erotica. ENEMY MINE is hot, but it isn't, strictly speaking, an erotica. The sexual journey is the point of an erotica. ENEMY MINE had another, external story arc going alongside the sexual arc. Most people figure that sex is fun enough, I just had to have someone trying to kill everyone. Keeping it real. That's me.

But. There is one thing you can be sure of. Me writing an inspirational? Not gonna happen. Wrong religion.

You're Writing What, Now?

First, allow me to confess that the holidays are eating my brain. It was as I was stepping into the shower so I could rush off to an appointment that some more aware portion of my mind shouted, "Hey, dummy! Blog post!" So here I am on a borrowed laptop, feeling like a moron with a hangover - that last part is from staying up until the wee hours of the morning reading through the last novel I wrote prior to being published. Wow, that book sucked. It is notable, however, as the first book wherein I'd managed to write a detailed sex scene.

No one but the critique group got to read that. It wasn't until Enemy Within and Enemy Games were published that I had to face the notion of anyone in my family reading the sex scenes I'd written. I'll be frank. I do my best not to think about it. My folks haven't said a word about the sex scenes. There have been a few comments about how often my heroines swear...but the sex? Not a word. Not a word about the bloody, horrific (to me) torture scene at the end of book one, either. At least not from my parents. I've had a few 'concerned about how you came up with all that' comments from extended family.

The two novels have been relatively easy because the sex scenes are pretty pedestrian as far as sex scenes go. Writing them is no big deal. Reading them aloud to the critique group? Damn, I hate that. I do it anyway. Or - I did. But this summer, I switched gears briefly. I wrote an erotica novella. Never had to read that one aloud, which is good. I do not know that I could have...That piece was critiqued via email. Now, Berkley is publishing it as an e-special in April of 2012. It'll be called Enemy Mine. It is set in the same universe as the novels.

I can be blase about that story because neither of my parents owns an e-reader. Yet. I'm not quite sure how I'll handle it if Mom or Dad decides to get one just so they can download and read the story. True. All my life, my folks have tried to be very open about sex. They wanted to make sure that their kids could talk to them about anything. They did a good job. "It's a natural part of life," they liked to say about love and sex. "It's just a body, everybody has one," they'd say about nudity. So I have some hope that if either of them reads the erotica, they'll just nod and go on. I mean, this IS fiction we're writing. I try not to get hung up on the notion that someone will think I actually do the things I write about - but I don't wander around shooting bad guys or flying spaceships. I'm comfortably certain my audience knows that. It naturally follows that I'm not necessarily into the BDSM elements that may have snuck into that erotica. Right? Right?