Visit Ellen Lindseth's website.How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?
Quite a bit really, as it reflects both the heroine’s physical journey through the course of the book as well as her emotional one. I wasn’t sure at first, though, to be quite honest. The working title, the one that guided me through the story’s creation, was Violet Exposed. That one would have accurately portrayed the dilemma the heroine, Violet, finds herself by the end of the story, when her many personas get in the way of finding true love and redemption.
While readers might not be burlesque dancers, or runaway daughters, or even find themselves in the midst of a spy plot, I think we all eventually face the choice of whether or not to reveal our true selves to someone else. And I think we all secretly wonder if we would have the courage to do so?
My publisher, however, thought my working title sounded to much like an erotica, and wanted me to come up with a more wistful title. Not being an author who is wedded to her titles, I tossed out some ideas, and we settled on The Long Path Home.
With the benefit of time, I think this new title does give the reader a better feel for both the external plot in which she travels overseas with the USO to a war-torn Italy, hoping to free herself of murder charges and find her way back to Chicago, and the internal one where she is forced to...[read on]
Q&A with Ellen Lindseth.
--Marshal Zeringue
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