How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Learn more about the book and author at Lisa Black's website.
The first book in the series was called That Darkness, from a quote I ran across in the Bible that seemed to describe Jack Renner perfectly: “But if the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness.” (Matthew 6:23) I like my titles to have something in common—though my publishers have never been crazy about this habit—so all the titles in the Gardiner-Renner series are from the Bible. For this one I had picked Before Destruction, from “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18) I thought ‘pride’ spoke to Jack, his pride allowing him to decide who lives and who dies, and also to how the villain’s pride plays into what they do—and ‘destruction’ definitely describes a scene at the end. But the publisher thought it sounded too much like a military thriller, so they suggested Every Kind of Wicked, from: “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.” (Romans 1:29) Which also describes my villains to...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: That Darkness.
My Book, The Movie: Unpunished.
The Page 69 Test: Unpunished.
My Book, The Movie: Perish.
The Page 69 Test: Perish.
The Page 69 Test: Suffer the Children.
Writers Read: Lisa Black (July 2020).
The Page 69 Test: Every Kind of Wicked.
Q&A with Lisa Black.
--Marshal Zeringue
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