How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Avery Bishop's website.
Many years ago I was in NYC for a business trip and I met up with a friend of mine who works in marketing at a major publishing house. We got drinks at a bar near the Ed Sullivan Theater, and we talked about books and movies and at one point we discussed the ongoing trend of suspense novels that had "girl" in the title and I made some crack about how I'd always wanted to write a book like that and my friend turned to me all serious and said, "You should." So that interaction of course stuck in the back of my mind, and one day the title Girl Gone Mad came to me, and I checked Amazon to see if it had been used before and was pretty shocked to learn that it hadn't.
And, well, the novel eventually evolved from there. After all, it wasn't just writing a book and sticking "girl" somewhere in the title; I wanted to make sure the book earned the title.
The thing I like most about the title Girl Gone Mad is how it can be viewed two different ways (at least, from what I've been able to tell so far; maybe others can read even more into it). The novel is about a group of mean girls who bully the new girl to her breaking point, and then fourteen years later — the girls all having gone their separate ways — the protagonist, Emily, learns that one of the girls from her old clique has reportedly killed herself, and then...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Girl Gone Mad.
Q&A with Avery Bishop.
--Marshal Zeringue
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