How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Molly MacRae's website.
My titles are teasers. It’s just barely possible someone will see the title Heather and Homicide and mistake the book for a nonfiction case study of botanical criminal activity. More likely they’ll recognize it as something lighter, and maybe even for what it is, a cozy mystery. It’s the fourth book in the Highland Bookshop Mystery series, with the title following the pattern of the other books – two alliterative words separated by the word “and.” The first word is something recognizably Scottish, the third suggests something nefarious. The beauty of only three words is wiggle room. Heather could have been the plant that turns whole hillsides purple. Instead, Heather is a true-crime writer who says she’s arrived in seaside Inversgail, Scotland, to research recent murders for her new book. But if that’s true, why does she seem more interested in a shadowy lawyer who had nothing to do with that crime? And why is she seemingly being stalked by death? I love coming up with titles, and for this book, and this series, titles come first. They’re teasers for me as much as for readers. They’re clues to the puzzle of where is this story going to...[read on]
My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism.
The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism.
The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels.
My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels.
The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual.
The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide.
Q&A with Molly MacRae.
--Marshal Zeringue
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