How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Alafair Burke's website.
I often have a working title without being committed to it. It would be crummy treatment of a human, but I’ve come to accept that you don’t owe a title any loyalty. Sometimes a title really sticks. I have a book called The Better Sister, for example. From early concept to publication, the title never shifted. But I usually mull a title over for months.
The working title of this new book was The Girl She Was for a very long time. In fact, it’s being published in the UK under that title. Readers might have girl-title fatigue, but in this instance, the word actually fits. Hope Miller cannot remember who she was or where she came from prior to her sudden appearance fifteen years earlier in a small town in New Jersey in an overturned SUV. The doctors assumed she’d eventually regain her memory, but she never did and had to make a new life for herself under an assumed name. When she vanishes fifteen years later, the search for Hope also means a search for the truth about who she used to be and what brought her to that town on her own. Find Me, in contrast, is filled with action and uncertainty. It also has a nice double meaning. Hope’s best friend, Lindsay Miller, is searching for Hope, but that also means finding the truth about what led to Hope’s sudden appearance fifteen years ago in a small town, with no memory of...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Dead Connection.
The Page 69 Test: Angel’s Tip.
The Page 69 Test: 212.
The Page 69 Test: All Day and a Night.
The Page 69 Test: The Ex.
The Page 69 Test: The Wife.
The Page 69 Test: The Better Sister.
Q&A with Alafair Burke.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
