How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Annelise Ryan's website.
The title of my most recent book, A Death in Door County, certainly gives the reader the setting if they know Door County, Wisconsin at all. If they don’t, they may well have heard of it and know that it’s a popular, idyllic vacation spot, so a death there takes on extra interest. If they haven’t a clue about Door County, I provide plenty of history and description.
My first title for the work (the publisher changed it) was A Monster At Death’s Door, and I did like this title a lot because it conveyed more of what the book was about: the possibility of a homicidal Loch Ness-type monster lurking in the waters of Lake Michigan, and the treacherous waterway that divides Green Bay and Lake Michigan at the tip of the Door county peninsula, which is known as Death’s Door. It earned that moniker because of all the shipwrecks there—literally hundreds of them—thanks to the underlying geography and unpredictable, deadly storms that...[read on]
Q&A with Annelise Ryan.
--Marshal Zeringue
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