How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit J.H. Markert's website.
The title, The Nightmare Man, carries a heavy workload, as it screams what the book is about—which is nightmares! And even more specifically, the book has a villain known as the Nightmare Man. Even Ben Bookman (his last name has a backstory to it too), as a popular best-selling horror novelist, has earned the nickname The Nightmare Man, due to the creepy nature of his novels. This novel is my seventh published novel, but the first under my pen name J.H. Markert, and so far, only one of my titles has kept the original title. But while The Nightmare Man was not my original title, it is very close. My original title was Mr. Dreams and The Nightmare Man, because, as you might guess, there’s also a Mr. Dreams in the story. After discussing with my agent, we decided to title the novel The Hollow when we started pitching it. There’s a creepy mansion in the story (the building is a character in itself) called Blackwood, and the area around it is referred to as Blackwood Hollow. It is also learned in the story that inside the brains of children there is a place called the hollow, where nightmares form. Ultimately, the publisher decided to change it to The Nightmare Man, which I not only liked but...[read on]
Q&A with J. H. Markert.
--Marshal Zeringue
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