How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Corinne Demas's website.
My working title for my novel was The Lady with the Dog, the title of a favorite short story by Anton Chekhov, which is quoted in my epilogue. The novel does more, though, than focus on one female dog-owner, so my editor, my agent, and I explored dozens of other titles. I kept mining the text of the manuscript, looking for a phrase that would speak to the core of the novel, and I ended up discovering it in the last line of the book.
I hope The Road Towards Home will suggest to readers not just a physical road, but a psychological journey as well. There are a number of “homes” in the novel: the houses each of the characters once owned, the retirement community where they find themselves, and the rough Cape Cod cottage where most of the story takes place. Home, of course is not just a physical place, but a state of mind.
I chose “towards” rather than “toward” for the title because...[read on]
Q&A with Corinne Demas.
--Marshal Zeringue
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