Q&A with Colin Mills

From my Q&A with Colin Mills, author of Bitter Passage: A Novel:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I hope it doesn’t pull any punches. It’s true what they say: coming up with a title was the hardest part of writing the book. I won’t share the original title if you don’t mind, but my publisher—quite correctly, I think—suggested it include the word ‘Passage’, alluding to the Northwest Passage. I thought long and hard about how to succinctly describe the Royal Navy’s nineteenth-century search for the Passage, and ‘Bitter’ was the most appropriate adjective. The British wanted to find the Passage, thought they needed to find it, but the search was arduous and dangerous. Men died trying to find it, even before Franklin’s expedition. For all that, the search for the Passage became almost like a kind of unpleasant medicine the Royal Navy felt it needed to consume. Why? Bitter Passage tries to explore some of the answers.

What's in a name?

The two main characters, Robinson and Adams, are loosely based on...[read on]

Visit Colin Mills's website.

My Book, The Movie: Bitter Passage.

The Page 69 Test: Bitter Passage.

Q&A with Colin Mills.

--Marshal Zeringue