How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Ellie Brannigan's website.
For Death at an Irish Wedding, I was asked to come up with several titles. In fact, this was the third title selected, and I wrote the book under a completely different title and saved my word doc that way. When I went to look for my story later, I couldn’t find the manuscript. Any author might imagine my immediate reaction of holy smokes, my work has all disappeared: belly tightening, sweaty palms, slightly sick…but then I went to my saved emails and found the email stream with my editor. Crisis averted, but it was an awful ten minutes of panic.
This is the Irish Castle series, and at the end of the first book there was the question of ghosts in the castle. I liked Haunting in an Irish Castle, but my publisher wasn’t sold. Once the story progressed, I realized it was more about the super-secret Hollywood wedding of Rayne’s rich American client and her actor boyfriend than ghosts. We came up with alternates and Death at an Irish Wedding stuck. It was a lot of fun to bring in Irish wedding traditions to the getaway weekend to fit the title.
Through each story, the struggle for Rayne and Ciara to save Grathton Village is paramount and it is unfortunate that people keep kicking the bucket—which is why...[read on]
Q&A with Ellie Brannigan.
--Marshal Zeringue
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