How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Follow Stig Abell on Instagram and Threads.
I think The Burial Place is a fairly, and straightforwardly, descriptive title. Location is a central character in my story, and indeed the whole series in which Jake Jackson investigates murders in the depths of the British countryside. I've found that my working titles never make it to the book itself - I am too whimsical, publishers are (rightly) commercially-minded. Titles are almost the last thing that get agreed in my experience.
The Burial Place is set on an archaeological dig, and I called it "The Dig" as my working title. I then entered into a protracted discussion into whether the published title should have "Death" in it (the first two books of the series were respectively called "Death Under a Little Sky" and "Death in a Lonely Place"). I'm fond of series with threaded titles - I think of the colours in John D. Macdonald's wonderful tales about Travis McGee, or Kathy Reichs and her "Bones" - but I do think they can be a bit limiting. I plumped for The Unquiet Land for this one, with the whiff of fugitive poeticism about it. The publishers wanted it more prosaic, and that's...[read on]
Q&A with Stig Abell.
--Marshal Zeringue
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