How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Melissa R. Collings's website.
Quite a bit, although it took us a while to get there.
My original title was Operating on the Past, which I loved because it worked on two levels. Cordelia is a spine surgeon who approaches problems as things to diagnose and fix, and she’s also operating on information from her past.
But my publisher wanted a title that put the romance more front and center. This led to a lot of back-and-forth.
Eventually, I proposed The Love Operation, which was close to one of the ideas my editor had suggested but still gave me the double meaning I wanted. Cord is essentially performing an operation on her love life, but an “operation” can also be a mission, and she definitely treats it like one.
I think it does a pretty good job of telling readers what they’re getting. Cord approaches her love life much the way she approaches surgery: identify the problem, gather the information, make a plan, fix it. Unfortunately for her, people are significantly less...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: The Love Operation.
Q&A with Melissa R. Collings.
--Marshal Zeringue
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