By John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com/

My next book—the second installment of the Jonathan Grave thriller series, to be published next July—finally has a title: Hostage Zero. It’s got heft, I think. It sounds intriguing. And it provides lots of opportunities for the art director to design a terrific cover. At the end of the day, that’s what a title is all about, right?

Good title + great artwork = interested consumer.

For me, a title and a cover have done their job when they compel a potential customer to pick up the book and crack the spine. After that, the prose of the book takes over as sales agent. A book is a consumer product, after all, and packaging matters.

I just wish that the journey to nail down a title was less arduous. I’m coming to grips with the fact that I’m just not very good with titles. They rarely stick. Here’s my publishing history to date (my original titles are in parentheses):

Nathan’s Run (Nathan!)
At All Costs (Most Wanted)
Even Steven (Even Steven)
Scott Free (Scott Free)
Six Minutes to Freedom (Six Minutes to Freedom)
No Mercy (Grave Secrets)

I know it looks like a three-three split, but no one in the entire publishing pantheon liked Six Minutes to Freedom as a title, but it stuck because no one could think of anything else.

A week or so ago, I floated a title trial balloon via Twitter and Facebook to see what people thought of Hard Target as a title for the new book. The response was swift and overwhelmingly negative. Who knew that a bad Jean-Claude Van Damme movie could sully a two-word phrase forever? And who knew how many people are titillated by the word “hard.” I mean really, people. . .

Over the weekend, I got what I thought was a great inspiration for a title, and I floated it to my colleagues here on The Killzone: The Cost of Betrayal. The response was supportive (although not particularly enthusiastic), but it was received warmly enough for me to proffer it to my publisher. The return email read, “er . . . keep thinking.” It was too specific, I was told. We need to think more “atmospheric.”

I have no idea what an atmospheric title is, but on Monday, I floated the possibility of either Mortal Wounds, Mortally Wounded or Precious Cargo. Yeah, I know they all suck, but I wanted a damn title. I’m tired of calling a year-long project Grave 2.

Then I got this email from my editor: “Here’s a title I like a lot: Exit Strategy. This won a ‘great’ from [our sales manager].” I liked it. Done deal, right? I mean, if the author, the editor and the sales manager like a title, what could go wrong?

The publisher hated it. Yep, even used the H-word. I don’t know why she reacted so negatively, but she’s really good at what she does, so I concede to her tastes.

Finally, someone came up with Hostage Zero. It feels right and it tastes right. I have a title!

So what about you folks? How much do you stew over your titles? Do your working titles typically last through to publication, or do they change? As avid readers, do titles matter beyond that first impulse to look at a book? Are titles more than just marketing devices?

John Ramsey Miller

One of the perks of being a published author is that authors and publishers will ask you for blurbs. Some are gems and writing a blurb is a pleasure, and you get to see and understand how difficult it is to write a great blurb that will do the book justice. Flip the coin.

Sometimes you eat the bear…

This week I received a book from an editor at Delacorte asking for my opinion on a book she edited that is being published in January 2010. I read the manuscript and the first 8o pages literally rocked my world. I’m serious. I found myself holding my breath as I read. This is a first novel by an unknown author and I read the book in five hours and I was blown away. Blown away. Blown away. The terms: an exciting new voice, and a talented storyteller, are tossed around every time a first novel is introduced, and often they are just marketing fluff from the book of standard sales phrases that was written in about 1820. I’ll just say one thing with conviction. This woman can flat write a coon up a tree backwards. The author’s name is Carla Buckley, and THE THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE should be a huge success. Hopefully this will be the first of many. It’s manuscripts like this that keep me excited about the requests and ready to read another manuscript.

Then …. sometimes the bear eats you.
I have also been asked to blurb a book and after reading it, wished I hadn’t said I would. Occasionally the author is a friend, or connected to a friend, the best I can do is write something that isn’t dishonest. Years ago, I hated to disappoint people. Now I say I only blurb books scheduled for publication and submitted to me by the publisher. Years ago I didn’t want any aspiring author to think that I thought I was too good to help them out. Yesterday I found a list of blurbs I wrote ten years ago and sent to an author who was a friend of a friend and owed this weekend author his life or something. I’ll withhold the name of the publisher (an internet on-demand publisher) and the author, who is no longer among the living.

Here are a handful:
“Few authors would have even attempted to incorporate so many seemingly unrelated characters and plots into one novel.”

“ ___________ is an author who is truly in a class of his own.”

“Never before has an author utilized so many genres in one novel.”

“You will laugh and you will cry and you will not believe just one person wrote this book.”

“I was so entertained by _______________ that I found myself reading long sections of the book over the phone to my friends until my voice played out.”

“A rich tapestry of plots, genres and styles that will have the reader laughing one minute and crying the next.”

“If you live to be 100, you’ll never again read anything like ___________________.”

The author actually used two of the blurbs on the cover. I didn’t lie in any of the blurbs, and everybody was happy.

The book whose name cannot be said, was literature’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. It had a time-traveling villain who wore white robes so he could appear in any time period without drawing stares, a vampire dog, a thirty page sea battle that it turned out was a tank commander’s dream, a virus that could destroy the earth’s flora and fauna, a haunted house where a child lived with an old pirate, a gay ghost who followed the tank commander around, a lesbian detective who looked like Rip Torn, an alcoholic cigar-smoking chimpanzee, and more. Characters appeared suddenly, delivered a volume of information, and just vanished forever. The author wrote one chapter in first person and narrated the next. One chapter was simply dialog between a deer and an alligator as they discussed the viral threat to their habitat from the mad scientist villain. A gay ghost (I kid you not) lamented the fact that being protoplasm made him able to create suction. There was a battle between an evil army of swordsmen and a villain turned good by love, at the end that broke up an opera. The lesbian detective fired her pistol at the bad villain and accidentally killed the fat lady before she could sing. And the audience sat watching until it was over, whereupon they applauded. What New Yorker who attends operas would actually know a battle in the aisles was not part of the opera they had paid to see? And the gay ghost who had simply vanished halfway through the book returned to sit in the audience for the action. Out of about nine plots, none was more important than any other and none of the loose ends were tied up so (as the author told me) there could be a sequel. The author also told me that he never planned anything he wrote ahead, and always had a drink or two then simply wrote the characters that appeared and “pen to paper” he went traipsing wherever the characters led him. I suspect he was completely unaware that they’d taken LSD and led him on a wild goose chase through a burning asylum.

Some have it and some don’t.

So, authors, got any good blurb stories?

By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

Have you ever noticed how much of our lives are spent preparing for failure? We set our “sights high, but our expectations low.” We “say a little prayer,” while we “plan for the best but expect the worst.” Then, when good news does arrive (and let’s be honest: good outweighs bad in the end for most people), we hesitate to celebrate as we “wait for the other shoe to drop.”

Most people, it seems to me, are perfectly happy to be around others who talk themselves down, yet get uncomfortable around acquaintances who say positive things about themselves. We are awash in pejoratives for people who are confident in their own abilities—narcissistic, egotistical, too big for his britches, precocious, swelled head—but where are the pejoratives for people who keep their talents hidden?

I can’t think of a single one. Instead, we call those folks humble, and we pretend to hold humility in high esteem.

Such hypocrisy. Talent denied is a key ingredient for mediocrity—a lifelong role in the chorus while the soloists command the spotlight. Mediocrity is beige. It’s safe, it’s boring and it’s comfortable, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s no way to live life. I guess it’s fine for those who are genetically predisposed to the ho-hum; but if you want to squeeze all of the drama out of life, and certainly if you want to make a living writing books, or acting, or practicing any other art form, then you’d best start living loud colors.

Start by owning up to your talent. I think you owe God that much for giving it to you.

Somebody asked me the other day when I first realized that I could write well. Not too long ago, I would have hemmed and shuffled and said something self-deprecating about how a lot of people would tell you that I still don’t write well. I’d have played it for a laugh and then said something about having been lucky in my life.

In short, I would have dodged the question. But that was before my new commitment to honesty and living loud colors.

For this questioner, I took the truth for a test-drive. I told her that I’ve known I was a good writer for as long as I can remember. I knew it, in fact, long before I had any tangible proof that I was right. I knew it because I wanted so badly to be good. In elementary school, I was the one who wrote stories for fun, and then re-wrote them four and five times because I wanted them to be better.

I’ve known for as long as I can remember that I was going to be a published novelist. Truly, there was never a doubt. I had no idea how long it would take, but that didn’t matter because I was willing to do whatever was necessary to learn the craft. I knew it would happen because I wanted it so badly, and because I was well enough read to know that my stuff was good. I knew that my storytelling was better than a lot of what I bought at the bookstore. If, in fact, I never did publish a novel, it would have been because I’d died too early.

I’ve rewritten that last paragraph six times now trying to make it sound not-arrogant. If I failed, forgive me, because I don’t feel arrogant. I feel blessed. And it ain’t braggin’ if it’s true.

If you feel blessed by talent, you should say it out loud when people ask. Try it now. Come on, we can do it together: “I’m proud of the gift I’ve been given. I’m proud of the endless, continuing hard work I put into it. I will be successful.”

If you can’t say it, how can it ever happen? I’m not talking self-delusion here, or new-age gobbledygook about some Secret where visions make your dreams come true. I’m talking simple honesty.

When I’m elected king, children will be taught to drench themselves in the exotic colors of life and to pursue their dreams with focus and vigor. Beige will be outlawed for all but those who are born to be boring. Adults will be as honest about their successes as they are about their failures, and they will be utterly shocked every time they don’t win.

What we envision for ourselves defines who we can become.