By the time you read this some Bambi’s mother will be dead.

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John Ramsey Miller

I am writing this on Tuesday because when it runs Saturday I’ll be deer hunting in dear old Mother Mississippi, and by 7 AM EST I very likely will have knocked down at least one deer. I hunt in November and December with the same boys, now older men like myself, whom I’ve been hunting with for forty-two years. My family eats venison all year long. I love it, my wife loves it, my sons love it, and their children love it. Yum, yum. I have never killed a deer I didn’t eat and I guess I’ve killed two or three every year I’ve hunted. Venison makes the best chili meat, the best crock-pot roast, the best tenderloin medallions, the best ground hamburger. Aside from the possibility that they eat grass tainted with pesticides or fertilizers, they are grass fed, acorn tempted and pure. Game won’t add weight to you either. Game and fresh vegetables is the best diet there is if you ask me. Nobody in my family is fat, nor are any particularly wormy-looking.

I sometimes hunt wild hogs in Tennessee and although wild pork smells dreadful when you cook it (we do that outside on the grill) it makes the best spaghetti sauce I’ve ever tasted. I also love boar chops, wild pork tenderloin, and Bar-B-Q. Store-bought meat has nothing on game. Game is 100% natural with no harmful fat, antibiotics, steroids, or other drugs in their systems. It keeps better than store bought. My wife cans it or freezes it. It is apparent that God put game on the earth to feed man correctly, and every time I take a game animal I thank Him for supplying the food. I almost forgot. Another good thing is, because I write about deer hunting in some of my novels, I get to call it research.

We just harvested a whole bunch of meat chickens we raised from chicks, and after 8 weeks their dressed weight ranged from 4.5 to 6.8 lbs. We fed them organic feed that comes from a local feed mill where they grind everything themselves from quality ingredients.

Our laying hens eat only organic feed, free-range for bugs and plants two hours a day, and our eggs are at least twice as tasty as store bought. I have fourteen, but want fifty or more so I’m building new quarters for them. Those I will not kill. When they stop laying, I have a friend with a large farm and he will let them pasture there as long as they live.

I do not think it’s the end of the world yet, and I’m pulling for President Elect Obama, but even if the country doesn’t collapse with half the country out on the street, food riots and infected zombies roaming the countryside, I’m serious about surviving as close to the bone as I can during the next few uncertain months and years and part of that is feeding my family as best I can. The farming community around here sort of roll their eyes at us, and probably think we’re being secretly filmed as part of some kind of reality show, but that’s okay. We are trying, and having one heck of a good time.

I know some people are opposed to killing animals, and frankly I don’t enjoy that part of hunting or harvesting, but there’s no other practical way to separate animals from their meat.

Hunting and raising animals gives me a chance to enjoy nature and think about my life and what I want to write, and sometimes even if I intend to keep doing it at all. Not that I don’t love writing, because I do and it has been good to me over the years. I just keep thinking that I should start some kind of a family business that involves my sons and grandkids. Maybe we can manufacture some sort of widget nobody can figure out how to live without owning. I do know that it should be some sort of business that won’t fail miserably, but I just don’t know what that could be yet. Feel free to give me some sure-fire ideas.

The Blurb Game

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By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

Manuscript written: check. New title determined: check. D&A payment processed: check. Let’s see . . . What’s next?

Ah, yes. Time to collect blurbs. Of all the rituals of the publishing business, this is the one I hate most. I contact friends of mine who also happen to write books and I ask them to read my manuscript and say nice things so that my book may better compete with theirs on bookstore shelves.

It’s amazing, when you think about it. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a Crest toothpaste ad with an endorsement from Colgate. But the community of writers is small enough and collegial enough that the blurb is rarely denied; and when it is, it’s usually because of encroaching deadlines and such. That collegiality is one of the things I love most about being an author. It’s like being a part of a giant, supremely talented support group.

As much as I get uncomfortable asking for blurbs, I love to give them. Mine is not a big enough name to get much of that, but when the request comes, I rarely say no, so long as the book is under contract with a legitimate publisher.

That’s not to say that every manuscript I’m sent gets a blurb. I do have standards, and I’ll never lie on the page. Sometimes, I don’t care for the story or the writing, in which case I will likely just “never get around” to the book. I’m certainly not going to give a negative blurb. What would be the point?

And that brings me to the nerve-wracking part of the blurbing process. A few readers at a time, the population of people who have read No Mercy will grow, which means if my assessment of my own writing is flawed, the delusion will soon end, and the news will be delivered by people I respect more than any others.

Because I love my book, though, I’d be shocked to find that others might not. So there’s no rational reason to expect anything but positive blurbs. Then, when they arrive, I’ll wonder whether they really liked the book, or if are they just doing a colleague a favor. This really can be an insecure business.

So, Killzone colleagues, what are your thoughts on blurbs? Do you seek them yourselves, or do you let your publisher take care of that for you? Have you ever given a positive blurb that you didn’t really mean? Any that you’ve regretted giving in the firstplace?

Missed Opportunities

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Not too long ago I was watching a primetime television show, as I am wont to do. And lo and behold, there was a commercial for the next Stephen King novel. It contained all of the bells and whistles of a movie trailer, and made those book trailers put together by authors on their own dime (mine, for instance) look woefully inadequate in comparison.

Which got me thinking: what an enormous wasted opportunity. Now I’m far from a publishing expert. Despite years working as a freelance writer, book publishing is still relatively new and shiny to me. And perhaps because of that I can see when they’re dropping the ball.

After all, not to begrudge Stephen King these promotional efforts, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say his sales are probably consistently healthy. When Stephen King has a new book coming out, his die-hard fans will know about it months in advance. And it’s not like that’s a small following. In addition to the commercials, there were probably full page ads in major book review sections and magazines, special mailings to bookstores, co-op placement…which is all well and good. But since a major complaint in the industry is that there are fewer and fewer of these blockbuster authors to rely on these days, why not seize the opportunity to create more?

For example, what if part of the commercial was devoted to a relatively unknown author whose work is similar to King’s? Showcase both titles, so that once the fans have torn through King’s latest offering, when they’re still hungry for more, another book leaps into their mind. Perhaps even set up some sort of promotional marketing, a reduced price for the purchase of both titles. You let King’s fans know about his latest release, and hopefully you introduce them to someone new. Why not take advantage of a built-in readership and expand on it?

Sounds pretty basic, right? Especially since when a J.K. Rowling decides to hang up her hat, or Dan Brown takes years to produce his next runaway bestseller, publishers start reeling as their sales plummet. Compare it to a sports team: put all the money in your stars and lose depth. If Peyton Manning gets knocked out of the lineup, you’re in deep trouble. But build a solid stable of players behind those stars, you’ve still got a chance of making the playoffs, or generating solid sales.
(On a side note, I actually have a tremendous amount of sympathy for Dan Brown. Go ahead and laugh, but can you imagine the pressure that poor man is under, having to write a follow-up to Da Vinci Code, knowing that the critics are waiting with knives that grow sharper by the year? I picture him locked away in a room somewhere a la Howard Hughes, naked and filthy and pacing. But maybe that’s just me).

Anyway, that’s my two cents. Build a team for the future, with a wide, solid base, not one that perches precariously on a few backs. But I’d love to hear what you think…

Two heads are better than one

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by Joe Moore

2heads One of the most frequently asked questions Lynn Sholes and I get is “How is it possible for two people to write fiction together?” The answer is, it ain’t easy. At least it wasn’t at first. Collaboration on non-fiction is somewhat easier to understand. In general, with non-fiction, the “facts” usually already exist and the collaborators’ job is to organize them into a readable document that has a beginning, middle and end. A good outline and knowledge of the subject matter along with professional writing skills may be all the authors need.

But with fiction, nothing exists. It’s all smoke and mirrors (a great title of a great thriller by my fellow KillZone blogger, John Ramsey Miller, by the way). Fiction is a product of an individual’s imagination. It might be inspired by actual facts or events, but only the individual has a specific vision of those events in their head. So how can two people have a similar enough vision to be able to write a novel?

I can’t speak for the handful of other writing teams out there, but Lynn and I have managed to complete 4 thrillers together because of a number of reasons. First, we love the same kind of books—the ones we read are like the ones we write. Second, we have an unquestioning respect for each other’s writing skills and a deep belief that whatever one of us writes, the other can improve. Third, we believe that there’s always a better way to write something. Fourth, we never let our egos get in the way of a good story. This comes from spending over 10 years in a weekly writers critique group. Fifth, we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and are willing to admit them. Sixth, we agree on the same message in each book. Seventh, we believe that we are on the same level of expertise. And last, we believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Those points cover the mental portion. Now, how do we handle the mechanics of the job. We talk, and talk, and talk. At least once a day we conference call, brainstorming and telling and retelling each other the story. Our two favorite words are: What if? Whether it’s global plot points or an individual scene or character motivation, we keep telling each other the story until that little imaginary movie in our minds becomes as in sync as possible. Then one of us will declare they have a “handle” on the scene or character or chapter, and create the first draft.

We write very slowly because each chapter must go back and forth many times for revision. Years ago, when we first started, everyone could tell who wrote what as we tried to write our first book. It took three years of hard work before we melted our voices together. Now, because the process goes through so many revisions, even I can’t always remember what I wrote and what she wrote. I rely on my co-writer so much that I’ve come to wonder how individuals can possibly write a book on their own.

There are a number of advantages and disadvantages to collaborating. A disadvantage is that you split any money you make. So you’ll always make half of what you could as a single author. And like any relationship, there is always a chance of a falling out. And something could happen where an ego can become inflated and affect the process.

One of the pluses is that we never experience writer’s block. One of us will always have an idea on how to get out of a jam or move the story forward. And unlike our family, friends, trusted beta readers, and everyone else, a co-writer has an intimate, vested interest in the success of the story that no one else could have.

Lynn and I are approaching the mid-point of our fifth thriller together. I’ve found that creating the first draft of a chapter is just as exciting as getting a new chapter from her and seeing where the story has gone. I guess the whole thing boils down to trust. Trust in each other and in the goals we both want to achieve with the story and with our careers.

So, now that you know how we write together, do you think you could ever collaborate on a novel? Or is writing fiction too private an experience. Do you believe two heads are better than one or would you rather not have anyone sticking their nose in your work?

PODCASTING: The New Serial Radio?

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Note: We’re reposting Lisa’s article today because a cyber gremlin kept it from appearing on some browsers on Sunday.

The Kill Zone is thrilled to have author Lisa Cotoggio join us today for a post on podcasting, with an eye both on the past and the future…read on to discover more.

by Lisa Cotoggio

Recently I moderated a panel for the Mystery Writers of America’s New York Chapter Dinner, the topic, “Solving the Promotional Mystery”.

Now, while I thought I had assembled an interesting group of publicists, marketers and authors, who I must say gave an excellent overview of all authors can do to extend the sales and shelf-life of their books; the audience seemed to focus all their questions on one single point: Podcasts. Which, by the way, can be attributed to Jonathan Santlofer’s keen insight on the subject.

As an author, it made me ponder the thought: Are we as authors missing out on a generation of readers whose maturity has impaired their eyesight? Though the answer to that question is quite obvious we now through the magical technology of Podcast have the ability to change it in our favor. And why shouldn’t we?

Looking back to the early days of my childhood my father used to tell me of the nights he spent with his family gathered around the radio listening intently to every word of The Shadow, The Lone Ranger; and of course, The War of the Worlds, made infamous by the actual belief of an alien attack.

And while I belong to the tail end of the “Babyboomer Generation”, the opening lines to those three shows still haunt the dark corners of my mind merely through memories of conversations with my father, born during the era known as the “Silent Generation”:

Who knows…what evil…lllllurks…in the heart of men? The Shadow knows!

A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty ‘Hi-yo, Silver, away!’ The Lone Ranger!

We interrupt this program to bring…

Riveting. Wouldn’t you agree? Of course you would, which brings us back to our topic: Podcasting. A series of audio or video digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet by syndicated download through Web feeds to portable media players and personal computers. The radio of the future.

Wouldn’t we all like to have that kind of gripping attention by a beloved audience of readers? Yes. And they on the same hand would love to have us read to them. The thought of being able to relive a fascinating part of one’s childhood is a cherished moment, especially late in one’s life.

Comments?

What would you do?

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By Clare Langley-Hawthorne
www.clarelangleyhawthorne.com


Having spent most of the weekend with a sick toddler with stomach flu (thankfully it afflicted only one of the twins – so far at least!) I was reminded once again of how motherhood has changed me. I absolutely hate any kind of stomach ailment but as I comforted my distressed son I found myself wishing that it was me, not him, who was going through it all. As a mum all I want is to take away my children’s pain. I feel a ferocious sense of protectiveness that has never extended to anyone else. I certainly empathize when my husband is sick, but do I wish it was me instead? Not on your life. When it comes to children though – there is no limit to what I would do.

I haven’t ever explored this in my writing but as a reader I have found a renewed appreciation for books such as Sophie’s Choice. When I first read this I was horrified and saddened but I had no real point of reference. The decision, unimaginably awful as it was, remained an abstraction. Now I’m not sure I could re-read the book, I would feel so such a visceral reaction to the decision that Shopie had to make. How could a mother decide which of her children would be saved?

The power of fiction for me is how character’s decisions – their guilt and torment – resonate with readers. I have found that since becoming a mum there are certain things that resonate now that never fully resonated before. It may sound obvious but I think this fact alone has made me realize how as a reader my experiences have changed the reading experience as well as the craft of writing. I don’t think now I could face writing about crimes against children – for the horror of such things now affects me in a way it never did before. I could, however, imagine a parent (and I’m not just limiting myself here to women) doing almost unimaginable things to protect their children. The question for me is not what would a parent resort to in such-and-such a circumstance but what would they not do.

If a visceral response to a character’s choice and actions is so dependent on a reader’s own life experiences, I wonder how, as a writer my work will change and grow. Will there ever come a time when I can dispassionately write about things that, as a mother, I now find impossible to even contemplate? I certainly would have no problem writing about a mother who would totally kick-ass to protect her children. Sarah Connor would have nothing on what I could imagine doing.

What books have resonated with you based on your own experiences? What issues provoke such a visceral response that you too feel like you would take up the Sarah Connor mantle?

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No Guarantees or
The Sophomore Principle
By John Ramsey Miller

When I speak to book clubs, writing students in high schools and colleges, I often tell them the story of my pre-career and payment of dues, but not my fall from grace and resurrection.

I wrote four books in my low-rent apartment bedroom on a computer set on a door supported by sawhorses. I spent five years writing my fiction full time while my wife worked at a bank. Our family car was a 1981 Camaro with 200,000 miles on it. To accommodate our youngest of three I made a jump seat of foam to go over the center hump in the back and I installed a seat belt for him since the car was designed for four people, not five. Most people who knew us during those years thought I was a parasitic deadbeat until I sold my first novel. My wife believed in me and she insisted that I give writing everything I had for a few years, and that I would know when it was time to move on. She never doubted that I would succeed, and that trust in my ability was my fuel and my inspiration.

After the first attempt at a novel, I acquired an agent who schlepped my first four around to the major and minor houses. I accumulated over 100 rejection slips before I sold The Last Family to Beverly Lewis at Bantam. She had my first three, rejected them all, but she saw something in them she liked, and she called and told me that if I would rewrite the draft taking into consideration her concerns, that she would like to see it again. I did and she made an offer on THE LAST FAMILY.

THE LAST FAMILY was something of a hit. It sold 40,000 copies in Hardcover, did amazingly well in paper back, was a Literary Guild Main Selection, was translated into a dozen languages, was optioned for a film, and gathered a stack of glowing reviews. The publisher offered a money-back-if-not-satisfied guarantee on the HC and they ran full-page ads in USA Today. I went on a 13-city tour at the request of Books A Million. I was wined and dined by the publisher and was offered a three book, seven-figure contract. After years of working hard, I thought I’d been escorted to the front of the line, and I was going to be right up there with my literary heroes.

I was no longer a deadbeat. Our friends said they’d always known I was a talent and that I’d eventually sell a book. I was an honest-to-God-fiction author with a big contract. I bought a four-bedroom house, wrote checks for a minivan and a Honda Accord, and the Millers moved to a wonderful and small southern town with good schools for my sons and nice neighbors. I had a large comfortable office in the new house, but I was so swept up in being a successful author, that I failed to concentrate on my writing. I had a deadline for my second book, and I made the date easily with a nice thick manuscript entitled THE DOWN DOGS. The trouble was, my editor didn’t think it was up to snuff (or more likely up to my pay grade), and to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t a worthy follow-up. I tried and tried to get it right. It was a book with decent enough characters, but structurally it had weak bones and I couldn’t make it work because I couldn’t see that I just wasn’t thinking hard enough and writing before I had thought things through. It was so frustrating that my editor suggested we scrap it and start from scratch with a new book. The publisher flew me to New York so I could pitch a new book idea, which was not bad at all, and so I went back to work. My contract was in jeopardy and I knew it. Now I was working in panic mode, and fear is a killer of creativity. I sent in a first draft and the publisher decided to pull the plug and I was released from my contract. Luckily I had earned out the advance, so there was no financial ugliness. Nobody was happy about it, and my editor and I kept in touch and she never stopped pulling for me, and I’ll never forget her continuing encouragement and the fact that she was always willing to talk to me about what I was working on.

After a few years spent actually writing every day and thinking about my work and being supported emotionally by friends like John Gilstrap, I got a new agent and went back in search of a publisher. As fate would have it, a highly respected editor at my old house read INSIDE OUT and wanted to buy it. Due to the publisher’s less-than-positive experience with me, she fought an uphill battle, but after a rewrite and an outline for a follow up novel, I signed another three-book contract. After those books were completed, I signed another. I have just delivered the last book under that last contract and I’m not sure I’ll be offered another one. My publisher loves the books, they even like me, but it’s the bean count that matters in the end. If I write this next book without a commitment from a publisher, so it goes. I’ll survive, and write without knowing if it will sell.

Being under contract actually only means the publisher has first refusal on the books in that contract, so I never know from one book to the next if I’ll be able to interest the publisher in the book I’ve just written. It’s been psychologically preferable to selling one book at a time, and usually the publisher does publish the books under the contract. It also allows an author to work with the same people book after book. Some think a publisher’s level of interest lags with familiarity––especially if the author doesn’t break out as soon as they would like. So I guess the question is whether changing publishers and sales teams a good thing or a bad thing?

A Title!

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By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

Sorry to hog the day with a second post, but I wanted you to know that the novel formerly known as Grave Secrets will be published in June, 2009 with the title . . .

NO MERCY

(And the title actually even works for the story line!)

Thanks, everyone for your many suggestions and good thoughts.

Cynicism

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By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

I’m not making this up:

About seven or eight years ago, a former business colleague of mine called to tell me that his twenty-something son wanted to write a novel, and to ask if I would be willing to show him the ropes. I said yes, of course, and we all gathered at a Northern Virginia restaurant for dinner.

His son—we’ll call him Mark because I can’t remember his name—sat quietly through most of the meal while his father, Lloyd, explained this lavish plan he had put together to make his son a fortune by writing a hit book. Writing is a business, Lloyd explained, and since Mark wants to write full time, Lloyd pulled some strings to assemble a board of directors to fund the start-up costs (folding money for Mark) and to provide quality control for the product (the book). Mark would submit each new chapter to the board for approval, and then together they would determine the plot points that would generate the most revenue, based on market analyses of what sold well. With proper business oversight, they would have a product that they could all be proud of.

As this presentation ground on, complete with market charts, I watch Mark sink further and further into his chair. When Lloyd was done, he got to the reason I was there: to give some tips on what plot points sell the best. I was also offered a seat on the board, but I refused. Instead, I told him that if torturing his son was really the point of this exercise, then pulling out his toenails with pliers would be more merciful. Toenails grow back with time; that kind of assault to self-esteem lasts forever.

The meeting ended shortly after that. We didn’t even have dessert.

I think about that meeting often, especially when I talk to my writing colleagues who are losing their publishing contracts and editors who are losing their jobs because the suits at the top of the corporate chart decided that we need more of X, and that Y just doesn’t sell the way it used to.

I believe that if the publishing industry as we know it dies (and I don’t think it will, even though I think painful times lie ahead), it will be at its own hand; under the weight of the business model it has chosen. Gone are the days when art producing businesses were run mainly by lovers of the art form. Now those art businesses are run as profit centers of behemoth companies. It’s not enough to turn a profit at the end of the year; you have to hit target goals.

Hey, I’m a free market guy, a great believer in capitalism, so at face value, the model makes sense. After all, a publicly-owned company has responsibilities to its stockholders. I’m all over that. If cinnamon toothpaste doesn’t sell, it makes no sense to keep the cinnamon toothpaste division in business. You gotta go for mint toothpaste. People like mint toothpaste. You build your market share by differentiating your product in other ways, but you start by acknowledging that everybody’s doing mint.

Thing is, art is not toothpaste, and it defies market analysis. Sure, we can declare Painter X to be the best gol-durned artist on the planet and talk people into buying his mass-produced canvases at ridiculous prices, and in the process we can have success. With enough success, we can push the independent art gallery on the corner out of business and flood the market not just with Painter X’s work, but with knock-offs of his work.

But what about people who want something else—people who dare to like what others don’t? They might try a Painter X just so they can talk about it with their friends, but they’re not going to buy another one. In fact, maybe they’re going to move away from galleries altogether and just paint murals on their walls. A few years down the line, people will wonder why the art market is shrinking.

The big publishers today anoint “lead titles” on which all the “co-op” money is spent to “package” the book in a way that will give it the best “placement” in the store. The idea is to hit a home run every time. If the ball falls inside the park instead of blasting over the wall, then it will of course be the author’s fault, and we all know how many more of those are out there to take his place.

To hedge the bet, the B-school graduates at the top look at what people have bought in the past, and they push writers to create more stuff just like that. That’s what they buy, and that’s what they push. There’s very little future for a writer these days who merely earns out his advance. It’s The List or nothing, baby.

And then we wonder why the public prefers the fresh, unlimited (even occasionally awful) content on the Internet over plunking down $25 for a rehashed version of a book they’ve read a dozen times already.
I’ve vastly over-simplified here, and I of course exempt myself and my Killzone colleagues from any of the above. What do you think?

Title Trauma, Part Trois

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Recently, both Joe and John have been kind enough to share their title traumas. Funny how these things seem to go around, it’s like lice in a schoolyard. I thought I’d seize the opportunity to discuss what’s been happening in my neck of the woods.

More of the same, sadly. A few weeks ago my new editor (which bears discussion in a later post, the revolving door aspect to the editor/author relationship these days) announced that she no longer liked the title for my next book. Neither did anyone else at the publishing house, apparently. The words “it induced grimaces at the editorial meeting” were mentioned. She gently suggested that they would, in fact, much prefer a new title. Ideally in a week or less.

Now, I’m already up against a killer deadline with this book. I need a finished draft by January 1st, which means I’ll ideally finish my extremely rough, nightmarish, barely-legible draft by December 1st, then spend the next four weeks frantically trying to fill in all the bracketed spaces marked “physics stuff.” (Sadly, I am not kidding about this. Since nuclear physics has never been my strong suit, and the contract negotiations dragged on interminably, I was unable to devote much time to research prior to starting the book. So “physics stuff” it is, until I figure out exactly what I need to ask my wonderful, kind, and knowledgeable friend Camille Minichino during the editing process.) At some point in there, I’m presumably expected to celebrate the holidays, too, with everything that entails.

Facing a grueling schedule like that, when I’m trying to crank out 10 pages a day, minimum, the last thing I wanted to think about is coming up with a new title. And as John said, you become attached to titles, develop a certain affinity for them. I’d already changed the working title once, from “K & R” (which stands for Kidnap & Ransom) to “Tiger Game,” something my agent and I settled on after long consideration. And I thought, all things considered, it was a solid title for a thriller. Paired with good cover art, possibly a great one.

But no: the publishing house had decided that “Tiger Game” simply would not do. New title, please. Oh, and by the way, we’d really like it to be something powerful, with a lot of punch. But not something that’s been done to death. So please steer clear of “War and Peace” and it’s ilk.

Yikes. Part of the problem was that my previous two book titles derived largely from their settings. Both took place in small, relatively-contained locales. I knew the titles before writing a word of either story, and no one ever complained. In fact, they loved “Boneyard” so much that the main comment has been, “Can’t you come up with something more like “Boneyard?”

The new book is a bit of a departure for me, however, in that it jumps around the country, from San Francisco to New York to San Antonio, and the story involves everything from skinheads to border crossings to dirty bombs. Not exactly something that lends itself to pithiness.

So I did what I could. I canvassed my friends. Who are lovely people, but as it turns out, not so good in the title department. Offerings included “Watch Your Back!” and “The Obama Project,” which, as my book has nothing whatsoever to do with the President-elect, I chalked up to pre-election day exuberance. “Bungee Jumpin” was also mentioned, although there are neither bungees nor jumping anywhere in the storyline.

Thrown back on my own resources, I rounded up the usual suspects. I scoured a 181 page book of gang slang terminology, which produced such gems as “Diamond Shine” and “Thunder and Rain.” I searched the web for nuclear terms, eliciting “Top Off” and “Kill Radius.” I pored over quotes from militia members and other extremists, and (oddly enough) while following this vein skimmed through speeches of our forefathers. Books of poems were opened, then shut in frustration. I sent email after email to my editor with potential titles, over 100 in all. “Dirty Chaos,” sounded too negative. “Invictus” was too esoteric. “The Patriot Project” generated a ripple of excitement, until it was shot down by higher-ups.

Things started to take a grim turn indeed. There was talk of postponing the book launch, which until then had been scheduled for November ’09. Which was not necessarily the worst thing in the world: when it comes to a book purchase most people are swayed by the title and the accompanying cover. So if it came down to going to market with a title we were lukewarm about, or waiting for inspiration to strike, I was all for waiting, The question was, if that happened, when would I get on the calendar? A crime fiction author wants their books to come out yearly, ideally around the same time every year. We were already going to miss that window with a November release date, but if forced to wait until 2010…

It was stressful, to say the least. I spent every spare moment poring through books on the border patrol. I started a contest through my newsletter, offering a $50 Amazon gift certificate to anyone who supplied the perfect title. (This generated a lot of responses, but although some came close to the mark, none quite hit it).

It’s not an easy thing, to find a title that resonates with me as an author. After all, I was the one whose name was going to be on the book. The one who would be referring to that title ad infinitum, mentioning it nightly on a tour. Years into the future (with any luck,) this title might even be included in my obituary (I’ll admit, I have a tendency toward morbidity. Those of you who have read my work are probably not surprised to hear that). The search became somewhat all-consuming. I’d wander through my house, chanting titles over and over to myself until the words lost all meaning. I typed them out, all caps, in enormous font sizes to get a better sense of how they’d look on a cover. I agonized.

And then I woke up one morning, after spending hours the night before clicking through an online “random word generator,” contemplating “Desert Day,” “Rock Sundae,” and (I kid you not) “Saint Cobbler.” “Bungee Jumping” was starting to sound pretty darn good in comparison. “Bungee Jumping” could be a winner.

Thinking that, I opened my trusty “Alternate titles” file, which was now pages long, and there at the top were the words “THE GATEKEEPER.”

I have no idea where that title came from, honestly I don’t. I initially thought it must have originated via the contest, and went back through all the emails I’d received in the week prior: nothing. Checked my internet history: nothing. It’s a mystery.

But I loved it. It struck a chord. Turns out there was a Clinton-era border patrol initiative called “Operation Gatekeeper,” which jibed perfectly with my storyline. Sent it to my agent to double-check that I hadn’t lost my grip on these things: he loved it. And my editor practically swooned.

Phew.

So, barring any unforeseen circumstances (and as every author knows, unforeseen circumstances are the nature of the publishing beast), THE GATEKEEPER will be released as planned next November.

Now I just have to finish the darn thing.

So I’m curious: what do you all think? Is it a winner? Or should I have gone with “Bungee Jumping” instead?

Please say you love it.