MoonScape

April 20th, 2011

• April 20th, 2011, 04:01 am

From Twitter 04-19-2011

• 08:25:16: RT @robinmckinley: Yes, I'm worrying. I feel the webby pull & I'm *old* http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/17/news-websites- ...
  
• 08:25:29: RT @robinmckinley: Hope hope hope? http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/apr/17/brain-implant-paralysis-movement
  
• 08:26:28: RT @JSCarroll: "You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
  James D. Miles
  
• 08:30:47: Yesterday got hot (over 90F I quit checking temp) and today's supposed to be hotter. And dryer. And windy. No joy in fire-watching.
  
• 08:31:44: Book III's getting a new title. Don't know yet what, but Editorial Discussion is ongoing. Can I re-use its original for Book IV? Doubt.
  
• 08:32:27: Aftermath of great visit w/Houseguest is...I don' wanna work...
  
• 18:57:38: RT @Quotes4Writers: "Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea." Richard Ford (Born 1944) Author http://bi ...
  
• 22:27:33: TX legislature redistricting Texas is like the class bully allowed to divvy up the snacks for a class party.
  

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• April 20th, 2011, 07:43 am

Title Change

The third book in the Paladin's Legacy group had a temporary (it turned out) title of Crisis of Vision.   However, in a flurry of transcontinental and trans-Atlantic emails Monday and Tuesday, it acquired a new (and, I hope, permanent) title: Echoes of Betrayal.  

It's the same story, though with a new title I can feel some paragraphs wanting to align themselves with the new title instead of the old--but the book's in production now.  Titles decided on early affect the story while it's being written. Titles decided on late have much less (often no) effect on the story.

Titles are a strange form of writing.    The title needs to convey something about the book--and if in a group of books with a single story arc, it needs to connect to the other books and their titles.  It also needs to intrigue the right readership and resonate with the various themes and plots and subplots, so readers don't put it down thinking "How does that title relate to that text???"  Titles can suggest genre and even subgenre: right now, non-mystery-genre titles with "blood" in them strongly suggest vampire stories.   Like cover art, titles are mostly connected to marketing, but by being words, titles also connect to the text of the story itself. 

And that's why the thesauruses and dictionaries and pads of paper were in use in three different offices.   Echoes of Betrayal will be out sometime next spring.

• Current Mood

  awake

• Tags

  the writing life

• April 20th, 2011, 11:47 pm

Tending to My Knitting

Long, long ago (45 years, thereabouts) my mother taught me to knit.  (That's after wasting years trying to teach me to sew...)   I took to knitting.  I knitted a fair amount of simple things for some years after that, as time allowed (the USMC, a second degree, and graduate school interfered somewhat...)  Then came here, with EMS duties, an adopted kid who turned out to be autistic, and serious writing, and the knitting sat in the corner and waited. ( Collapse )

• Current Mood

  accomplished

• Tags

  knitting