Fiona McGier--I've Written a Great Book, Now What the Heck Do I Call It?

Don’t miss Fiona McGier’s terrific guest post and #giveaway at the bottom of this post!!

Titles–or “I’ve written a great book, now what the heck do I call it?”

When I wrote my first book, over 10 years ago, I did what I always tell my students: barf it out quickly, clean it up later. As an English teacher with an emphasis on teaching writing, this is the only way I know of to avoid writer’s block. Any English teacher or editor can help you to clean up your work, making it grammatically correct. But no one else can reach into your head, ala the pensieve in one of the Harry Potter books, and pull out your ideas. You have to do that yourself. For most people that’s the hard part. So that’s why I make a joke of it when I talk to teenagers. They like to make gagging noises and show me just how they’ll barf out their ideas.

So there I was, with my first-ever book done, and I started looking for publishers to submit it to. Then I looked on the submissions guidelines for a few, and to my chagrin, the first thing they asked after who the author was, is what’s the title? I blinked a few times in surprise. Title? I don’t need no stinkin’ title! Isn’t that someone else’s job? Alas, it isn’t. Especially in the world of e-publishing, which is the only publishing world I’ve had experience in, the author must come up with the title. And despite looking around on-line, I didn’t find any website with helpful hints about how to do this.

I tried talking to my characters, but discovered that once I typed The End, those particular characters stopped speaking in my mind. The minor characters were getting noisy, demanding that I give them a romance of their own too, maybe in my next book. But none of the voices in my head had helpful suggestions. So I sat and thought about the story I’d just written. My very first book was about a woman about to turn 40, divorced, with 2 pre-teen kids, and a part-time business she runs with her best friend, also about to turn 40, also divorced with 2 kids. The heroine thinks she’s too old for romance.  Since she uses music by Santana to dance to, I thought of one of his songs, and named this book, Never Too Old for the Game of Love.

My second book was about her best friend, the chef. She opens a small cafe to supplement their party-planning business, so I called the second book Recipe For Love.

I wrote 4 more books in this series so far, and all of them are like the second book, in that they have the occupation of one of the main characters in the titles. Love by Design is about an interior designer, Analysis of Love is about a therapist, Prescription for Love is about a doctor(and is a free download on Smashwords), and Love Therapy involves a physical therapist. All of these books feature members of the Reyes family, a large, loving Hispanic family living in a Chicago suburb.

When I was writing my female spy novels, which are unfortunately, temporarily unavailable since my publisher closed, I thought of titles that had words related to agents. Secret Love was such a great title for the first book! It wasn’t until after it was published that I went onto Amazon and found out just how many other books have that same title. Then the second book involves a female spy and two agents who want to romance her, so I called it Undercover Lovers. This title is also used by others, though not as many.

I wrote a couple of stand-alones, with titles that reflected the plots. Then I wrote what I thought was a stand-alone book with a romance set up in Grand Marais, Minnesota, a favorite camping destination for my family. The hero is an actor with a drug addiction, who has never felt a real emotion in his life. He’s sent up to Grand Marais by an indie director who wants him to star in a movie, but only if he can stop getting arrested for partying too much. He gradually falls in love with the director’s cousin, and discovers that in order to win her love, he has to save himself. For the Love of His Life is the title, and it’s a pun, because she is the love of his life, but also unless he changes, he won’t have a life to love. I used puns in the next two titles in this series as well. I have to self-publish these this summer, because they were with the publisher that closed also.

When a Wolf Howls

My latest book to come out is a werewolf book. The heroine, Saoirse, is first generation American, born to parents from Ireland. She’s a biology researcher who keeps getting fired for not being willing to produce the results that the clients specify. She says if even science is going to lie, there’s no truth left. Her best friend suggests she apply to a high school academy that’s looking for a biology teacher. She’ll have to live on the premises, since it’s in a remote area of Maine. The only teaching she’s ever done is when she was working on her masters, and she was a TA (teacher assistant), but she gets the job. The principal, Diego, doesn’t have a degree in education, but he’s great with troubled kids, since he was one. His inner wolf is attracted to her scent the first time they meet, and impatient with him because humans take so long to court. It’s so much quicker and easier with wolves! She likes the remoteness of the place, and even enjoys the nightly howling of what she’s told is the local wolf pack that lives on the grounds. Of course, she has no idea that the sexy principal has a secret, as do many of the other people she works with. I call this one, When a Wolf Howls.  I’ve already submitted the sequel, and keeping with the wolf-alliteration in the first title, I call it Worth the Wait.

So what advice can I offer to writers? You know your plots and your characters better than anyone else. You spend lots of time with them, as you write down their life stories. If they won’t help you with the title, think of what readers will want to know about the book. Are there shifters in the book? The kind of shifter should be in the title. Vampires or other paranormal creatures? Reflect their existence in the title. For contemporary romance, which is usually what I write (unless some rogue paranormal characters hijack my muse), I usually put something involving an occupation, or something that has great significance to the main characters. If you’re lucky enough to have beta readers or an author group, maybe run some ideas by them. But whatever you pick, you might want to do a cursory search to find out if it’s a much-used title. That makes it harder for readers to find your book with that title. You’re a creative person. Just create a few more words!

Here’s an excerpt of When a Wolf Howls:

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Do you have any advice about choosing titles? Or have you ever been attracted to a book just by the title? Or have you ever been turned off of a book just from the title?