Titles

I was having a chat with another author this week, and we got talking about titles of books.

It's something I've never really thought about, which is odd, when you consider how important they are.  It must be the title and jacket which first attracts a browser to a book, followed by the blurb, then a dip inside to sample some of the writing.

I was surprised to hear that quite a few authors only come up with the title of their book when it's finished, and even then often with the input of their editor and publishers.  I hope it's not me being my usual awkward self, but I tend to do things the other way around.

With The TV Detective, the whole premise of the tvdetective series seemed to flow from that first title.  The Death Pictures sets up the idea of the riddle - the entirety of the book came from that one, central puzzle and its title.  The idea for Evil Valley grew from seeing on a map the Dartmoor Valley where much of the action is set - Evil Coombe. I thought you just couldn't have a place with such a great name and not write a book about it!

Again, with The Judgement Book, the novel follows on from the title.  Which leads us onto The Balance of Guilt, and a departure from the Hall norm, if that's not a contradiction in terms.

It's the first of my books where I'm hoping you won't know - or at least not with any degree of certainty - what the title refers to until the very last page. And more I won't say, because I've probably suffered the usual Hall problem and said more than I should anyway.

What I can tell you is that, having just finished the editing, it's 340 pages long, and will be out on Sept 6th, as planned.  If you'd care to take a look at the cover and a little precis of the plot, it's now up on the books page - www.thetvdetective.com/books.html