Hell or High Water
So my reading is at Crescent Moon tonight, but my mind's on other things--namely, the title change of THE DESIRE PROJECTS and the fact that three big-dealio writers are reading it right now in order to provide blurbs.
Which makes me panic if I think about it. So I'm not thinking about it. Not, not, not.
The writers who've generously agreed to read it are doing so quickly, prior to the July in-house meeting that the editor will have with marketing and publicity, etc. The goal of having these blurbs in hand is to gin up excitement among the St. Martin's publicity team for what is (let's be frank) a new book by a writer with no platform or name-recognition in the genre. A completely unknown quantity. Since big publishers bring out hundreds of titles a season, why would the publicity and marketing folks get excited about an unknown? Hence these blurbs.
I know that the manuscripts were delivered last week (hand-delivered by a courier in a Town Car, according to one account--muy la di da). I know that the title is likely to be (brace yourself) HELL OR HIGH WATER, in order to signal to readers who regularly buy mysteries/thrillers that this is a book they're likely to enjoy, since--again--my name will mean nothing to them.
I know that this nervewracking stuff is part of the process.
Gentle reader, I heaved many a sigh over the title change. I've been living with the manuscript as THE DESIRE PROJECTS for over four years now, and it was, in my humble opinion, a damn near perfect title for the story. (The fictional protagonist grew up in the real-life Desire Projects of New Orleans, and everyone in the novel is driven by some intense desire, forbidden or otherwise. Also, it had a kind of Buddhist spin, in that the crimes of the novel all stem from desire, which I liked.) I loved it. It made me feel clever and literary.
But my editor wasn't the first to balk at it, and I was prepared (by the woeful tales of my writer-friends who've had their titles changed by publishers--a larger club than you'd like to imagine) to be flexible.
Still.
I do like it well enough--and it was certainly better than any of the other dozens of titles that my agent, editor, and I were shooting back and forth to each other for a couple of weeks. I will not even humiliate my poor book by including them here. Even my own suggestions were quite dreadful. It's like trying to rename your child after four years of living with her as Jessica: She's Jessica. She just is.
Okay, so it's not quite like that. But you get the gist.
I like HELL OR HIGH WATER (my editor's suggestion; bless her) because it conveys the hell-or-high-water determination of the protagonist, Nola, to get her story (she's a journalist) and get her man, and because it resonates with the difficulties that New Orleans has experienced. It takes a common, familiar expression, Come hell or high water, and tweaks it slightly (by omitting the come), so a reader encountering it will feel recognition but with a little twist.
I also think that HELL OR HIGH WATER--once it's been formatted in those sans-serif all-caps in red or black or silver that seem to grace the covers of most suspense novels--will scream thriller to the unsuspecting bookstore browser, which is, according to my editor, its primary job.
And what the title THE DESIRE PROJECTS failed to do. Alas. Wistful sigh.
So I'm reading like a maniac to keep my mind off it all (Hammett's The Thin Man, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and Al Gore's Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis).
Also diverting is the process of working like a maniac on FAMILY TROUBLE, the collection of essays by memoirists about how they've negotiated the tricky issue of writing about their family members.
The essays are so excellent! Each one has a unique story to share and helpful strategies to suggest. The writers are stellar. It's a joy to work on these pieces, and my research assistant Sindu is great. With her help, my goal is to put this project to bed by August 15. Come hell or high water.
Which makes me panic if I think about it. So I'm not thinking about it. Not, not, not.
The writers who've generously agreed to read it are doing so quickly, prior to the July in-house meeting that the editor will have with marketing and publicity, etc. The goal of having these blurbs in hand is to gin up excitement among the St. Martin's publicity team for what is (let's be frank) a new book by a writer with no platform or name-recognition in the genre. A completely unknown quantity. Since big publishers bring out hundreds of titles a season, why would the publicity and marketing folks get excited about an unknown? Hence these blurbs.
I know that the manuscripts were delivered last week (hand-delivered by a courier in a Town Car, according to one account--muy la di da). I know that the title is likely to be (brace yourself) HELL OR HIGH WATER, in order to signal to readers who regularly buy mysteries/thrillers that this is a book they're likely to enjoy, since--again--my name will mean nothing to them.
I know that this nervewracking stuff is part of the process.
Gentle reader, I heaved many a sigh over the title change. I've been living with the manuscript as THE DESIRE PROJECTS for over four years now, and it was, in my humble opinion, a damn near perfect title for the story. (The fictional protagonist grew up in the real-life Desire Projects of New Orleans, and everyone in the novel is driven by some intense desire, forbidden or otherwise. Also, it had a kind of Buddhist spin, in that the crimes of the novel all stem from desire, which I liked.) I loved it. It made me feel clever and literary.
But my editor wasn't the first to balk at it, and I was prepared (by the woeful tales of my writer-friends who've had their titles changed by publishers--a larger club than you'd like to imagine) to be flexible.
Still.
I do like it well enough--and it was certainly better than any of the other dozens of titles that my agent, editor, and I were shooting back and forth to each other for a couple of weeks. I will not even humiliate my poor book by including them here. Even my own suggestions were quite dreadful. It's like trying to rename your child after four years of living with her as Jessica: She's Jessica. She just is.
Okay, so it's not quite like that. But you get the gist.
I like HELL OR HIGH WATER (my editor's suggestion; bless her) because it conveys the hell-or-high-water determination of the protagonist, Nola, to get her story (she's a journalist) and get her man, and because it resonates with the difficulties that New Orleans has experienced. It takes a common, familiar expression, Come hell or high water, and tweaks it slightly (by omitting the come), so a reader encountering it will feel recognition but with a little twist.
I also think that HELL OR HIGH WATER--once it's been formatted in those sans-serif all-caps in red or black or silver that seem to grace the covers of most suspense novels--will scream thriller to the unsuspecting bookstore browser, which is, according to my editor, its primary job.
And what the title THE DESIRE PROJECTS failed to do. Alas. Wistful sigh.
So I'm reading like a maniac to keep my mind off it all (Hammett's The Thin Man, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and Al Gore's Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis).
Also diverting is the process of working like a maniac on FAMILY TROUBLE, the collection of essays by memoirists about how they've negotiated the tricky issue of writing about their family members.
The essays are so excellent! Each one has a unique story to share and helpful strategies to suggest. The writers are stellar. It's a joy to work on these pieces, and my research assistant Sindu is great. With her help, my goal is to put this project to bed by August 15. Come hell or high water.
Faye said:
When I first read the new title I thought: HELL OR HIGH WATER by Joy Castro? And then I thought: HELL OR HIGH WATER by Joy Castro. And I quickly imagined it just as you describe a few paragraphs later, screaming out at me in the thriller/mystery section of a bookstore, or on the NEW TITLES shelf, the letters in black or silver or red. And kind of quickly, I got it. I see what they're saying. I can see why that might get more of your books into the hands of that audience. I can understand that the change was a bit painful, and letting go of your very cool and literary and meaningful first title is hard. The new title is not quite the Joy Castro I'm used to seeing or reading. But, I kinda like it, and I wish I could pre-order now.
June 14, 2011 9:45 PMfayepoet said:
Come hell or high water, you'll get it done and it'll sell-- no doubt with a title so evocative. Sorry to say good-bye to The Desire as it is what you desired.... Let us know when it's ready be rolled out. Yahoo!!
June 16, 2011 1:34 AM