My publishing contract with Bloodhound Books for The Secret Life of Carolyn Russell indicates the title is a working title. It also says the publisher will consult on the proposed cover. Contract vetting by the Society of Authors, suggested I might like to strengthen the consultation right on the cover (and title) to a right of approval. This wasn’t something I cared about. After all, the title had changed four times since I started drafting the novel in 2021. Here’s the story of how the title changed:
Title One: Little Swot
In the 1979 storyline, Carolyn persuades her mother to invest in tutoring which provides an opportunity for close contact with the teacher of her dreams, Mr Simmons. But when I told my husband about Little Swot, he assumed the title referred to a boy.
Title Two: Extra Lessons
Still on the theme of tutoring, I changed to a title which I thought had a nuanced double meaning. (I did check on Amazon that it hadn’t been used for erotic fiction!) Although as time wore on, I began to feel this title wasn’t quite right.
Title Three: The Girl and the Tutor
I attended an online masterclass in December 2021 offered by Writers & Artists. It was called How to Write a Book That Sells and delivered by bestselling author Angela Clarke. The content focused on the submission package (opening chapters, synopsis and cover letter) and was aimed at developing this in order to acquire literary representation. One of the things Angela emphasised was the need to pay attention to supermarket bookshelves. It’s Angela’s contention that busy women doing the weekly shop want to grab a book similar to one they’ve enjoyed before. With the advent of Gone Girl and Girl on a Train, many similar titles followed. This is how I settled on the new title of The Girl and the Tutor and felt relieved that the girl in my title is actually a girl of sixteen years – and not a woman as in many of the other books. My husband still grumbled and said the title was too on the nose.
Title Four: The Secret Life of Carolyn Russell
In the latter stages of my querying journey, I won feedback on my submission package during a fundraising auction for Ukraine. The editor of a small press gave helpful advice to improve all aspects of the package and suggested a new title. She said, The Girl is good, but The Girl and The Tutor is not great. Maybe just something generic like The Lost Girl or The Missing Girl or The Cold Case or The Abduction of Carolyn Russell. So, I played around with these ideas and settled on The Secret Life of Carolyn Russell.
I was prepared for the title to change again on publication by Bloodhound Books but the team were happy with it. Phew!
How important are titles to you in choosing a book to read or giving a name to your creative work?
The copyedits for The Secret Life of Carolyn Russell were returned to me recently. I had a fortnight to go through them and found this was just about long enough to complete the changes needed. Here are three things I was reminded about along the way:
Compound words
How could I have got so many compound words wrong? Take two separate words and combine them to make a new word with a different meaning. When you put the nouns post + box together, created is the red box where we post our letters, a postbox. Sounds simple, right?
Several years ago I published a piece called Find out which published author your writing style resembles which has turned out to be one of my most viewed posts. It gave a link to I Write Like where you can paste an excerpt of your writing for the website to analyse. (The facility is now also available as an app.) It turned out the piece I entered used similar word choices and was written in a similar style to Chuck Palahniuk. I’ve always been rather pleased at the match and wondered if my writing had changed over time to reflect another author.
For anyone on Twitter, you may have come across online pitching events that encourage writers to compose a tweet using 280 characters to get their story under the eyes of literary agents and publishers. If the tweet is ‘liked’ there’s an opportunity to submit a query letter, synopsis of the work and the first three chapters for consideration. It’s a good way to bypass the slush pile and I’ve attracted some interest by honing my elevator pitch to the size of a tweet. In previous twitter pitches I’ve used the following to describe my latest novel (the words in capitals suggest comparable titles):
THE WIDOW x HIGH FIDELITY
Menopausal journalist rediscovers her mojo by developing a true crime podcast about a missing West Country teenager in 1979. The dual timeline reveals the girl’s story of infatuation and exploitation with an unforgettable twist.
Earlier this year, I saw another twitter pitch advertised by Bloodhound Books, a leading independent publisher based in Cambridge.
For those of you who aren’t active on social media, I’d like to share the news that my work-in-progesshas been longlisted in the Novel London Literary Award. This competition invites international submissions for complete works of fiction, which may be unpublished, self published or newly published. As my manuscript is up against published novels I don’t expect it will get any further in the competition but it’s good to see my details on the publicity poster. Well done to all longlistees.
I’m continuing to work on the manuscript following feedback from beta readers. I’ve also changed the title from Little Swot to Extra Lessons which better reflects the novel. Here’s the draft blurb:
I’m delighted to introduce Paula R C Readman to readers of The Writers is a Lonely Hunter. Paula and I have been previously published in anthologies by Bridge House Publishing and have met at celebration events. As we’ve both had novels published this year, we thought it would be a good idea to share our experiences. Paula’s answers to a series of questions are posted below.
1) What type of books or genre do you write?
I would class myself as a horror writer, or at least, the darker shade of pale because of my love of Victorian ghost stories. It’s the simplicity of how the Victorians told their dark tales without relying on the use of blood, guts and gore which I love most. I hope I’ve recreated their chilling tension in my stories too. Of course I do add a bit more bite to my tales as and when they need it, but I don’t overdo it or add it for an unnecessary shock element.
Of course, die-hard horror fans might find my work more cosy horror/crime rather than what they are looking for, but I feel there’s a market for my kind of work. It’s just finding the right place to market my books, which has me stumped as it isn’t quite horror and not quite a crime novel. I categorise my writing as Gothic Crime.
2) What was your inspiration behind Seeking the Dark book?
Seeking the Dark is a vampire story with a twist. When I first wrote the novel back in 2005 I had no idea how to write a book. I had some success with writing nonfiction articles about researching my Readman family roots in Whitby, North Yorkshire
After suffering a couple of rejections with the nonfiction, I decided to turn my hand to writing short stories. I wrote a story about a girl catching the last bus home. In the last paragraph the twist is revealed and the reader discovers that she’s a vampire. I took the short story into work and showed it to a friend I trusted. Lisa liked the story but wanted to know more about the girl. The short story then became a book. It went through many changes as I learnt the skills needed to refine my ability to write. I have sent it out to quite a few publishers over the years. Unsurprisingly, it suffered quite a few rejections, but on receiving plenty of good feedback it kept me motivated. In the end, I set it to one side and focused on writing short stories for publication as I wanted to build a writing CV of published work in hope to increase my chances of finding a publisher. It wasn’t until my third written novel was published that I decided to submit Seeking the Dark after I had finished editing it again.
3) Give a short taster of your plotline, and introduce us to your main character.
Investigative journalist, Jacob Eldritch, is obsessed with solving the mystery of the Dead Men Sleeping, a series of unexplained deaths, but he isn’t aware that the Dark force is gathering strength.
One evening, he spots a man leading a white-haired beauty through the crowds at his local bar. A few days later, he sees her again at a hotel, in the company of a different man. A week later, both men are dead and the police add their names to the unexplained death list.
While conducting some background research at the library, a young girl doing her homework gives Jacob an unexpected clue. This turns the mystery of the Dead Men Sleeping on its head when he discovers they’re linked to the death of a Whitby ship owner two hundred and twenty-four years ago.
As the Dark closes in, Jacob must fight, but will he survive?
4) How did you choose the names of your characters?
I have two books which I tend to reach for when deciding on my main characters’ names, plus I collect interesting names from the television while watching the news.
The Dictionary of Surnames, by Mark Anthony Lower is part of a collection of nonfiction books I kept from my days spent researching my family history. The second book is a Dictionary of Fictional Characters by William Freeman. I pick and mix my character’s name though sometimes the characters tell me their names as they develop in my mind. I’m dyslectic so find it difficult to pronounce certain names. If I keep stumbling over them when reading my work aloud, I have to change it for something that flows off my tongue.
5) Will your readers find your main character likeable or not?
Yes, I think most readers will find Jacob Eldritch likeable. He’s very much your boy next-door type of a guy, though he can be a bit self-contained as he has a failed marriage behind him because of his obsession. I hope the readers find Amanita Virosa an intriguing character, if a little scary.
6) How did you choose the title for your book? Had you chosen the title before writing the book, or on completion?
Seeking the Dark has changed titles four times as I was concerned that the first few ideas were too religious and might put readers off. The final idea for the book title came from a comment I heard on a radio show when driving home from work. The radio guest said, “Well, it was like seeking in the dark.” I have no memory of what they were chatting about, as all I could do was just keep repeating the phrase Seeking the Dark until I got home so I could write it down.
7) How did you choose the cover picture? Did you have an idea of what you would like?
I always imagined the book cover would have a woman wearing a large brimmed hat that covered the top half of her face as I always saw Amanita as the lead character in the book. She would be holding a champagne glass, with a half-smile playing on her lips. For years, I had focused on her point of view, but while editing the book last year, I suddenly had a light bulb moment and realised that Jacob was in fact the main character. This helped when my publisher at Darkstroke asked me to select a cover picture from a website. I first looked on Amazon at the same category as my book came under to see what the norm was. Most of the books under Vampires had bloody fangs and neck chewing. I wanted my book to stand out from the crowd as it isn’t a straightforward vampire novel. On seeing the cover picture I chose, I felt it had both elements of my plotline and title. I hoped it would speak to the reader as the picture shows Jacob at the bottom and the ominous Dark hanging over him.
8) If a film maker chose your book to adapt, would you be happy with a based on version film or series, or would youwant them to stick as closely as possible to your original idea? What wouldn’t you be happy with .i.e. too much violence, complete change of character etc.?
Hmm, this is a difficult question to answer because I know that a filmmaker has a limited amount of time in which to tell the story. A novel gives an author more freedom to explore different elements within their storyline. I hope I would at least recognise my characters, and they wouldn’t just focus on the sex and violent parts within my plotline.
9) Have you started writing your next book? Is it something original or a follow on novel?
As the Crow Flies isn’t quite a follow on to The Funeral Birds as that was a novella. It will be more of a standalone which allows me to go into more background details of the main characters. Most of the readers that reviewed the book wanted to know more about the characters especially Granny Wenlock and who she was. As The Crow Flies will be a darker book with the same sense of humour between the husband and wife private detective agency team.
10) While writing the book did you have a light bulb moment when everything came together, and what triggered it?
As I’ve already said, for years I had focused on Amanita Virosa being the main character in the novel. Since 2005 while writing the book and re-editing over the years I had always seen it from her point of view until last year. For eight straight months, I worked, with an online friend, Kim Martin on editing Stone Angels. In that time I learnt a great deal from her.
Once my first published novel, Stone Angels was accepted by Darkstroke I then worked alongside the publisher on its final edits. All the skills I learnt from both Kim and Laurence, I then put into action when editing Seeking the Dark. As I was editing the novel, it became clear that Jacob had the stronger point of view. This revelation became the turning point in the novel’s life and made it far easier to edit. I feel it’s a more powerful book too.
Thank you so much for being my guest, Paula. You’ve give some really good insights into your writing process.
Paula’s novels are well worth reading so do use the links below to buy your copy.
I am delighted to have a piece on Cathy Ry’s blog about the background stories to some of the fictional settings in This Much Huxley Knows. Click here to pop over for a read.
You may remember around three weeks ago, I wrote a post about the blog tour I’d organised to promote This Much Huxley Knows. (You can read it here.) Last week, everything went according to plan and book bloggers who had signed up, posted a review or excerpt on the agreed day. It wasn’t without last minute hitches, one blogger had mislaid the electronic copy of This Much Huxley Knows but with only a short while to spare, managed to read and review the novel in record time.
It’s an anxious time waiting for the launch of a new novel. Fortunately, I’ve received lots of wonderful early reviews for This Much Huxley Knows on Goodreads. If you’ve offered one, let me say here and now how terribly grateful I am. Getting positive feedback is a brilliant way to calm the nerves. I’ve also been distracted by housework and went back to one of my old favourites – cleaning the oven – such a satisfying job!
the writer is a lonely hunter 