Yet again, titling help needed.
So, I’m at the stage with Under the Hill in which I should imminently be getting a contract to sign – at which point I will officially announce as much as I know about who the publishers are and when it’s likely to appear. But in the mean time my editor and I have decided that as it’s so long, the best thing is to publish it in two parts. This is fine, as there happens to be a natural cliffhanger right in the middle, which will make a great place to end one book and start another.
However, that means that Under the Hill becomes the title of the whole series (if you can call two books a series), and I have to think of separate individual titles for each volume. I was thinking Knight’s Gambit and Queen’s Pawn. The trouble starts in the first book when a knight of Faerie meets Ben and recognizes him, and it ends in the second book with two Queens of Faerie having a smackdown, aided by our heroes, so that seemed appropriate. But I can’t help thinking that chess references may be as common as muck. What do you think?
Otherwise I was thinking about something to do with take-off and landing (to tie into the fact that two of the heroes are WW2 airmen.) Or something to do with being kidnapped and rescued (though that might be a bit spoilery)? The first book mainly takes place in Bakewell in Derbyshire (a small, picturesque village in the UK), with diversions into Elfland, whereas the second takes place mainly in Faerie, with diversions into our world. But Under the Hill: Village People and The Queens of Faerie, while appropriate, might be a bit misleading.
Can anyone help me? I’m really useless at this!
Queens’ Porn?
(sorry)
On a more serious note (and this might require a very slight re-write, perhaps an extra few lines) you could name the planes they fly. During WWII warplanes – especially bombers – were normally given names. Enola Gay and Bockscar are perhaps the most infamous: they’re the planes that dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You could call them Titania and Puck, or some other fairy reference, and then use that as the basis for the names for the books. Puck had his head turned into that of an ass, which would match with the “Knight’s Gambit” idea quite well since the traditional knight chess-piece is the head of a horse. Perhaps “Puck’s Gambit” and “Titania’s Pawn”?
*G* She’ll be disappointed 🙂
That’s actually a great idea. Thank you! I don’t know whether the practice happened with British bombers, mind you. It may have just been an American thing. Nothing I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot) about Bomber Command in the UK indicates that they named their planes anything other than “(P for) Peter or (M for) Mother. But my hero flies a Lancaster called (V for) Victor, which performs a significant role in the second one, so I could go for UtH: Victim’s Battle and UtH: Victor’s Flight.
Thanks!