Slightly Off the Mark

"If the Beast gave me a library like he gave to Belle, I'd marry him too." -- Aya Ling

 So, my wife's bosses were going through storage units, and had to sort through all the books their daughter collected over the years. Some were damaged, but they offered to give Emily and me most of the rest. Their daughter, they said, read a lot.

Not long after, they filled our Ford Escape with so many books I was afraid it would bottom out on every hill on the way home. A few days later, they did it again. Then again.

Mountains of books! Forests of books! More books than you'd ever read in a lifetime!

Ahem. If you'll pardon me for quoting Beauty and the Beast. I may have cried a little. I also may have cried a little while we were carrying them all up the steps into the house, but enough about my back.

It was Emily who had to clean up the books because, as it happens, I'm allergic to both dust and mold. Never thought I'd be glad about that. But I forgot, and later when I was cleaning our former bedroom/new reading room (our own library!) I gave myself an allergy attack. Too bad--eight hours of sleeping off the Benadryl, when I could have been reading.

Freaking scads of books! 

We're still sorting them, by author and genre. Authors like me, who don't stick to a genre, will be a problem. But many of them were novel series (love a good series), which helped. We unfolded a table and Emily got started while I was cooking and doing the dishes, which is completely understandable when you realize how much more organized her mind is than mine.

Really, the only member of the family who wasn't thrilled was the dog. (This all happened before Beowulf passed away.) When we first put up the table he liked to lay down under it, but as we unpacked more books that space became filled, too. Sometimes he just walked up to the table and looks sadly at his former doghouse.

"I am NOT amused. I can't even read."

A large percentage of the books are what's called high fantasy, which I take it are better enjoyed when you're high. Wait, let me check ...

Oh. Well, it means epic in scope, with forces threatening a world that is not our own. Game Of Thrones stuff, and didn't it take us a whole year to read through those massive tomes. The novel I wrote (and am currently trying to sell) is low fantasy: mostly set in the real world, with the addition of magical elements. Now we're talking about Harry Potter and the Giant Dump Truck of Money.

Many others are space opera, again similar to another novel in my submission process. Think Dune, the Lensman books, and of course Star Wars. (My Junior English teacher in high school was the daughter of E.E. Smith, who authored the Hugo-nominated Lensman series. Fun old-timey SF, and possibly an inspiration for the Green Lantern.)

There are also history books, mostly involving World War II, which made me squeal a little. Okay, a lot. There are mysteries, and both nonfiction and fiction books about horses, and encyclopedia yearbooks covering all the earlier years of my life and some before. We have our own library of books--something I always dreamed of.

I took this photo to document that someone decided to leave their shampoo behind, and buy a book instead. If you never leave your couch, you don't need shampoo.

It all made me a little sad.

Let's face it: even if I gave up writing and put all my spare time into reading, there's no way I'll ever get to all these books, plus the ones I already have, plus the ones on my reading list. We've still got books in boxes in the garage. I've got friends writing books that I want to read. It makes me want to retire to a rustic cabin in the woods and just become one with a comfortable chair.

Still, just having all those books up on shelves around us will cheer me up substantially, and better too many than not enough. With books, I may never go anywhere again--but I'll go everywhere.

That's a pretty good way to spend your time.

We and our books--I mean, the ones we wrote--can be found everywhere:

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

·        Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

·        Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

·        Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

I've been kidding myself with the name of one of my novel manuscripts. It's not that I was in love with the title: I was more in love with the possibilities the title represented.

Many readers are familiar with book series that have a progression in their titles. One For the Money, for instance, is followed by--well, what are the Stephanie Plum stories up to now? 27? And each numbered in order.

Sue Grafton has a letter in each title of her series, meaning that Z has to be her last one unless she starts throwing in subtitles, or something. AAA Is For Roadside Assistance might come after Z, but she started way back with A Is For Alibi.

When I started my young adult mystery novel, I wanted it to be a series, so I looked for something like that. Famous author names, cities, types of flowers, whatever. That would also make it clear to editors and agents that I was interested in a series, and series are big these days.

So, for instance, A Is for Asimov, or Boston Mystery, or Carnation Crime, or something like that. After thinking not long enough on it, I chose colors. For one thing, I could do those without going alphabetically. I'm not that good.

So I chose Red Is for Ick. I didn't realize at the time that all of Grafton's books have "is for" in the title, or maybe I'd have thought longer. But hey--red's the color of blood, and this novel would have a murder or two; and what would my fifteen year old hero, Cassidy Quinn, say about the blood? Yep: "Ick!" (You get to meet Cassidy, and briefly her father, in my YA adventure The No-Campfire Girls.)

It was brilliant.

Except for one problem.

The title makes sense when it's explained, but I just took three hundred words to explain it. You don't get that kind of space when you're querying an agent or editor. You need to cut to the chase.

I've been using this manuscript on the agent hunt, and got compliments and a few requests for the complete manuscript, one of them very enthusiastic ... but in the end, three dozen rejections. No, no one ever said they rejected it because of the title, and maybe the title's just fine and doesn't need explaining. But in the crowded world of publishing, you need every advantage you can get--starting with your title.

So what do you, the reader and/or writer, think? Granted, many titles are changed after the book is picked up, but (assuming you don't self-publish) you have to get the proverbial fish on the hook, first. Yay or nay on the title?

Here's a brief description of the book, if it helps:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hit 50,000 words in my latest novel rough draft!

I need to get that thing done, so I can let it cool while I work on my non-fiction project. I'd have them both done by now, if not for all those bills and, on a related note, that pesky full-time job.

But my hands have healed up from the sewer line fiasco, so at least typing isn't painful anymore.

Just for a treat, here's a picture of granddaughter Lilli at Christmas, and an excerpt from the rough draft of We Love Trouble:

 This is from Chapter One of We Love Trouble, which is narrated by an unusual dog named Wulfgar. Victoria Noble has volunteered herself and her husband, to return a horse to the relatives of a girl who was injured in an apparent accident: