As some of you may recall, I have been anxious about the fate of D______, my latest novel and something of a prequel to my debut, Braking Day. I had sent it off to my agent, the estimable Brady, for review, after which it was due to go to my editor, the hard-driving Aranya, for the final verdict. For several weeks, I have been on tenterhooks. But now the verdict is in.
I am happy (relieved!) to report that the verdict has been overwhelmingly positive. If you like SF, SF mysteries, or can tolerate SF for the sake of a mystery, D______ will not disappoint! Aranya, Brady and Brady’s assistant, James, have made a number of excellent suggestions that I will be incorporating into the final text, but D______ is very much on its way.
Although it won’t be called D______. We have settled, probably, for L___ o_ D______. I’m still blanking out the words because I’m not a hundred percent sure there won’t be a further change. I have been caught out like this before!
Normally, this is the point where I whine about the publishing industry changing one of my perfectly good titles. But in actual fact L___ o_ D______ was my suggestion. As the manuscript took shape beneath my fingers, L___ o_ D______ felt like a better title than D______, and that’s the one I used when I sent the draft out for review. The publisher pushed back on that a bit because L___ o_ D______ comes up in searches as a Bollywood movie (!!!) and that will make finding the book using a search engine a wee bit harder. What a world we live in, eh? This is not something that would even have been considered until a few years ago.
Nonetheless, as neither the publisher, Brady, nor I could come up with anything better, L___ o_ D______ remains intact. If (if!) it continues to remain intact, L___ o_ D______ will mark the second time in a row (after Esperance) that my choice of title will have survived contact with the professionals, so maybe I’m starting to get the hang of it!