There have been four front-runners for the title for the sequel to THE MASTER OF VERONA – though none of them are what I call the book privately. To me, MV will always be IL VELTRO, meaning both the greyhound and the bastard. Perfect, but unsaleable. The sequel is rife with hawking and images of falconry, so naturally I refer to it as IL FALCO. But that, too, is unusable. So the lead title contenders for the sequel were:
- THE MASTER’S GRIP
- THE FALCON’S LURE
- THE FALCONER’S VOICE
- VOICE OF THE FALCONER
The first was a choice back when MV was called The Murder Stroke. It’s a fight move that shows up in the book, and as we discussed hooks, we thought that fight moves for titles might be cool. Except no one outside the SAFD, IOSP, or SCA would know what they meant. Again, a title isn’t good if the audience can’t at least guess the meaning.
But even when we dumped Muder Stroke, The Master’s Grip stuck around. It’s actually the title on the contract I signed last year. Because the first book was called THE MASTER OF VERONA, this played very well into that. My only objection was that I might be stuck with Master titles, something that would get old very fast. Hornblower, Sharpe, Flashman, and the Eagle series are the only books that haven’t grown too tedious with repetetive titles. Even the Dexter books have begun to sound ridiculous, and there are only three so far.
Then my wife raised another objection: "The Master’s Grip – doesn’tit sound like there’s a self-pleasuring joke in there?"
She was right. So that title was out.
Tomorrow – More Sequel Title Fun!
Oh yes, the title fun. I’ve stopped growing grey hairs over them by now, since the publisher will change them anyway. So either something good pops up together with the first plotbunny (‘A Land Unconquered’) or I use an online quotation search, usually for Homer or Vergil, adapt something that strikes my fancy, and come up with fun like ‘With Horse and Chariots Reigned’.
And then there’s the cool title that never found a novel because the antag took over and it’s a totally different story now – ‘The Tribune of the Lost Fort’ (which is now the currently shelved ‘The Charioteer’, definitely a working title because it only fits the first part of the book).