Thursday, February 23, 2006

The One Page Synop and ... a Title Change?

I love the way the Lord has everything timed. Yesterday, as I said, I finished plotting the main movements of this book all the way to the end. This morning I got a call from one of my Bethany House editors wanting a one page synopsis to take to a meeting this afternoon. Of course, had I not finished making that plotline, this request would have been much more difficult to fulfill than it was. In fact, after wallowing in all the details for several days, it was the perfect next step to have to boil it all down to one page like that!

And then, as so often happens in this industry, I got a suprise. An email from the same editor came this afternoon informing me that the "management team" (not real sure who that is) didn't like the proposed (assumed for four years, now) titles for Book Four. This is the first time anyone has said anything about any of my titles. Whatever I've titled the book, that's what they went with (including Arena which was just a convenience title for me to be able to refer to the book easily). It didn't even occur to me this could be an issue.

Wait, I take that second to last sentence back. My originally proposed title for Book 4 was Light out of Darkness, but when they contracted for it, they suggested I change it to Light out of Shadow so it would tie in better with the other books. That made sense to me and I said sure. So that's how I've thought of it ever since, even though it's called Light out of Darkness in the contract. Frankly, either one was fine.

But, as of today, neither of those are acceptable any more, though I don't know why. Instead, the preferred options are, Out of Darkness or Out of the Darkness. Hmm. Not sure what I think of those. Not sure it even matters. Not sure how such a small, probably unimportant detail can take up so much time and thinking, either. Especially since it's doubtful I'll have much say over it.

But I am wondering: What do you all think of these new options? Better? Worse? The same?

Grace,
Karen