Kate Constable's Blog

Naming The Baby

Titles are hard. I say that now, as I'm struggling to name the Current Project (the one I've totally changed three times before getting to this point, ie almost the end of the second complete draft.) So far it's been called The Shadow of the Crow, Isabel's Dreaming (that was back when the main character was called Isabel), The Time of the Crow, Speaking With Crows... you may have guessed, it features crows. My current working title is Crowfire, which I love as a title, except that I'm going to have to go back and insert some extra fieriness to justify using it.

Although ultimately that may not matter, as almost certainly someone is going to say, nah, don't like that, and we'll have to come up with something new.

The Singer of All Songs was originally called The Chanters of Tremaris, which ended up being the name of the trilogy. Briefly, The Waterless Sea was The Sands of Hathara. The Tenth Power was always The Tenth Power. The Taste of Lightning started out as Baltimar's Daughter, and the editors and I struggled for weeks until Penni helped me out. Always Mackenzie used to be Truly Mackenzie, but the Girlfriend people thought that was too wussy. Winter of Grace was a bullseye, first shot. Woo-hoo! My next book, which comes out in May, will be called Cicada Summer, which I don't loathe, but I don't particularly love it either, partly because there are at least three other books with the same title kicking around out there. (You can google them yourselves.) To me, Cicada Summer will forever be The Summerhouse Girl.

As for the CP - well, I'd love it to have Crow in the title somewhere. But who knows... Naming Alice and Evie was a doddle compared to this lot.