Un-Titles

[mrissa]

So I've known for awhile that Sampo is not a very good title for this second Finnish book. It doesn't mean anything to people unfamiliar with Finnish mythology, or worse, it reminds them of Little Black Sambo, to which it does not refer in the slightest.

Looking back through my last paper journal, though, it seems that I am extremely talented at coming up with alternatives that are even worse. Circuit Sky or Circuit-Graven Sky? Bleh. Skiing Down the Hüsi Elk? Even more obscure. timprov has gotten into the spirit of the thing, suggesting Crepuscular Finns and Dawn of the Louhis. ("Like Lawrence of Arabia!" he says helpfully.) Hell, The Stars in my Circuit Like JFETs popped into my head just now. Anybody else have ideas about what I should definitely not call this book? Bonus points for time-of-day references and/or archaic computing references, since the other two nearest it are Thermionic Night and Midnight Sun Rising.

If anybody happened to have any brilliant notions of what to call this book, those would also be welcome, but one imagines that some minor point like reading the silly thing might be helpful there. (Then again, maybe not. timprov has been known to possess special powers regarding my books, even when he hasn't read them. He can often give me areas I should explore if I'm stuck. So maybe one of you is like that with titles.)

Zed was our title-man out in California. Maybe I should write to Zed.

Comments

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

Personally, I do not think it would be possible to improve upon Crepuscular Finns. :-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

He is the Timprov for a reason.

[iagor.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't worry about it :) Once you'll sell it, the marketing department will promptly tear their hair out and make you change the title anyway.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is my dream. In fact, this is my dream for nearly every book I've written.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Louhi, Louhi: Oh, Oh, Me Gotta Go?

More seriously, when you talk about time-of-day references, I think of "noon with lots of sun glaring on the snow" and "dawn with mistiness in a primeval pine forest," both of which would make a bad title but could be part of the spirit of a good title.

I don't know any archaic computing references. For me, Apple IIc is an archaic computing reference.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, and Commodore64s at High Noon is not really what I'm going for here, unfortunately.

But the noon with lots of sun glaring on the snow may well be the time of day I'm going for here. No mistiness of primeval pine forests, alas; that's a different book, which already has a title, and it's more "mistiness of primeval pine forests before the shelling starts."

[timprov.livejournal.com]

TRS-80s at 11:30?

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

I'd suggest using "Twilight" in there somewhere, but I'm not so good on the early computing references or the Kalevala.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think you would get a kick out of my Magoun translation of the Kalevala. Y'know, in your spare reading time.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

The Quality of Rain?
Time of Day?
Capacitor Incapacitated?
Calling the Motherboard?
Bad Diode Rising?
Plasma?
Touch-a-Touch-a-Touch Screen?

....I think I should stop, now....

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that was the perfect stopping point! Just far enough to get me to groan.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

I suggest you not call it Atanasoff's Gloaming. Or, for that matter, Flemming and the False Dawn. Or even The Anticrepuscular Virga of Jay Forrester. Perhaps especially that last one.

You could do worse than calling it Vespertine.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Except that (according to Google) that's a Bjork album. Sigh. I suppose I could just hope that my target audience doesn't listen to Bjork, but I'm not sure that's a gamble I want to make.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Maybe something with Vespertine in it, though. It sounds less blood-vesselly than Crepuscular.

Hmmmmmm. It is now on a card propped on my mail scale.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

Thermionic Nights...
?Thaumaturgic Equations? 'practical magic defining individual entities'

Granted, not Finnish in the least, but I don't think the Finnishness is what they'll use to market the book. And 'equations' sounds nice and sciency.

But that leaves MSR the odd one out. :/ Course, as a reader, by the time I've read 2/3rds of a trilogy you could name the last book "Book Three" and I'd probably still read it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's not a trilogy.

No, really, it's not. MSR is approximately stand-alone, and there will be other books of about the same degree of alone-standing.

But the word "thaumaturgy" does not appear and will not appear and is not really...the right flavor of magic for me, if that makes sense.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

it's the magic of practical miracles (or something of that sort)

Ah well.

'calculated miracles'?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Calculated Miracles" is a great title for another book entirely, I'm afraid. Miraculous is exactly the kind of magic we don't have here.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

If "Sampo" would be a good title, but you're afraid of confusing people who don't know the mythology, how about "The Infinite Mill" which is a translation of Sampo, more or less. Or "The Everlasting Mill". Or would the word "mill" confuse people in these non-agricultural days?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. It might well confuse people, but it's less that than the substance of the story that worries me: the new Sampo of my stories is no longer a mill, exactly.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I think Sampo is a fine title. It never even occured to me that it was similar to "Sambo," and I suspect it occurs to you only because you live with the title so closely -- your reading public won't be that intimate.

And in any case, why bother worrying about this? It's the sort of thing that a publisher will want to have a strong say in, and may not even let you decide. There's absolutely no doubt that the title is good enough to submit with.

B

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Actually, it didn't occur to me until it was suggested independently by several different people and confirmed by several more.

So yah, it's a submissible title, but if someone is going to change the title of it, I'd rather have some ideas for something better myself rather than relying on a hypothetical future person to come up with something I don't hate.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Maybe. I submit that you have at least two self-selection biases going on. One, only the minority that see this connection are going to say something about it; the rest of us will be silent. And two, the people who noticed the connection are people who have heard you talk about the book at length and think of it in different terms than a reader who doesn't know you at all.

And, of course, the people who noticed it are fans. That probably makes them three sigma right there.

I'd be willing to bet that any editor will like and keep the title. Short "funny word" titles are good.

B

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Midnight Circuit?

[talltree6.livejournal.com]

Kalevala's Scorching Sun?

Finnish Showdown at High Noon?

Finning For the Fjords?

Lemmings in the Mist?

M'Edlin to See Plus Vee Eye On Finn Sky?

Oooooo, now I had better quit before someone throws kaalikääryleet at me.