First Peek!

My working titles often have little to do with the final publication title. Fortunately, I know I’m not alone in this – Joan D Vinge originally wanted to call Phoenix From the Ashes “Take Me Out Of Pity”, until an editor pointed out that a title like that would not just be baring her throat to the critics, but handing them the knife and putting her head on the block.

So, this one. It was originally titled Can’t Go Home Again, because that was the anthology it was being written toward…. back when I thought it was a short story. When I knew it was a novel, it got changed to Glitter and Gold, because 1.) That was the song by Barnes Courtney that got my brain to unstick plot points, and 2.) gold and things that glitter but are not gold are actually important in there for spoilerific reasons.

But Glitter & Gold sounds terribly like a girly romance, and this is… not. And despite the urging of one friend to call it A Quiet Funeral With Firefights, (you know who you are), this works better thematically.

He swore he wouldn’t be back while his parents lived…
Now, almost thirty years later, AJ is going home.

Ordered back to the far northern reaches of the Empire to attend his mother’s funeral by Imperial Intelligence, and urged to find closure, AJ is opening familial wounds and trying to bury old feuds. But the past doesn’t die that easily, and family secrets still threaten all the survivors – and the woman he loves.

And then there’s the Fed agents threatening the community…

12 thoughts on “First Peek!”

  1. When can we throw money at you?

    IE Do you have a publish date for it. 😉

      1. It will be in less than two weeks.

        Depending on what the electrician says tomorrow when we open up the walls, it might be in a week, or it might be in “Oh, this’ll be fun. Cedar, can we hire your teenager’s strong back?” fallback date, but it will be within two weeks!

  2. I generally think of a work like a Victorian, by its main character’s name, until I figure out the real one.

    But it’s fun when it was inspired by a title that no longer fits the final work.

    And then there was “Lady in Waiting” which would have been fine in a collection but because I was also selling it standalone, became “The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn. ” I still miss the pun.

    1. Heh! I know that fun!

      Do you ever get the fun that is the original scene that inspired the whole work, by the time you’ve done all the worldbuilding and geology and economics and characters and problem and plot…. no longer actually fits in the final story?

  3. Obviously I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t comment on the thematic value. But that said, “A Quiet Funeral With Firefights” seemed to me to be a great title, as a follow to “A Perfect Day With Explosions”. 🙂

    Whichever, I’ll be looking forward to it.

  4. So happy. 2 weeks will fly by (I hope) I also have to agree with Bob C. about the title.

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