A Title's Worth

I'm terrible at updating this blog. Well, I've been busy. True, legitimate excuse.

I'm terrible at titles as well. Names I can handle and we'll get into that, but titles baffle me. I could never come up with those flowery ones like Love's Wanton Desire and make it stick to a book. I mean . . . I don't really want to read that. It better have quite the blurb to hold that title up.

When I started the L&L series, before it hit series status, the original title of The Treasure Hunter's Lady was (get ready for it) The Rainbow Serpent. Only because it had to have a title (why didn't I just say Untitled?) to get a folder in my online critique group. Really, Untitled would have been better.

THL didn't get a real title until I had a solid plot idea for The Sky Pirate's Wife. Since I'd already decided to write that one, I wanted the first book to have a similar title. It took me a while to come up with the treasure hunter bit.

Here's something you may not know about the books. The first noun in the book is a male in all of them except number 4 (The Siren's Sentinel). It's always something he (and in Emer's case, she) isn't, but that the second noun is.

I confused you, right?

Take The Treasure Hunter's Lady. Abel's not a treasure hunter, although Romy accuses him of it multiple times and he eventually stops denying it. Romy, for all her faults however, is a lady.

The Sky Pirate's Wife--Van Buren is no sky pirate, he just has a bad reputation. Sophie becomes his wife right away.

The Turncoat's Temptress, well, this one is a little trickier, because Basil sort of did turn his back on the group that raised him. But he had to in order to save Nora, who has always tempted him.

The Siren's Sentinel, a whole lot murkier. Sirens, much like temptresses, are women who draw men. Emer is undoubtedly one of those women, but she's not a danger to them like the Guardians believe. As for that Sentinel bit, I'm not giving it away other than to say, Ransom is there to watch over Emer.

And finally, the big reveal, the final title for the final book, the one I was previously calling The Maiden's Match. You can scratch that, erase it from your Internet and caffeine stimulated brains. The final book will be called:

The Crusader's Maiden

Because . . . Lo is on a mission to find something, and Bliss earned the nickname 'the Maiden' from a ghost story.

Whew. So glad those title worries are over.