The Second Book

(Reposted from 08/14/08)

KL and I posted the first part of our second book, as several people might have noticed. =)

It's always exciting and a little terrifying to start a new book. It seems as if we're starting over. However, at least, with the second book, we already have our characters and our world in place, so it's not as intimidating.

One of the more amusing jobs that KL and I face as writers is naming our books. As KL and I never got around to deciding the name of our first book, we were faced with the task of titling both. Because there are several main characters and several threads running through our novels, it becomes hard to summarize into simple titles and taglines.

Do we name our characters in the title? The Adventures of Fell, Wisteria, Averi, and Rai seems a bit long and uninformative. And, what would Book 2 be called? The Further Adventures of Fell, Wisteria, Averi, Rai, and Friends? ...no.

Or, should we stick to the relevant nouns and concepts that our book addresses? The Thief, The Princess, The Farmer, and The Mage is like one of those logic puzzles. The Princess must be Averi, and no one knows more about farming than Fell. But, who is the Thief, and who is the Mage? Rai's not all that good of a Thief, but he's certainly no Mage. And, Averi's also a Thief, but there's no way that Rai's the Princess. At any rate, we abandoned this title.

We also thought about following the Harry-Potter-title format. However, Wisteria Ling and the Magical Mystery Sword didn't strike the right chord, especially since it cuts out three of the main characters. For that matter, Averi and the Diplomatic Relations Disaster also failed on multiple fronts.

So, we ended up talking about what we were both looking for in a title. Like the sucker I am, I knew I wanted alliteration, and, ideally, some sort of connection to our plot. KL, on the other hand, wanted something that sounded exciting, or had to do with fighting, which led to her throwing in a lot of words such as, "Fight! Sword! Battle! Adventure!"

The end result of hours of brainstorming was a compromise. Book One ended up being the title we've been using all along as a placeholder--Eastridge Academy: School for Adventurers. And, Book Two became Eastridge Academy: The Stolen Sword.

And, our tagline is:

"Eastridge Academy: School for Adventurers...where adventurers are made."

(A serious title for a very serious book.)

=)

JLY