Figuring out titles is hard.
Most of the time.
Sometimes it’s really obvious and you just point at that one and say “That one!”
For all the other times… We’re scratching our heads, trying to think if anything stood out while making revisions.
So when it came to figuring out the title for Galina’s story, we turned to the Distant Horizon Universe newsletter!
We proposed six ideas:
1. The Deception
2. Deceived
3. Quarantined
4. The Warning
5. The Outbreak
6. The Secret
But we weren’t 100% sold on any of them at that point.
So we asked readers:
Knowing that Galina’s story will be a young adult dystopian thriller in the same vein as Distant Horizon and Glitch, and having read the three sneak peeks from these newsletters, do any of those titles stand out to you?
Do you have an idea for a better title?
And we did get a few responses! (Which we very much appreciated).
Ultimately, we ended up settling on “Deceived,” which became part one of Galina’s Saga (which we later just called the “Deceived” series). Because, of course, we ended up having plenty more plot fodder itching to be written.
Which is why we now also have its newsletter-exclusive prequel, Initiated, and its sequel, Betrayed!
And yes. Figuring out those titles was also a pain. But at least we had the convention of the title to work with.
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Now I just have to hope I can remember what I planned to title the next book in the series…
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Happy reading and writing!
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 