Let’s Play a Caption Game

Are you good at writing captions for pictures? Or maybe headlines for newspaper stories? Then could be you’re an ace at coming up with book titles. If so, we can maybe brainstorm on titles now and again. I’ve written posts about coming up with titles for my books several times. Here’s the link to one of them, “Let’s Talk Titles”, in case you want to check it out.

Book titles are important. They are sometimes the first thing that catches a readers eye, especially if the cover shows the title to best advantage. I’ve had some good titles. Some of them I’ve come up with. Others a titling committee at the publishing company have  brainstormed and come up with great ideas for titles. Sometimes I’ve liked a title right away. Other times, we’ve gone back to the drawing board and tried to find a title that suits the story, the publishers and me.

I’ve had thirty-five books published. So that’s a lot of titles. What are some of my favorites that I titled and the titles stuck? I did title many of my young adult books. A favorite title among those would be A Kindred Spirit because of how that title fit the story so well. I just checked that book on line to make sure I hadn’t forgotten the exact title. A fun review there, written several years ago, was from someone who had read the book when she was young, kept it through the years, and then her daughter found it and read it too. Both liked the story.

Another title of one of my young adult books I came up with and really liked was A Look of Eagles. That story was about a girl who worked with horses and that phrase, a look of eagles, describes the special something that horsemen can see in a horse’s eyes or the way he stands or moves that lets them know this horse is going to run and be a winner.

If I’m thinking about more recent books, I suppose I would have to say Orchard of Hope was a favorite title I’ve come up with since I did want that book to be about hope for the future. As far as titles that the publishers brainstormed for me, I like These Healing Hills. We went back and forth with that one for a while. They weren’t thrilled with my suggested title, which I admit I have forgotten, and I wasn’t thrilled with their first suggestions which I have also forgotten. But These Healing Hills nicely fits the story even though it can tongue-tie you in a minute if you try to say it five times in a row. 🙂

Is there one of my titles I regret the publishing company nixed? Actually there is. I really, really liked my title of my 1855 Louisville book that was about the election riots with one of the causes the inflammatory editorials the newspapers printed. My character was the daughter of an editor and she had ink in her blood even though, at that time, genteel women weren’t expected to be reporters or write anything other than the occasional flowery poem. I titled the book Words of Fire. The publishers said that wouldn’t work. They suggested a title I couldn’t accept. After I said that title was totally wrong for the story, they suggested Words Spoken True.  I still liked my title better, but I bowed to their experience in marketing that was much greater than mine. If they said my title wouldn’t work, then the title didn’t work. Even so, I really liked that title. I had actually rewritten that story three or four times and changed the title several times. If I remember correctly, my first title was Whispers of Love. A writer has to remember that very few things are written in stone.

Book Giveaway

Now to my new giveaway. Thanks to all of you who shared how you shake the winter drearies last week. You have your name in my drawing hat to have a chance to win your choice of one of my books and a grab bag book by a different Christian author. But you aren’t limited to one entry. Leave a comment on this new post and any other new post before the deadline for entries of midnight EST, February 10, 2018 and you’ll get your name thrown in the hat again. To make it fun let’s play the “Caption Game.” Take a look at the picture at the top of this post and come up with the perfect caption (family friendly, please). If you just want to enter without playing the game, you can do that too. Any comment will work for that entry. As always you must be at least 18 years old to enter. No purchases or sign-ups are necessary to enter. It’s all for fun. I’ll see if I can come up with a caption too and share it on the next post along with a new photo.

So fire up your imagination. I know it will be fun to read your captions. As always, thanks for reading!