What's in a Name?

Ah the joys of titling your work.

I'm currently working on a fairly major revision of the book that started out as Cora (working title). I'll chew through the reasons for the revision in another post, but... the title is still driving me nuts.

It's a space-opera / colony adventure with bad corporations, black-ops fleets, aggravating settlers who mean well but do the wrong things, some cool techy stuff, some romance, a lot of betrayal and a some rollicking action. No hard science.

Cora was only ever a working title - it's a bit too McCaffreyesque ('Damia' etc.). So before the darn thing got submitted to HarperCollins (that's a long story) I changed the title to 'Written in Dust.'  It's from a quotation: "Who then to frail mortality shall trust, But limns on water, or but writes in dust," - Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Since the whole novel has an overarching theme about the nature of trust, it seemed like a good title, if a little pedestrian.

Then I figured that a better title might be 'The Settlement' because a) it's about a settlement / colony and b) at the end the good guys have to make a deal - a settlement - with the bad guys because they're in a lose/lose situation and they manage to pull a win out of the hat after some hijinks.

That was the stage I was at until a couple of nights ago. I marginally preferred 'The Settlement.' maeve_the_red preferred sticking with 'Written in Dust' and mevennen, who read an early draft at Milford in 1998, probably still recognises it as 'Cora'. And then I was half listening to a song on TV and a phrase leaped out at me that really fits. How about 'Empire of Dirt'?

Go on. What do you think of it as a title? 'Empire of Dirt.'

It's from the song 'Hurt' by Nine Inch nails, written by Trent Reznor.

Okay, back to the revision, whatever it's called.

What's in a Name?

Ah the joys of titling your work.

I'm currently working on a fairly major revision of the book that started out as Cora (working title). I'll chew through the reasons for the revision in another post, but... the title is still driving me nuts.

It's a space-opera / colony adventure with bad corporations, black-ops fleets, aggravating settlers who mean well but do the wrong things, some cool techy stuff, some romance, a lot of betrayal and a some rollicking action. No hard science.

Cora was only ever a working title - it's a bit too McCaffreyesque ('Damia' etc.). So before the darn thing got submitted to HarperCollins (that's a long story) I changed the title to 'Written in Dust.'  It's from a quotation: "Who then to frail mortality shall trust, But limns on water, or but writes in dust," - Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Since the whole novel has an overarching theme about the nature of trust, it seemed like a good title, if a little pedestrian.

Then I figured that a better title might be 'The Settlement' because a) it's about a settlement / colony and b) at the end the good guys have to make a deal - a settlement - with the bad guys because they're in a lose/lose situation and they manage to pull a win out of the hat after some hijinks.

That was the stage I was at until a couple of nights ago. I marginally preferred 'The Settlement.' maeve_the_red preferred sticking with 'Written in Dust' and mevennen, who read an early draft at Milford in 1998, probably still recognises it as 'Cora'. And then I was half listening to a song on TV and a phrase leaped out at me that really fits. How about 'Empire of Dirt'?

Go on. What do you think of it as a title? 'Empire of Dirt.'

It's from the song 'Hurt' by Nine Inch nails, written by Trent Reznor.

Okay, back to the revision, whatever it's called.