What's in a name?

[pbray]

Folks have been asking how I came up with the title for THE FIRST BETRAYAL, so I decided to share the answers here. Warning: spoilers under the cut tag.



More than you ever wanted to know about book titles

Book titles are a peculiar blend of creative sensibilities and cold marketing realities. Ideally it's unique, memorable, and indicates the genre/theme. Without seeing the cover or blurb, you can probably guess that A Most Suitable Duchess is a romance novel, while I, Robot signals science fiction.

Keep in mind that you can't copyright the title of a standalone novel, so titles are often reused, particularly one or two word titles. Publishers try to avoid reusing titles within house if the prior book is still in print, but there's nothing to prevent two publishers from releasing books with the same title in the same year, or worse yet, the same month. As authors we try our best to come up with catchy titles, and if we're lucky, we'll find out that someone else isn't using that title for an upcoming release. In most cases the publisher gets the final decision on the title, not the author, though usually there's a fair amount of back and forth negotiation if the original title needs to be changed.

In Devlin's Luck, the title refers to one of the underlying themes that came up as I was writing the first book. Devlin has luck. It's not good luck, it's not bad luck, it's simply luck. If there's anything weird happening, he'll be the one to stumble upon it. If there's a single banana peel in an open field, he'll be the one to trip on it--and his sudden fall may well save his life as an assassin's arrow whistles by overhead.

I was fortunate that Devlin's Luck hadn't been previously used, and that the folks at Bantam liked it. Since we were trying for a strong brand identity for that series, the titles of the next two books fell easily into the pattern of Devlin's NOUN, winding up as Devlin's Honor and Devlin's Justice.

By the way, the series is called The Sword of Change series, which is a reference to Devlin as the agent of change, rather than a literal sword.

For my next book I didn't have anything in mind, so it was simply called "Untitled Fantasy" until I was ready to send the draft outline and sample chapters to my agent. At that time I brainstormed about a dozen titles with two friends. After discarding those titles that had already been used, I settled on The First Betrayal, updated the document headers and sent in the proposal.

The First Betrayal refers to my original conception of the storyline, back when I believed that Prince Lucius had agreed to what had been done to him by the monks. In this scenario "The First Betrayal" was Lucius's, and it was the betrayal of self.

Later the story idea shifted, as the proposal was revised and expanded. By now Lucius was as much a victim as Josan was--two men who had both put their trust in Brother Nikos and been betrayed. When I submitted the final manuscript to Bantam, I also submitted a list of alternate titles which included The Sea Change, one of the suggestions from arcaedia. But the folks at Bantam liked The First Betrayal so it stayed, with book two becoming The Sea Change.

In a sense The First Betrayal is a grim joke, since there are so many betrayals that occur in the course of the book. Chronologically you can argue that the first betrayal occurs in the backstory when Josan and Prince Lucius are betrayed by Brother Nikos. The hellish magic performed on them is the key to the events that unfold in TFB. Then in the course of the narrative Josan is betrayed by his friend Myles who places the rebels' cause over friendship, Josan/Lucius betray the rebels to Empress Nerissa, and then Lucius almost immediately betrays Josan by vanishing rather than remaining to face torture and death at the empress's hands.

In this way The First Betrayal is a great title, signifying the convoluted blend of politics, conspiracy and shifting alliances that drive the plot. One betrayal follows another, until by the end of the book Josan's learned that he can trust no one.

This, of course, will be a problem in the sequel, where he's going to need people he can trust if he's going to survive. But that's a discussion for another day.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Ooh. To me, the first betrayal is Josan/Lucius betraying the rebels to Nerissa. The rest of it was just, like, warmups, or something. :)

I suppose I didn't *really* expect the second book to be called The Second Betrayal, but I kinda hoped it would be. :)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like the idea of warmup betrayals. A few stretches, ease the muscles and then *bam* they're off.

And yes, there will be a series of betrayals in book two, including a fairly massive betrayal by Josan. But for marketing reasons I can't call it "The Second Betrayal" just as I couldn't call TFB "The Lizard Book" though in both cases the titles are apt.