Guest Post from Author Grace Pennington!

 That's right folks,the famous narrator is now a published author! This month J. Grace Pennington released the first book in her Firmament series, Radialloy. The series is about a young Christian girl who lives in a spaceship with her father.

Unfortunately, I did not have the time to read her book in time to review it for the VLA, but I would like to wholeheartedly welcome her to our blog to tell us about a subject that matters to many nerdy readers (and writers) like myself: novel titles.

By Any Other Name

One of the big questions that always comes up when writing a story is the matter of titles.  What are you going to call this story?  When someone asks, “What are you writing?” are you going to be stuck saying, “Well, it’s this story that’s sort of cool story in space about this girl who, like, helps her dad and stuff”?  Or are you going to be able to say “It’s a Christian young-adult novel called Radialloy”?

Which one is going to interest your potential reader more?

I love titles, and I love titling stories.  I’m particular to clever and short titles, and take great writerly delight in coming up with them.  Writing a series, however, adds a whole new level to titling.  Not only do the titles have to sound interesting and accurately represent the story, but there has to be a logic to them that transcends each book, extending to the series as a whole.

For my sci-fi Firmament series, I gave a lot of thought to the logic behind the titles of the individual books.  The first book, Radialloy was released earlier this month, and the other seventeen books are in various stages of revision, drafting, outlining, and planning.  Basically, the titles fall into two basic categories:  they are either named for the book’s theme, or its premise.

Radialloy is a word I created myself, for the central object of the story.  The next book, In His Image has to do with the theme, the significance of the idea that man is made in the image of God.  Machiavellian is the same way--the story’s theme addresses the Machiavellian principle of “the end justifies the means.”

Reversal Zone has to do with the premise.  Gestern is a word in another language that exemplifies the theme.  No Man also deals with the theme, as does Eleftheria, which is also another language.  Humanoid, interestingly, deals with both, as do Intoxication, Till Death Shall Part, Timestream and Wandering Jew.  Hypochondriac deals with the premise, Programming deals with both, Pandemonium with the premise, Phagocardiosis with both, and Myopia with the premise.  Stars, the last novel, deals with both.

Some of the titles and ideas are subject to change, but you get the idea.  Basically what I do is boil the story idea down until I have a direct theme and premise, then look at the two and first decide which I want to emphasize, which is the strongest and the most interesting.  Then I look for a word or a term or a short phrase that epitomizes the idea that will also be intriguing.  Sometimes it takes several tries.  What’s currently titled Gestern was originally called Vienna and has changed six times so far.  I’m still not sure whether it’s going to stay where it is now or not.  Radialloy was retitled multiple times, and was called Never be Shaken for almost a year (for reasons that no longer have anything to do with the story).   So sometimes, titling is a process, rather than a simple lightbulb moment.

There are also those rare titles that come to me first, begging for a story.  Myopia and Pandemonium were both of that type, and I worked out premises and themes for them.  But more often I have the story and must go hunting for the perfect title to go with it.

I love titling, but that doesn’t make it easy for me.  Sometimes I’m about ready to bash my poor, tired head against the computer screen in frustration while searching in vain for the perfect word or combination of words.  But the moment when you find the right one, the moment where suddenly it fits, and it’s perfect makes every second of frustration incredibly worth it, and it will make a huge difference in making people interested in your story.

 Now that you are standing in awe of her mature and knowledgeable creativity with writing, go check out her book on Amazon already! (Radialloy on Amazon) The excerpt is utterly delightful and reduced me to giggles with the utterance of the line... "The eagle has CRASHED!"

 You should also check out her Twitter page.