Your favorite read may have almost had a different book title.
Book plans and titles often change. During the planning process for the Marc Wayne series, I had a loose idea of where the story progression would take the reader. However, reader feedback, reality, and changing trends dictated a different book title.
JK Rowling mapped out the Harry Potter series in the beginning. Each book has a distinct beginning, middle, and satisfying end. Taken together, there is a larger over-arching story that spans all the books in the Harry Potter series. Similarly, Lydia Sherrer planned each story in her Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus series with a full beginning, middle, and end. Put together, her series is individual adventures that, when strung together, tell a larger and multi-book story.
When Max Garwood suggested writing the Marc Wayne action-adventure series, we had a small collection of characters who would participate in world-saving adventures. Readers have enjoyed similar patterns by authors like Clive Cussler.
Book Titles That Almost Were
Our first book, The Patent, was a challenging delight to pen. The second book, and the second half to Marc Wayne’s initial international adventure, brings Marc back to hearth and home. While Gun Runner would be a fitting title for the second book in the series, the word gun was not well received in social media circles at the time. As a reader kindly pointed out, the title Gun Runner would result in blocked marketing.
Additionally, while the third book had been called The Embolus by coauthor Max Garwood and me during the writing process, reader feedback was a hard no to that title. After all the great responses from readers regarding their opinion on titles, subtitles, and covers, I will always invite readers to partner with me in deciding such important choices.
For The Embolus, readers said
- What’s an embolus?
- How do you spell that?
- I would never look that up because I don’t know what it is, how to pronounce the word, or how to spell it.
- Ewwwww! This mostly from nurses who knew what an embolus is.
Thanks to our smart readers, Gun Runner was set aside as a title and Secrecy Order got reader thumbs-up.
Also, thanks to smart reader opinions, The Embolus was wisely chucked in favor of the far better title, Unnatural Cause.
For additional behind-the-scenes tea about Book 1 in the Marc Wayne Action-adventure series, The Patent, listen in to this short podcast with fellow author Sarah Hamaker.
