I read and hear all the time that writing is hard. Once upon a time, it could be. But that's what practice is for. Now I generally find writing easy. Rewriting and editing are a bit more work. The final editing decisions can be tough. But chapter and book titles? For me, those can be real work, so I use placeholders. For instance, when I needed to reference Book III of the Dragon Lord Chronicles at the end of Book II, I had no idea what it would be called until just before publication. The working title was Albanian Internet Kittehs. Because 2016.
Here are the working chapter titles from Book III (Into Otherness). Some of them survived. Some of them did not, hopefully for obvious reasons. But some of those I replaced are personal faves. What do you think? If they don't make sense, you really need to go watch some old Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes. Great cartoons work on all levels, from kid to adults, and Rocky & Bullwinkle does.
1. The Sword and the Stone 2. Reunion 3. Flubber Gas Would Help 4. Where the Spirit Walks Alone 5. Bullwinkle's Burrito 6. Boris Ain't Badanoff 7. Will Natasha Prove Fatale? 8. Rocky Thinks You're a Squirrel 9. Will Dudley Do Right by Them? 10. Aesop's Fractious Faerie Tales 11. Mr. Peabody Gets a Black Belt 12. Hide and Go Seek 13. The Flying Casket 14. Dancing on Air, or the Pottsylvania Polka 15. Hither, Thither, and Beyonce 16. Grandma's Feather Bed 17. The Missing Moustache 18. A Rock and Roll Banned 19. It's the Little Things 20. Fewmets and Fish 21. Dudley Doright Arrives 22. I Just Met a Girl Named Rozafa 23. Brilliant Chapter Title 24. The Art of Subtitlety 25. In Which Pooh Eats Piglet by Mistake 26. The Case of the Young Turks 27. The Valley 28. On Edge 29. That Thing You Do 30. In and Out of Otherness 31. Revenge of the Jedi Moose 32. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 33. Ta da! 34. Mama Fu 35. Another Day, Another Abyss 36. Inconceivable! 37. A Last Hurrah 38. To Weep, Perchance to Dream
Into Otherness is due out in late November of 2017, around the Thanksgiving holiday. Published by Nine Realms Press. Copyright 2017, Miles O'Neal, Round Rock, TX.