DAVID BARRIE
Friday, 19th March 2010. On titles as brands.
Time to say a fond farewell to the working title of the second Franck Guerin novel. For something like six months I toyed with a manuscript entitled “Bleached”, but it has now been decided that the definitive title of the book will be Night-Scented.
The fundamental reason for this choice is the desire to establish a form of continuity with Wasp-Waisted: a hyphenated title; a reference to something that lies at the heart of the intrigue (Wasp-Waisted being the name of the magazine that keeps coming to the surface in the first book; Night-Scented being the name of a new perfume whose development is the cause of many a death in the second one); and – that godawful term – an attempt to brand the Franck Guerin series (titles that echo down entire series are scarcely unusual – even Ian Rankin was once thus packaged, with Knots & Crosses followed by Hide & Seek followed by Tooth & Nail – albeit the latter was renamed from the original Wolfman to fit the overall logic). Of course, the concern with branding is a little ironic, as one of the subjects touched on in Night-Scented is the rebranding of a terrorist organisation.
What is slightly worrying about this choice, however, is that it implies I’ll have to find a hyphenated title (constructed from a noun and a past participle) for any subsequent instalments in the Franck Guerin series. Still, creativity is supposed to thrive under constraint. That’s the whole point of the sonnet form, after all.
Time to say a fond farewell to the working title of the second Franck Guerin novel. For something like six months I toyed with a manuscript entitled “Bleached”, but it has now been decided that the definitive title of the book will be Night-Scented.
The fundamental reason for this choice is the desire to establish a form of continuity with Wasp-Waisted: a hyphenated title; a reference to something that lies at the heart of the intrigue (Wasp-Waisted being the name of the magazine that keeps coming to the surface in the first book; Night-Scented being the name of a new perfume whose development is the cause of many a death in the second one); and – that godawful term – an attempt to brand the Franck Guerin series (titles that echo down entire series are scarcely unusual – even Ian Rankin was once thus packaged, with Knots & Crosses followed by Hide & Seek followed by Tooth & Nail – albeit the latter was renamed from the original Wolfman to fit the overall logic). Of course, the concern with branding is a little ironic, as one of the subjects touched on in Night-Scented is the rebranding of a terrorist organisation.
What is slightly worrying about this choice, however, is that it implies I’ll have to find a hyphenated title (constructed from a noun and a past participle) for any subsequent instalments in the Franck Guerin series. Still, creativity is supposed to thrive under constraint. That’s the whole point of the sonnet form, after all.