First off, notice the new digs here at seanobrienauthor.com. Had a bit of a hiccup with the last format--and by "hiccup," I mean it was damn near impossible to get stuff up and running, so we have a new look. Anyway.
First off, it's taken an amazingly long time for this novel to get going. For reasons I will not get into here, EDGE Publishing had some trouble after I signed the contract and work was delayed rather a long time on the purchased ms. On the one hand, while I understand and do not begrudge the folks over at EDGE their lives and the personal issues that got in the way, the fact remains that many, many months went by after the signing of the contract with no work nor communication on the ms. However, fences were mended, and things seem now on track for a June e-pub, followed up by a print version.
First off, the title. I had been living with the title Caretaker for virtually all of the novel's life, having settled on it rather early in writing and never doubting it. It fit well, it was a one-word title, and I was happy with it. Witness from my shocked expression my alarm when I discovered not only had a novel been written with the same title (not that unusual, I suppose) but that it was a science-fiction novel (okay, still not terribly unusual) with the same opening premise (now it's getting a little weird.) From the summary of this other novel, the plot diverges quickly from mine, but the similarities were too great to ignore. Once I learned of this, I contacted the folks from EDGE (with whom I am now in regular communication) and we mutually agreed that a title change was in order.
How to do this? I said, only partly in jest, that renaming the novel was akin to renaming one of my children. I'd lived with this title for so long I had come to think of the work as indelibly labeled Caretaker. This wasn't a case where I had two or three alternate titles and just went with this one--I had this one and this one only.
The new title came about largely as a sort of word-association game. I started with some thematic and Biblical quotes: Behold the Fire and Wood, for example, which went nowhere. That led me to The Stars Will Provide, and from there I turned to Guernica for inspiration. So I had Guernica is Silent, which led to Guernica Manifest, and the, finally, to Silent Manifest.
It will still be a long time before I can accept this new name for my child, though. I still think of her as Caretaker.
Be seeing you!
First off, it's taken an amazingly long time for this novel to get going. For reasons I will not get into here, EDGE Publishing had some trouble after I signed the contract and work was delayed rather a long time on the purchased ms. On the one hand, while I understand and do not begrudge the folks over at EDGE their lives and the personal issues that got in the way, the fact remains that many, many months went by after the signing of the contract with no work nor communication on the ms. However, fences were mended, and things seem now on track for a June e-pub, followed up by a print version.
First off, the title. I had been living with the title Caretaker for virtually all of the novel's life, having settled on it rather early in writing and never doubting it. It fit well, it was a one-word title, and I was happy with it. Witness from my shocked expression my alarm when I discovered not only had a novel been written with the same title (not that unusual, I suppose) but that it was a science-fiction novel (okay, still not terribly unusual) with the same opening premise (now it's getting a little weird.) From the summary of this other novel, the plot diverges quickly from mine, but the similarities were too great to ignore. Once I learned of this, I contacted the folks from EDGE (with whom I am now in regular communication) and we mutually agreed that a title change was in order.
How to do this? I said, only partly in jest, that renaming the novel was akin to renaming one of my children. I'd lived with this title for so long I had come to think of the work as indelibly labeled Caretaker. This wasn't a case where I had two or three alternate titles and just went with this one--I had this one and this one only.
The new title came about largely as a sort of word-association game. I started with some thematic and Biblical quotes: Behold the Fire and Wood, for example, which went nowhere. That led me to The Stars Will Provide, and from there I turned to Guernica for inspiration. So I had Guernica is Silent, which led to Guernica Manifest, and the, finally, to Silent Manifest.
It will still be a long time before I can accept this new name for my child, though. I still think of her as Caretaker.
Be seeing you!
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