What’s in a name? pt. 2

In my quest to delay actually starting on the final draft of my most recent novel, I give you a blog post.

Last year I received many questions about my last name, Spendlove, so I went into that (it happens to be my maiden name) along with why people choose pen names in this post.

Now I’m going to talk a bit about novel names, or more specifically why I just changed the name of my second novel in the War of the Seasons series from The Hunter to The Half-blood.

I had been debating swapping book titles between book two and book three for a while once it became clear that book two was not as focused on The Hunter as I’d previously thought it would be.

*Caution* Mild spoilers for books two and three from here on out.

When I originally came up with names for the books, I decided on “The Hunter” for book two, because it was supposed to be about saving the Hunter. I decided on The Half-Blood for book three because it was supposed to be about saving the Half-bood. I chose The Human for book one because it started with an H and sounded nice with the other two book titles. I do like alliteration, just in case you hadn’t figured that out yet. 😉

After writing The Hunter I realized swapping titles might be appropriate.

The Human is in reference not just to Story but to what the story needs – a human/someone from another world. Essentially everyone is after the human, and the human, or rather, “other-worlder” is the focal point of the story.

In book 2, the half-bood, NOT the hunter, is actually the focal point of the story. The same could be said about book three, the focal point is actually the hunter, NOT the half-blood.

My only hesitation in swapping the titles was that for the past 9 months I’ve been talking about Book 2: The Hunter. But really, that’s a small thing, and the title swap made a lot more sense.

So I suppose I’ll be writing The Hunter again, eh? Unless, of course, I find a better title for book 3. You never know, my last two books have taken unpredictable turns – there’s a good chance book 3 will as well. 😉

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Here are a couple links of interviews and podcasts I’ve been on over the last several months:

1- Not writing related, but a blog post that my friend Caitlin & I featured heavily in while running the Disney Princess 1/2 marathon (yes, that mass of curly dark hair in the first pic in the blog post is me). Why yes, we were running as Rapunzel and Mother Gothel. 😀
http://attractionsmagazine.com/blog/2012/02/26/disneys-princess-half-marathon-2012/

2- My very first interview ever from Origins 2011

3- Mormonism in Sci-Fi panel at Dragon*Con 2011

And a couple great links to other blogs and posts that I enjoyed & found quite helpful:

1- Withholding the Love, by Aaron Allston
Excerpt: A while back, it was mentioned to me that a colleague, an SF author, had said
that she did not consider self-published authors to be her peers.

I’ll explain why. At length.

2- J.K. Rowling and Self-Publishing.

3- Gender assumptions in writing (Warning, there is some strong language).

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Lastly, need a copy of my books? As it happens you can buy them here.