By any other name...

Although occasionally the titles on our books come easily, in some cases the editor and author hash things out at length. At other times, the title just gets tweaked a little.

For my March release—book number ten of the Safe Harbor Medical miniseries for Harlequin American—my original title was Hitting the Baby Jackpot. That made sense to me, since the heroine gets pregnant with triplets. However, every time my editor looked at it, she saw the words “Hitting the Baby.” Since we don’t want to encourage child abuse, we changed it to The Baby Jackpot.

I recently finished my June release, number eleven in the miniseries. The original title was The I’ll-Never-Marry-Again Club, based on the idea that the hero and heroine are both widowed and neither plans to remarry. However, what brings them together is his desire to have children, and her willingness to be an egg donor. The editor requested more title ideas, I sent her a short list, and we agreed on His Baby Dream.

Even after publication, titles aren’t carved in stone. I’ve been revising (sometimes extensively) some of my older books for reissue as ebooks. Last month, I was working on a light ghost story that I originally called The Ghost and Cheri. My then-editor changed the title to A Ghost of a Chance.

One little problem: on Amazon, there are more than thirty books by that title.

How is anyone going to discover my revised book if I retain that name? So when I post it this week for Kindle and Nook, I’m using my first-choice title, The Ghost and Cheri.

In addition to a haunted house, there’s a curse, Cheri’s orphaned seven-year-old nephew, and a hunky hero who investigates the paranormal. I’ve set a Halloween special price of 99 cents till October 31.

Along the way, I realized that I’d explored a similar theme—a single mom moving into a haunted house with a young child—in my much scarier and sexier paranormal romantic suspense Touch Me in the Dark. As an additional Halloween treat, I’ll be offering Touch Me in the Dark free on Amazon October 6-10. It’s a gift to my readers and I hope you’ll enjoy it. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download a free app for your computer, tablet or cell phone at Free Kindle app.

Happy reading!
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