The story of a title
This is a question my kids asked me, so I thought I’d answer it here.
The working title for Swallow Me, NOW! was Sam’s Solution as it tells of the solution Sam came up with to her problem with bullying. At every step of the way, it was suggested that it be changed. I admit that I wasn’t completely happy with that title, but I couldn’t think of anything better.
When we sent the manuscript to beta readers, one of the questions we asked was “Can you suggest a title for this book?”. We had a lot of great ideas, including:
- Defeating the Bullies
- Stay Strong
- Sam’s New Beginning
- You’re Not Alone
- The Evil Genius’ Daughter
- Overcoming Your Fears
All excellent suggestions, however none jumped out at me as being the title for this book. Some of them are sparking ideas for future stories too. But not quite right.
It wasn’t until we started doing the layout for the cover that Julieann and I emailed back and forth with different title ideas and Julieann even did some mock ups with different titles. One that she came up with was Swallow Me Up, NOW!. I liked that one but it didn’t read quite smoothly enough, so we dropped the Up and the book now had a title.
The title comes from one of the early scenes in the book where Sam comes into the classroom and wishes the grown would open up and swallow her as she doesn’t being the centre of attention.
