Why I'm finally turning tail, back to the original book title chosen by my publishers ...
A great title can be the making of a book - and in particular, the making of book sales.
When Jane Blonde Sensational Spylet was first published, people in the know in the publishing industry told me I had the best title of the year (and they also liked 'Vampirates'', which I do too. Clever!). He seemed to be right. JB sold very well.
But book titles can be hit and miss affairs, and not all are created equal. Some are born, like Jane Blonde. Some are created for mass market appeal, like the many My (fill in the gap) Animal/Fairy/Horse series.
And some, I've discovered, are made backwards, from tail to whiskery nose.
My first major title, Jane Blonde, Sensational Spylet, I came up with myself with some help from Ian Fleming. It stuck. Then, through the writing of the seven-book Jane Blonde series and a World Book Day novella, I became accustomed to chucking around ideas for titles with my publishers, Macmillan Children's Books.
Sometimes I'd suggest the title up-front before I started storytelling. Sometimes we'd toss it around between us as the book neared completion. Occasionally, they'd suggest a title and ask if I could match the story to it. They were wonderful titles, and I love every single one as it fits the book brilliantly from contents to cover. It was much the same with the Doghead books, and although I had some back and forth on titles with other publishers for my adult fiction, Macmillan and I were always in full agreement on these children's books.
So when they asked me to write a new 'girl' series and gave me a theme to consider, I had no hesitation in coming up with the most original theme-based story and character I could conjure up. I pitched a new series called, in my mind, 'The Nine Lives of Matilda Peppercorn' with each individual book named after a breed of cat. We all loved the concept, the early chapters, and the fun new character. Series bought, contracts signed, job done.
It was only later, once the first book was fully drafted, that I discovered in a random conversation what the publishers were now calling the book/series. Catgirl, they said. What now? I said. Then - no, I said.
I hated it. It just didn't feel like my book. The publishing engines ground to a halt, and over several months. we battled with the title.
Macmillan tried very, very hard to make it work. They really did. They even brainstormed a new title that didn't mention cats. Unfortunately, I loathed it even more than Catgirl. I know they were committed to this name, because I accidently found it on Amazon in a 'placeholder' a few years ago, but I couldn't live with a title for my beloved characters that made me feel nauseous and stare at my feet in embarassment whenever I talked about it.
And so, heart-broken (on both sides, I believe, because publshers didn't and don't make these decisions lightly) and with an exchange of some dramatic emails, I pulled out of the deal.
I look back now and wonder if it was complete madness to back out of a multi-book contract with a major publisher over what was, on the surface of it, just a difference of opinion over a name. Perhaps.
The other part of me, though, knows it was the right thing to do - because what I was really challenging was not the title, but my creative freedom and the ability to take my character and story in a direction nobody knew was coming. Not even me, although I could sense it. Even at the time, I could feel that this crazy blue-haired girl would take me down creative trails I'd not even dreamed of, on important themes I hadn't imagined.
You see, the reason I didn't like the name 'Catgirl' was because that's really not all that she is. And I knew that if I went along with it, I wouldn't be able to write the rest of Matilda Peppercorn's story in the way I wanted to. Correction, she wanted to. Non-cat sections would be edited out. Bigger storylines that strayed into the unknown would be shortened and then steered in a different direction. Effectively - and I don't blame them for this as this is what publishers have to do - my beloved character and her stories would become a product, and I'd have to go where the market and market forces sent me.
Back then, I could only mumble that it wasn't really where she was going, and while I didn't know exactly where that was, I knew it wasn't down a narrow channel, sized and shaped for a specific market segment. Writing it 'true' was more important to me than writing to be published, even if that meant (and it did) significant pain, hurt and loss of income for all parties concerned.
In a way, this couldn't have happened at a better time. It was the cresting sunrise of the e-book era, the growth of indie publishing arena, the rise of technology and systems that would 'democratise publishing' (a popular zeitgeist cry). I tried my hand at all of it, with varying degrees of success and even more extremes of failure, and I published the first Matilda Peppercorn book under a couple of different titles, trying to find and feel the one that best reflected the story and the brilliant girl at the heart of it.
I toyed with calling it Tilly and the Whatever, but then another series with that title came out, published by my own former publisher, no less! It's my belief that ideas often float around waiting for a co-creator, and this time they got there first. No biggie. I shrugged and moved on.
In the meantime, I just kept writing. I wrote that girl's adventures of magical mayhem in the way that they wanted to be written. As biiiiig chunky novels (which, btw, I'm told girls don't read any more). As bonkers tail-tales of friendship and family. As mad, epic, mystical journeys. As an interweaving, crazy history of a girl who's a legend in her own lifetime. And that's what it finally became: a four book series called charting The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn: Witch Hunter (at the time, although she was the Hunted rather than the Hunter), Toadstone, Questioner, Trinity.
When I finally finished writing TLOMP. I actually snivelled a bit. You spend a lot of time with your peeps over four biggish books, and you miss them when they're gone. But it's what drives you as a creative. Even if nobody ever read it or appreciated a quartet of large, zany novels that are not short as the market requires, I had to finish the story for my own satisfaction.
And so finish it I did ... until, a bit before and during the pandemic, I brought Tilly P together with my other characters, including Jane Blonde, in an ensemble series called SWAGG. Which is when I finally opted to go back to that original name that Macmillan wanted for the Matilda Peppercorn series: The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn, Catgirl.
Why?
Because in that particular book, the first in the quartet, it turns out that's what she is. It then provides a tag or nickname for her throughout all the books.
Because now that I've completed the whole thing, I know she can't get stripped of her other considerable powers to fit a certain notion of who she's meant to be.
Because now it feeeeeeeeels right. I know my characters more by how they feel than anything else, and I just know that Tilly would approve. In the beginning? Not so much. But now? Superbly excellent.
Because above all else, Matilda Peppercorn is just - divinely and haphazardly and with flaws and claws galore - herself.
And because I'm just myself, too. A writer. A creative. A storyteller who just needed to finish the tale that had grown inside me, in whatever fantastical directions it wanted us to go.
So with props and apologies to Macmillan Children's Books, here she is. Catgirl. SWAGG member (and narrator of the third SWAGG title which takes Tilly's story even further). But most of all, uniquely Matilda Peppercorn.
What's in a name? Turns out it can be a complete adventure. A bit of a legend, actually.
Jill's books are available in e-book, paperback and hardback from Amazon and everywhere you can buy books, including your local indie bookstore. Go to jillmarshallbooks.com for more.
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