The Unique Title

The Unique Title seems to be one of those impossible, elusive things that only comes along once in a great while.

Not long ago in a blog post over at Romance Divas, I lamented the fact that the title Hunter’s Moon belonged to more than half a dozen other published works when my novella hit the electronic shelves. Oh well. Titles can’t be copyrighted, so it’s not as though having the same title as an existing work is amoral in some way, it’s just not ideal.

Sometimes titles come to me, like flashes of inspiration and I think, “Oh Wow! I’m an absolute genius!” Then I hurry to my web browser to look them up just to make sure no one has already taken them and 9 times out of 10, I’m crushed to find that my genius isn’t all that unique.

This happened with my second manuscript – a still unfinished historical I titled, The Baron’s Bride. It sounded so good, since the story is essentially about a young girl who becomes the bride of – you guessed it, a Baron! Of course, it’s been done. The book of the same title is quite old by publishing standards so a new book with the same title surely would not have rocked the boat, but nevertheless, to me that means, try again for something better.

A few weeks ago I was toying with titles and came up with a great medieval/historical title, Only for a Knight. Now there’s a title that begs for a great story. Well guess what? It’s already been done. Sigh.

The other morning round about 3:00 AM a brilliant flash of inspiration gave me Betty and the Beast. I even got out of bed to write that one down and then discovered it’s already a title at Ellora’s Cave. The plot idea I had was way different, but nevertheless, the title’s been used. Another deep sigh.

Oh well. I suppose I should be amused that my brain works well enough to come up with these little gems. I must be just as clever and smart as these other authors, I’m just a little bit slower on the uptake.