Lets Talk Titles

 

Let’s Talk Titles

Do you start with one, or does it emerge organically from your writing process? How important is a title in shaping your project—or even selling it?

I’ve had titles arrive fully formed, like a gift from the muse, and others fight me all the way to final edits. And even then, I’m still second-guessing.

But let’s back up.

Take my story “Satan’s Spit,” nominated this year for an Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity. Sounds dramatic, maybe even dangerous, right?

The inspiration?

A meme about a bottle of Mercurochrome — that flaming red antiseptic from hell that haunted medicine cabinets in the ’70s, was repurposed as Satan’s Spit in a graphic online. I laughed. Then cringed. I can still feel the demonic sting. I remembered my grandmother asking, “Do you know how to dance?” before she dabbed it on my raw elbow.

Her question, that bottle, that pain? That’s how I ended up writing a Depression-era crime story involving blues music, a young girl passing as a boy to survive — and a murder. The title had to be Satan’s Spit. Nothing else burned quite right.

Sometimes a title comes first, and the story spins around it. Other times, it creeps in later.

Let me show you what I mean.

 

SHANE CLEARY MYSTERIES

1. Dirty Old Town is the first Shane Cleary mystery, set in 1970s Boston, when the city was gritty, polluted, and violent. I thought of the busing crisis, the Pogues, the Dropkick Murphys. The music gave me the mood — and the mood gave me the title.

2. Symphony Road

Named after the actual Boston street where a string of suspicious fires broke out. The novel’s about arson-for-profit. Sometimes the setting is the title.

3. Hush Hush

A mix of fact and fiction: I borrowed from Hush-Hush, the scandal rag in L.A. Confidential, and wove in the real-life murder of Andrew Puopolo and the legal fallout. Gossip, power, and justice — all in a whisper.

4. Liar’s Dice

Yes, it’s a dice game where deception is strategy, but it’s also a metaphor for every bad decision in the book.

5. The Big Lie

A tip of the fedora to Chandler’s The Big Sleep, but also a meditation on lies.

Got a ballot? This one’s been nominated for both an Anthony and a Shamus this year.

 

THE COMPANY FILES

1. The Good Man

Set in post-WWII Vienna. The title asks a question: Can you be a good man and still work for the Company, especially when your job is recruiting ex-Nazis to beat the Soviets? The Third Man and Vienna cast a long shadow here, but I wanted to show how moral ambiguity wasn’t just noir—it was U.S. policy.

2. The Naming Game

It’s McCarthy, the Red Scare, and writing for a movie studio. Who’s loyal? Who’s naming names? And who’s playing along to survive?

3. Devil’s Music

This one tormented me. I started with Diminished Fifth — a nod to both classical music theory and Lillian Hellman clever use of the Fifth Amendment. But it was too obscure, so I went full metal: think Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath,” inspired by Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War.” The two pieces of music are built around a tritone, aka diabolus in musica.

4. Eyes to Deceit (Coming November, fingers crossed)

This one fought me hard. It’s about the joint CIA/MI6 coup in Iran, 1953 — a geopolitical web of intrigue around oil, lies, and betrayal. With a subplot set in the Borscht Belt, no less. I had a dozen working titles. Some too dry, some too dramatic. I finally landed here. And it stuck.

So… How Important Is a Title?

It’s not everything. But it sure helps.

A good title sets the tone, signals the genre, and sometimes it’s lure a reader. Sometimes, it’s the one thing a reader remembers months later.

Just make sure it doesn’t sound like a lost IKEA product. (Diminished Fifth, I’m looking at you.)

So yes, titles matter. But if all else fails?

Find a weird childhood memory, or a grandmother with a sense of humor.

The story — and the title — will find you.