Trunk Stories. My Titles.

Many writers have what they call "trunk stories" and "trunk novels". These are works on which they labored with varying amounts of effort and time. But, for one reason or another, they fail to sell to any market. And thus they are transported to the gulag of "the trunk".

Back in the days before digital files all of our stories were typewritten and on paper. The place you put the unsold work was in a filing cabinet or in a trunk in the closet or on the floor or under the bed (etc.). Since the advent of word processors and desktop computers and laptops, we writers just relegate the unsold projects onto hard drives or disks or thumb drives where they gather whatever passes for dust in the unmined ether of the digital world.

I have mentioned before how one story I wrote went almost two decades as a part-time trunk story before I sold it. I liked the yarn and refused to give up on it. So now and again I would drag it out of the drawer (I started writing it before I had a computer) and would re-tool it and edit it and tighten it up. Eventually I did sell it for a tidy sum to an anthology at a major publisher. It was one trunk story that ended up finding a market. That short story in that anthology remains in print after 14 years. So it was good that I didn't give up on it, (even though the thieving editor has never paid royalties due and earned on the title since that time).

More years ago than I would like to admit I wrote a horror novel that was very dear to me. It was, in fact, the second novel that I wrote. The book went through several agents and was rejected time and again. Each time I would take the manuscript out and edit it and re-tool the book. I'm not sure which publishers saw it or which editors took a look at it because some of my agents were not, to put it mildly, forthcoming in how they conducted their business. (In contrast to my first agent--Richard Curtis--who kept me carefully apprised of where, when, who, how, and why.)

This novel was relegated often to trunk status, but every so often I would drag it out of the thumbnail cobwebs and tinker with the book. A few times I completely overhauled everything-- even basic parts of the plot. The only thing that remained constant in that work were the theme, the major characters, and the title. I loved that title, borrowed from a wonderful John Lennon song.

Finally, one of my agents was shopping the book around when a non-fiction book appeared on the best seller lists that had the exact title of my novel of ghosts and monsters. I texted my agent and wondered if I should give the book a new title. So for a while that's exactly what I did. Now, I have always had a hard time with titles. My books are mainly ideas and plots and characters to me and I often tackle them and have no idea at all what title will be appropriate when I finish. Not so with this book. From the fist chapter I knew exactly what I wanted the title to be: BEAUTIFUL BOY.

So, for a while I did change the title. But when that agent parted ways with me, I went right back to my original title. Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass if another writer came up with the same title for his book years after I wrote the first draft for mine. It's unfortunate, but frankly I had it before he did and no other title I was thereafter able to concoct delivered the thematic and emotional punch of that first one.

This is why my next novel, scheduled tentatively from some time in 2018 will be BEAUTIFUL BOY.