The above title as usual may confuse readers and I confess I could have stated it lot more elegantly and writerly. I have read columns and blogs on how to drill down and find the central core or theme of your work/your book. In other words, WHAT ARE YOU REALLY WRITING ABOUT? WHY ARE YOU WRITING YOUR BOOK?
I will confess that I've always enjoyed reading about writing, the tricks of the trade, so to speak. And I have learned things in the books and magazines and e-posts. Not much that I've actually used, but that's my fault.. I am hard headed and conceited. I like to visualize myself as a Grandma Moses or Primitive Naturalist of literature.
Part of it is that writing has always come easily to me. And when you've done it as long as I have, not sold but written, writing is no big deal. "WWWM" has attracted readers and I hope will attract readers after i'm gone, but it follows virtually NO laws of commercial or literary fiction. I like to think of it as a literary Bumblebee. It should not work, not be able to fly, but for some readers it does.
I have no idea why it works, or what it's about except the great adage: NEVER MARRY A PRETTY WOMAN.
HOWEVER...once in a very rare while I completely misunderstand why I am writing a book, the point or moral of it. And it matters.
Consider "Tis A Far, Far Better thing" with the cover of a guy on the gallows. It didn't sell much, aroused some interest but not much. I know there are valid reasons for that. It had an unusual hero/protagonist: an emotionally stunted guy who has never been able to love or trust any woman since the deaths of his family at an early age.
Killing any chance of a millennial readership- he makes his living firing people and destroying dying companies. He is a Capitalist in capital letters and believes he's the Good Guy in the story.
And he's hooked up with an attractive artist and New Age Obama follower who has used sex to claw her way out of poverty and is still having sex with other guys. She's a lot more liberated than even your usual Chick-Lit heroine who lives free and wild until she meets The One.
I've always loved Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" and since this story is about a man who's never experienced love finding it for the first time and learning he can't have it, it was a logical step to have him make the ultimate sacrifice and give up the woman he loves so she can have the man she loves.
Therefore: the title and the cover.
Unfortunately, the "tale of two cities" motif only occupies the last 10 percent or less of the book. If I hadn't fallen in love with the image of the guy on the scaffold I would have realized it sooner.
Self sacrifice for love is NOT what the book is about. I think if you read the book and don't look at the last tenth, it's easy to see what it's really about. You have a good looking, sexually active guy who falls into what he assume is lust. It's the only thing he's ever known. He pursues the girl to get her into bed, does get her into bed, and she meets his friends and they have a fairly enchanted sexual holiday until they both have to go to work in different states and different time zones.
But they keep coming back together. For weekends or vacations or one night stands - in Ponte Vedra or Miami or Paris. And their time together gets longer. Until it's three years later, They see other people but like two magnets they keep being drawn together. It frightens his friends who see what's happening and know that he has never been crushed by a love gone bad.
Eventually for purely practical reasons he asks her to move in with him. AND IT HITS THE FAN. She vanishes for awhile and when she returns he has to face the fact for the first time when she's not with him, she's having sex with other men. He's always known it. just like he can have sex with other women, but he's never had to face the truth. And he finds out he doesn't like it - AT ALL!
The story keeps going with some ups and downs and twists and turns. But it's not about
sacrifice. It's about HOW MEN FALL IN LOVE.
There's an old saying that women trade sex for love, and men trade love for sex.Which fits in with my beliefs. There are billions of men and women on the planet so if you want to argue that men can fall into love with the exchange of glances across a crowded room, I wouldn't argue. But most men, I think, fall in lust first and if they can indulge in a sexual relationship, love usually sneaks up on them.
So... the title is misleading,the cover is misleading, and the sales copy is misleading.
Which is why I'm bringing it out with a new cover, a new title and new sales copy. But, as far as I can tell, I'm not changing a word in the book itself. I never spell out the core of the novel, the theme or moral, but I hope most readers will pick up on this if they're not distracted by that damned hangman cover.
All of which is to say unless you're a completist collector of my work - Pray God there is at least one such creature in the universe -and you've already read the book, don't bother to buy the new version.
Below is the new title and cover, I'm putting it out on Amazon this to see if I get a different sales reaction this time.
