I've worked most of the Thanksgiving holiday (while not on the road or taking care of a teen who had four wisdom teeth yanked) on Erin's edits of Seward's Issue. Already, murky plot points have vanished, the main character suffers more (a good thing, apparently), and some stupid head hopping has vanished.

Naming your book is hard. We all know there's a 90% chance, if bought, the title will change again. But you want the damn thing to be catchy enough to snag you an agent and buyer in the first place. While we liked "Seward," and she sure has issues, and is herself an issue of the more famous Dr. Seward (see--don't you want to read my book now?), the title wasn't catchy. It did not denote this was a mystery, nor a paranormal one. Moreover, according to the perky young YA agent, NO VAMPIRES ALLOWED. She liked the monster that does appear, but...hmmm, how do we get across that although the main character has a loose connection to vampires, this is NOT A VAMPIRE BOOK. (You'd think they were passe or something).

The sequel, already in progress as my Nanowrimo project, is "A Tangle of Limbs," and most people thought that one intriguing. (Um, NO VAMPIRES there, either). So the "A (blank) of (blank)" format seemed workable for a series. Erin pointed out in her edits--this book has a lot of ghosts hanging over people's heads, not to mention the somewhat ghostly nature of the monster. I could go on with the metaphors, but the husband liked the word "Discord" and the teen said, "Stick with ghosts. It would catch my eye."

So--we're going with "A Discord of Ghosts." Lots of ghostly things, real and metaphoric, hang out here, and yes, they do fight one another. I'm still on target for January 1 to get the final, polished edition finished for pitching.

Alas, only about 13K for NaNoWriMo, but I enjoyed the work and my pals in the Augusta Writer's Group. You guys rock! Thank you for being supportive to each other not just in November, but year round.