A CURSE OF ASH AND IRON and…the title

Okay, so now that I’ve been back from vacation for a bit, and sort of gotten my life all back in order again, I can return to my posts about CURSE. The book is still getting great reviews, even has some people talking about it on Goodreads. NINE HUNDRED people have added it to their Goodreads lists — To Be Read, or reviewed, or just read. That’s amazing to me! 900 people!

Anyway, the title. If anyone remembers, WAY back when it was a manuscript, it had another title. The original title was SMOKE AND MIRRORS. If you’ve read the book, you get why it was the title (although, I think I ended up taking out that direct reference before it went to print).

As so often happens in publishing, a title the author submits with is often NOT the title that ends up on the book. When my agent first sold it to Strange Chemistry, one of the editor’s requests was a title change. Apparently, some guy named Neil Gaiman had a book of short stories by the same name, and they wanted to avoid confusion…

Yeah.

My agent and I wracked our brains thinking of new titles. Things like MIDNIGHT and  MASQUERADE and all kinds of other crazy stuff. I think we had about a dozen rejected choices before I came up with the approved title. It started out as CURSED, which kind of reminds me of some kind of werewolf story or something. But in the end we got there. I actually like it better than the original, and it gives me something to build on for future novels of a SIMILAR nature *hint hint*

What do you all think? Like the title or no?

Walt Disney World and Me

We had an AWESOME time in Disney! Ten days of GO GO GO (and a little downtime — naps are necessary to survive in Disney!)

I DID end up with two Vera Disney bags. What you need to know about them if you go is that NOT every store that carries them has every Disney pattern. Our first night I went to Downtown Disney, which is like a big shopping place with restaurants. We took the boat from our hotel right to it. I found some Vera there, and then later also at Epcot, but since I had already bought two, I didn’t get anymore. Getting everything we bought home was hard enough!

I got two Midnight with Mickey items, the Smartphone wristlet (I have another in a different pattern, and LOVE it!) and a Mini Hipster:

I saw the laser cut Mickey bag, but didn’t see the pink quilted one anywhere. But we were so busy, I didn’t have a chance to really look. SO MUCH to see!

Yeah, I bought pink and sparkly Minnie ears. What about it?

We also visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal. While we didn’t love Universal in general as much as Disney, HP was AMAZING. Best part of the park, IMO.

The dragon on top of Gringott’s breathes fire every once in awhile. And even on the ground, you can feel the heat. Awesome! I bought my own wand in Ollivanders!

And… BUTTERBEER!!!

We had a great time, the magic of Disney and Harry Potter were definitely in force. Didn’t want to come home, and now that we are we want to go back.

Have a Magical Day!

I’m back — so where are my blog posts!

I know, I’ve been back from vacation for over a week now, and I haven’t blogged! What is WRONG with me! Well, I was catching up on post-vacation stuff, like laundry and bills and some other stuff that had been put off until we were home. So I’m nearly all done, and I will post some blogs soon. We had a great time at Disney, and the time we spent at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was AMAZING.

I’ll be back on track by the end of the week. I think.