Book Title Confidential

I Changed My Book Titles… Again. I recently changed the titles of both of the books I'm working on. Yes, again. At this point, my titles have had more identities than a witness in the mob protection program.

I'll reveal one of them...I've got a great title for the new JR Johnson novel, but I'm not telling anyone until it comes out.

Meanwhile...


The new humor book? The original title was I Shouldn’t Say This Out Loud.

It was an okay title, but it was too long. 

Meanwhile, everywhere I look, the bestselling books, and blockbuster movies  have crisp, memorable, three-word titles.

The Shawshank Redemption.
The Bourne Identity.
​The DaVinci Code.
The Princess Bride.

Eat Pray Love.
The Big Sleep.
The Green Mile.
The Maltese Falcon.
Best In Show.


​I especially looked at comedy book titles:

Born Standing Up....Steve Martin
​Is This Anything?....Jerry Seinfeld
Dad Is Fat....Jim Gaffigan
The Comedy Bible....Judy Carter

If you expand the acceptable title length to from one-to-four words, you pretty much get everything. Most Disney movies are now one word.

If Ernest Hemingway now wrote For Whom The Bell Tolls, his publisher  would force him to change the title to something like: Bell Tower Murders..

Hey, Bell Tower Murders is a good title!
Hallmark Channel...if you're listening, I'm willing to work up an outline.
I could throw in a gazebo, maybe the murders could happen during the holiday season? The crime buster: an attractive young widow who runs a high end smoothie shop and solves murders in her spare time.

Note: I would deny, under oath, ever watching the Hallmark Channel. A friend...Bob...told me about it.

Anyhow, enter my new title: Mumbling Toward Greatness.

It's a humor book, and I'm also narrating the audiobook version. That's where "Mumbling" comes from in the title.

More on this later, and the logic behind the cover.

The JR Johnson novel will come out first, then Mumbling Toward Greatness. The novel is written by a different guy: J.P. Flynn. 

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