Friday Tea Time and Titles with J. A. Campbell

Today’s tea is one of my recent favorites.  Twinnings Pumpkin Spice Chai Tea.  There is much love for this tea.

This tea was a gift from the Irish Sailor.  Every now and again he does really sweet things like bring  home random things he thinks I will like.  He doesn’t like me to tell everyone though so it’s a secret.  Don’t tell him I told you.

I like Twinnings tea in general and I’ll be talking about their Irish Breakfast tea one of these days, but today is for pumpkin and chai.

I’ve found that chai spices and pumpkin compliment each other, after all many of the spices found in chai are found in traditional pumpkin pie.  A couple of years ago I combined the two, adding chai mix (not the bag tea but the actual premixed stuff) into my pumpkin pies and a local favorite was created.  I’ve been asked to make them almost every Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas since then.  So when the Irish Sailor came home with chai and pumpkin I was extremely happy.  This is a heavier tea and tastes best with cream or milk and sugar.  To me the milk and sugar bring out the flavors.  I’m very sad though because I am almost out.  I went through this box of tea very quickly.

Ok, enough of that.  Now onto Titles with… me 🙂

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Titles are kind of the bane of my existence.  My story folder is full of titles such as Meg 1 and Nightmare 1 and 2 and horse adventure and Halloween story.  Yeah, I mostly know what they are but horse adventure doesn’t have quite the same ring as Arabian Dreams and Meg 1 isn’t quite as good as Senior Year Bites.  One of my novels, now titled Restless Nights, was Kat modern for seven years.  Yes… seven… I was actually done with the novel and starting into the second by the time I thought of the name Restless Nights.  Of course, when it came to me, I also got the title for the second, Shattered Days.   So sometimes they come to me, but it can take a while.

Imagine my horror when my publisher asks me for a title and I only have a month to come up with one.  Fortunately, she’s going to help me with that, so I am somewhat relieved.

I don’t know why I have such a hard time naming things.  http://www.behindthename.com/ and http://surnames.behindthename.com/

have pretty much saved my stories from characters all named Adair and John and Sue.   Actually, I’m not sure I have a Sue, I do have a John in Senior Year Bites.  I’ve used Adair 4 times that I can think of and he was originally a character in Arabian Dreams.  I renamed that character Galen when I rewrote it the second to last time and alas… he didn’t make it into the final rewrite.  However, to those of you who miss Galen/Adair… I have plans for him, never fear.

I’m digressing.

I came up with the title for Arabian Dreams because the main horse is based off of my Arabian Mare and the original character used to have prophetic dreams.  That also didn’t make it into the final version, but so far the title has stuck and I really do like it.  The title for Senior Year Bites was kind of a whim.  I think I sort of dreamed it, and sort of pulled it out of… ehhem…

People tell me they love it, which is funny because I was never sold on the title, but it has grown on me.  (That’s uncomfortable, let me tell you).  The Restless Nights and Shattered Days titles came to me in that half awake-half asleep state one spring.  It woke me up early on a day I was supposed to be sleeping in.  Ending seven years of torment was worth the lost sleep however and I think I even got some writing in that day.

I think I need to come up with a better method of picking titles.

I’d love to hear from my fellow writers on how they pick their titles.   I’d love to hear from anyone on their thoughts about titles (and character names).

Until next week I wish you happy trails and a good cuppa.

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