And the next book's title is ...

Last week Wade and I had a rejuvenating vacation on Mt. Desert Island, Maine, filled not only with R&R but also with many book-related activities! I had a signing of The Sense of Reckoning, which is set on MDI, at the venerable Sherman’s Books in Bar Harbor; restocked the Reckoning supply in the “gift niche” at The Claremont Hotel, which serves as the model for the fictional Lynams Point Hotel; checked out the venue for the talk I will be giving with MDI Fire of ’47 researcher Sean Cox at Bar Harbor’s Jesup Library on October 27; and snapped a photo of The Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels on a shelf in the Southwest Harbor Public Library, which also makes a brief appearance in The Sense of Reckoning.

We also visited friends at their home on what we fondly refer to as Porkchop Island, which could make a great setting for the next Ann Kinnear book—what’s more suspenseful than an isolated locale complete with sand dunes and a backhoe appropriate for digging (and burying)?

Most of my time, though, was spent finishing up a draft of my next (non-Ann Kinnear) book to send off to my editor, Jen Blood. (Check out Jen’s Erin Solomon thriller series—highly recommended!) My next book features a child (and, later, teen) dealing with the physical and emotional consequences of her ability to affect others through the power of her mind. My working title for it was A Mind Diseased:

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
​
That would have continued my practice of using Shakespeare quotes for titles (“the sense of death” is fromMeasure for Measure, and “the sense of reckoning” is from Henry V). However, when spoken out loud, it requires an oddly portentous delivery (“A Mind … Diseased”) to avoid having it sound like A Mine Diseased(perhaps the story of the Chilean miners?). Plus, since this was a different cast of characters, and, I hope, the start of a second series, it seemed as if a different title theme would be preferable.

Thanks to my creative and marketing-minded husband, Wade Walton, I now have the title for my next book:Rock Paper Scissors. (Possible sequel title: Hangman.)

I can’t wait for Walton Marketing to provide the blurb for RPS so I can share that with you!

Cheers!
Matty