I May Be Biased, But I Think This Novel Sounds Interesting (Bad Book Title?)

 

The Bonnay family is gathering for their parents’ fortieth anniversary, but all is not balloons and streamers. Aubrey’s dad has gotten himself arrested—again; her rich brother’s wife is acting cold and standoffish, and no one knows if little sister Cassandra can pull her hand out of her latest victim’s pocket long enough to show up.

The night's supposed to be perfect. Aubrey’s long-time boyfriend has something “very important” to talk to her about, just when she’d given up hope that he’d ever pop the question. She’s touched that he’s chosen her parents’ anniversary for the big ask; not that Mister and Mrs. Bonnay’s union is anything to emulate.

Through all the family turmoil, the party goes as well as expected. Dad gets bailed out and returns home as jovial if he’d just strolled to the mailbox. Everyone loves good old Jerry—until someone doesn’t.

The police arrest Aubrey’s mother for murdering him, a preposterous proposition, and it’s left to Aubrey to convince the cops of her mother’s innocence, all the while disguising her own life of crime.

Aubrey doesn’t know who killed Dad – the list of suspects is a mile long, including her own family. But she’ll take any step, including the most drastic one, to protect her mother.

 

As book blurbs go, this is one of my better ones. It sure sounds like this novel's got it all ~ a dysfunctional family, murder, secrets, a whodunit. Know how many copies it's sold since its 2021 publish date? Three. And one of those copies was purchased by me (to store on my Kindle). So, realistically, two. (I don't count.)

Why? Granted, I did no advertising, because in 2021 I didn't even know book advertising was a thing. Hmmm, maybe that's why, now that I think about it. It's kind of late now.

It could also be the title. I'm notoriously bad at titling my works. One of my best titles was created before I even started writing the story. I had a trial subscription to Canva that was about to run out, so I quickly whipped up a book cover from one of Canva's stock images and slapped, "New Kaitlyn" on it. That was just dumb luck.

With The Apple, I agonized over the title, trying and rejecting about 20 different iterations. Finally, I stopped to ponder the background theme of the story, and that was that the main character stood in harsh judgement of her criminal father, yet this professional, highly respected woman was a white collar criminal by night. So, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree", as the saying goes. (It seemed like a eureka moment at the time.)

In hindsight, though, what the heck does "The Apple" mean to a casual buyer? Nothing. Or the wrong thing, as in "temptation", which is not what the book is about at all. Should I go back and change it? Doubtful. After four years and two sales, I don't think it matters. It's a shame. I've just read the novel's preview, and the writing is solid. It draws a reader in. 

The Apple was my third novel. I'd made so many mistakes with my first two, and surprisingly, they were different mistakes. Whereas the first book suffered from "who the hell cares about this part" syndrome (that's what comes from trying to hit a certain word count), the second, oh, my God, turned into a heaping pile of...back story. I don't know what I was thinking; maybe I wasn't thinking. That second novel was so putrid, I eventually unpublished it.

By the time I wrote The Apple, my vapid brain had finally absorbed a few things ~ keep the story moving, weave in back story in small droplets. I still included a subplot, because "everyone says" subplots are vital. But at least my subplot still involved the main character; not some secondary player no one cared about. While I still planned to query agents who demanded a predetermined word count, this time I didn't pad. With a family saga, which is what this was, it was easy to expand the story by including other family members' stories. 

Once I gave up on querying and decided to self-publish, I naively thought I could just slap the book online and people would discover it. Surprisingly, it doesn't work that way. 

The cover could be an issue, too, but I'm rather partial to it. Me being me, it's not my first cover. The original had a fuzzy woman's face in the background, holding out an apple:

Again, though, that played into the "temptation" theme, which was misleading. I prefer the current cover, which suggests a woman hiding her true self. 

I've only ever written four full-length novels. The rest are novellas, which frankly, don't sell. That's another reason why it's a shame The Apple languishes at the bottom of Amazon's book listings. I did a search once on Amazon for "The Apple", and I believe I had to scroll through 13 or 14 screens before it showed up. Even books that didn't have "apple" in the title came up before mine. How does that work? 

I've tried various ways to come up with titles for my works ~ a book title generator, searching famous phrases and riffing off the promising ones, even AI (AI is even less imaginative than me). One would logically think that if you can write an entire novel, a two or three-word title would be a breeze. That's a hilarious misconception. 

I'm seriously considering changing the title (to something), then slapping it up for free for a couple of days. KDP's free book promotion has never worked for me, but it's not only free to the reader, but free promotion for the author, and you know me ~ I don't turn down free things. When it doesn't move my book, at least I won't be beating my head against the wall.

Clearly, I have way too much free time on my hands, if I'm pondering changing a book from 2021. Free time only gets me into trouble.