This month my bread-and-butter work (teaching English coummunication part-time at local colleges) started up, so I haven’t had so much time for blogging. I’ve been trying to put whatever energy that I have at the end of the day into my book projects, and I’m happy to report that I’ve finished a couple of drafts of my new adult novel, The Baseball Widow, and have made progress on a young adult novel, which is currently untitled. I’m not very good with titles, to tell you the truth (though I think The Baseball Widow is pretty good). Still waiting to hear from my agent!!
The y/a novel is an expansion of a long short story that was published in Cicada as “Pilgrimage.” I think that “Pilgrimage” worked as a title for a story – or for that story – but I think it needs a catchier, okay cooler, title to attract hip young readers. Also, I’ve added some characters and sub-plots. The narrator’s alter-ego is a manga character named Gadget Girl. Some of the action takes place in Paris, and the overall theme is body image. Using these elements, here are some titles I came up with:
My Big Fat French Summer Vacation
Gadget Girl Goes to Paris
I am Beautiful
Exquisite Corpse
Bonding for Beginners (I’ve used this title before, but it’s also a story about a mother and daughter trying to bond, so maybe I could use it again?)
They pretty much suck, right?
Gaijin Mama 
with the pilgrimage title, want to try to riff from that with – journey. there are many popular books out now with so-n-so’s journey or journey to, journey into, journey from, etc titles for young readers.
I actually like Gadget Girl Goes to Paris — intriguing and cool, I’d say!
Thanks, Cathy and Liz. I’ll give some thought to the journey idea. And Liz, I like “Gadget Girl Goes to Paris” too, but I’m not sure that it’s the best title for the story since it fails to encompass a lot of the other major themes. (I know it’s hard to judge when you haven’t read the work!)
i like “I am beutiful : best