She's So the One by Belle Rose

Decided: We are not going to bring back "Naked Came the Stranger" as a title. And I, Anon. #2, stand corrected, btw. In a recent blog, I said that the title was in question practically right up until it was available on Amazon. Not So. It was in question up to, including and beyond, publication date.

    Which should give you some idea of how well artistic decisions made by committee work out. The whole truth is that the original, published title was "She's the One." This, after years, years, of  debate. We were nubile young women (or so it seemed) when we started this project, and now we were, um, not nubile. 

    Some time after our book was available and set to rock the sales charts, one of our more ambitious writers discovered that there were a zillion books by that name. What to do?

     A name change was in order, but what should it be? Every time we had another, wholly new and incontrovertibly zippy title, we discovered how unoriginal we were. Something had to be done before we approached menopause. I'll spare you the catchy ideas that flew back and forth. Ultimately, we went with being more au currant, and added "So," as in, "That dress is so yesterday."  

     But here's your chance: We're open to ideas, as long as we're still living. And we're so still living.

     Not that the debates didn't continue. Belle, for instance, is not that thrilled with her name. I forget where that name came from, or Rose, for that matter, but it made for a nice graphic on the Press Release. 

     Maybe it was because we were all working on other projects that weeks--or was it months?--went by between chapters. Our memories had to be refreshed on what had come before so that we could pick up the drift. I didn't realize the extent to which our memories had to be refreshed until, one day, there was this e-mail in our messages: Oh, great, now we have Dr. Thompson's dead wife showing up.    

       Dr. Thompson's wife was dead??? Dr. Thompson had a wife? And if he did, who said she was dead? Maybe she wasn't dead, not really. Maybe it only seemed she was dead. But if she really was truly dead, what kind of a doctor was Dr. Thompson that he couldn't save her?

    That's the really great thing about fiction. You can pull some amazing tricks, and bring someone back to life. That is, if you choose to. It's all up to you.

     There is one chapter in which there is a terrible car accident in a snow storm. It happens on a winding country road along the river. It is dark and incredibly slippery, the snow rapidly turning to ice. The air is suddenly shrill with sirens; police are rerouting drivers up a steep hill and down the other side to circumvent the scene of the accident. The car, barely visible from the top of the hill, lay upside down, crushed like a cigarette pack. There is no question whose car it is. And no question that the driver would have be dead.

    Or would he?