It's probably not really important to know why a writer chose a particular title. It may catch your interest or cause you to pass on by. It may have a deeper meaning or mean nothing at all. I share this information with you as a way to show part of my writing process and because I've had a few people ask why I chose my particular title.
     Choosing the right title for a book is often more difficult than writing the novel. It has to be different enough from the other titles of novels to prevent people from buying someone else's book that might have a similar title. This is especially important if they don't remember the author's name. It has to be snappy enough to catch the eye of anyone browsing the bookstore shelves, yet not so outlandish people pass on by. Cat in a Basket might be a great title for a children's book, but not so good for a murder mystery about a hippy found dead in a laundry room. If you happen to use that as a title for your next crime novel following that plotline and it works, let me know.
      Whether anyone considers my titles eye catching or not, each book has a title and subtitle. The title is always the same, Detective Jake. This is the name of my main character. Using this series title on every book will make it immediately apparent the book is one of the novels within my series. The subtitle is the title of the individual book and a word or phrase describing the plot.
     What made choosing the subtitle for my novels so difficult is that I wanted a title to reflect not only something about the crime, but also something about Jake's personal life. The Search For Truth can describe any murder mystery in that a detective's job is to sift through all of the evidence and testimonies in order to discover what happened and arrest the murderer. But Jake is searching for yet another truth, the truth about what guides and motivates him. There are many truths in our lives, some more true than others or things we view as truths which are actually lies. Jake must sift through the evidence of his experiences, compare those to the truths presented by other people, and draw a conclusion as to what is the real truth.
     My second novel is subtitled Ripped. The murderer does just that to his victims. Jake is also ripped or torn between holding onto his long held beliefs and the truths he's slowly learning through the various things happening in both his professional and personal life. The only way to repair that rip is to come to a final decision about which direction to go in his life.
     Each new novel's title will be approached in the same way. I'll have to wait until I know the plots and start writing before I can decide what would be the best title.