Making A Choice and Getting Off A Curse
First
of all, just let me say ‘Thank You’ for joining my first ever blog tour. It’s a
strange feeling being asked to talk about my own book, but it’s great. It’s
quite overwhelming to be frank about it
but in a good way. Being here with you today is all at once flattering
and scary. Now for The Way You Look Tonight.
TWLT
is the second instalment to The Standards series. The first one, What A
Difference A Day Makes found here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/What-Difference-Day-Makes-Standards-ebook/dp/B00U6DZKS8,
was published more than a year ago as part of an anthology. When I got the
rights back, I re-edited then self-published it. Both these stories are based
on lyrics to the same titles of Standard music. The lyrics inspire and set the
pace of both stories.
One
difference between WADADM and TWLT is with the song choice. For the first book,
I was locked in on the song and had no doubts. For TWLT, I debated between this
title and using My Way. The latter song came up several times in the story when
I first drafted it and initially had a bigger influence on the story itself and
on Jamie’s character. However, I didn’t want to get stuck with a curse.
I
have said that the love of Karaoke in the Philippines has reached great heights
it’s now considered a national pastime. In fact, it competes with boxing or
playing and watching basketball. Take it this way: no Pacquiao fight is
complete without karaoke.
So
what has that got to do with the title? Well, the song, My Way, is in the story
and I truly love it. In fact, it used to be my father’s favourite as sung by
Frank Sinatra. However, Karaoke and My Way = Curse. You could get killed
singing the song on karaoke and because of the deaths, My Way has been banned
from any and all karaoke song lists here in the Philippines. I didn’t want that
curse to extend to my story so had to make a decision and cut it to the minimum
mention and that’s it. One reworded phrase only. By the way, My Way is the key
to the tragedy in the story.
I
had to make a choice. Stick with The Way You Look Tonight and write a sweet
May-December romance or use the cursed song as title, allow it to set the pace
of the story and turn it into a morbid tragedy?