A crime Thriller’s Changing Titles
My new crime thriller No Way To Live is out on Kindle Unlimited. But No Way To Live wasn’t always it’s title.
No Way To Live – The Origin Story
In October 2020, I found myself locked down in Riyadh. I was teaching there, but the international school had closed and all lessons were delivered via live video links from my small, dark apartment. My family were in the UK. I’d accepted the job thinking I’d be able to travel home every school holiday, but Covid made that impossible.
With none of the usual excitement of Christmas around me, I decided to write a Christmas crime thriller about Tom, a gangster who walks away from his gang to help one of its intended victims. ‘After all,’ the blurb of the novel would eventually say, ‘it’s the season of good will.’
Christmas Lights – a working title
There’s a running joke in the novel about Tom hating Christmas songs, so I gave it the working title of Christmas Lights, after the Coldplay song. It seemed apt. Metaphorically, by leaving the gang, Tom walks into the light. More prosaically, he has the song in his head when he is nearly killed at the start of the novel.
A Slow Evolution Begins
But the story is darker than Christmas Lights suggested, so I opted for Christmas Shadows. So much of Tom’s former life is shadowy, but also, there’s a scene where he sees a motivational quote on a wall:
‘Keep facing the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.’
This prompts Tom to reflect that in his world, it’s best to keep your eye on the shadows.
Next Title, Please!
But I was never entirely happy with Christmas Shadows. It felt too dark. It’s a crime thriller, but it’s not bleak. Casting around, I thought about my favourite Christmas thrillers of all time: The Long Kiss Goodnight, Die Hard, obviously, and also Lethal Weapon. But for me, they are trumped by David Morrell’s excellent book The Spy Who Came For Christmas.
Trying out a more quirky feel, Christmas Shadows morphed into The Gangster Who Came For Christmas, an intentional homage to Morrell, who is one of my favourite authors.
Except, in my case, The Gangster Who Came For Christmas sounded too cutesy, like one of those frenemies novels, and it didn’t really reflect the characters. Anyway, the story takes place in the run up to Christmas. The Gangster Who Came For Christmas felt misleading. Besides, I didn’t really want to tie it in with Christmas alone. Like Die Hard, it’s set during Christmas, but is it really a Christmas book? I’ll let you decide.
No Way To Live…At Last!
I decided the title needed to reflect the journey of the three main characters, Tom, Billie and Katie.
By this stage, my quest for a title reminded me of the ordeal I had in naming Do Not Keep Silent, my first novel, which is about a Hong Kong protest leader. Then I remembered that Mae, the main character, uses the phrase ‘Do not keep silent,’ during one of her rallies, and that seemed like the perfect title.
And that was it. The title had been staring me in the face all along. Somewhere over the halfway point of No Way To Live, Billie uses the phrase. ‘No way to live,’ when talking to another character. One way or another it applies to the character she is addressing, and also to Tom, Katie and herself. The phrase was perfect.
And so, from Christmas Lights to Christmas Shadows, to The Gangster Who Came For Christmas, the book finally became No Way To Live. In all honesty, it was easier finding this title than Do Not Keep Silent’s!
Have you had a similar battle to find the perfect title? If so, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.
No Way To Live is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.
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