Titles are hard

I hate the idea of working on a novel whose title is Immortal 3 because we all know unless this is a movie it’s not going to end up actually being called Immortal 3.  (It should be a movie though.  Hollywood: give me a call!  We’ll do lunch!)  The problem is no title has been coming to mind.

The first two books were easy.  I mean, Immortal: a book about an immortal guy.  No problem.  Second book covered a lot of his Greek history so of course Hellenic Immortal.  But book three?  I grant that I have not fleshed out the plot completely just yet, but I know roughly what’s supposed to happen, and it isn’t something that’s easy to pin down in a nice declarative one- or two-word title.

Rejected titles

• Byzantine Immortal.  The historical era I’m looking at includes the Byzantine era, but he’s not really going to be spending a lot of time in Constantinople, and as far as I can tell nobody called them the Byzantines in the Byzantine era.  I may reconsider it though, because it’s moderately catchy.  (Alternative: Immortal at Byzantium.)
• Immortal on the Silk Road.  Much more accurate, but I don’t like it, and I think it’s been used.
• The Wrath of Khan.  Definitely been used.
• Immortal at Colonus.  Oedipus joke.  Never mind.
• Immortals.  Only because the second Alien movie was called Aliens.

New working title

So while stressing this is a working title, what I’m going to go with for now is Immortal at the Edge of the World.  It’s much wordier than I’m used to and so may very well be changed if something better comes along.  I considered a variant– Immortal at Terra Incognita– but decided that was much too obscure.  (Terra Incognita is what used to be written at the edge of maps when the mapmaker didn’t know the nature of the land that lay beyond it.  It’s cool, but any title that requires a separate parenthetical explanation is probably too heady.)

Let me know what you think of this title!  I’m modestly excited, if only because I don’t want to keep calling it Immortal 3.

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