Still Browsing...

Things are proceeding on the book front, though it's still in the "getting the book publisher-ready" stage. Got the first graphic novel section completed and delivered from Sungyoon Choi, and I think it looks marvelous. Heart-breaking, but marvelous. While we're waiting for rest of the artwork to be completed, Agent J would like to see if the manuscript could be trimmed down a bit and tightened. Sounds reasonable. I hope I'll have better success at trimming pages off my novel than I've had at trimming pounds off my frame this year (damn you, apple-bacon-cornbread stuffing!) Agent J will be looking over the manuscript this week and offer edit suggestions. This isn't unfamiliar territory; years of whittling novels into plays for Lifeline Theatre in Chicago (with half the company members looking over your shoulder, benevolently) should stand me in good stead.

And then there's the title... The book, Liberace Under Venetian Skies Untitled, has thus far Teflon'd itself against any new name applied to it. We're getting closer, though. The following is a few titles I've been monkeying with these days. Feel free to weigh in. Remember, the graphic is only there to give the context of it being a book. It's a shot I took at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Much of the book is set there, and in the neighborhood behind the neon of the city.

Okay, go:

Lots of meanings for "departures," all of them apt.

This one is Doug's favorite. 

Coincidentally, it's one he came up with, too.

This phrase gets used a lot in the book.

The main character returns, over and over, to a pivotal moment in his life, trying to replay it in different ways but unable to arrive at the truth.

Kinda grand, ain't it? God figure prominently in the book. 
Suggested by Christina Calvit, playwright extraordinaire.

This one was suggested by my friend Amy Hill,

who discovered it in the Wordle art of my manuscript.
Works however you say it.

Kind of active but whimsical, don't you think?

I like this one because it uses screenplay syntax, 

and screenplays figure into the novel. 

It also encapsulates the illusion of Las Vegas. 

I noodled with this one a bit. 




What about:

Or this?

Damn it, I'll get Liberace in there somehow!