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I mentioned earlier that there was a hitch with the original title of my novel, Not Dead Yet, namely that it was already taken by a novel St. Martin’s Press is also publishing next fall, the same season they’re publishing mine, and by a far more important author than myself. In order to avoid confusion among the sales reps and bookstore buyers, we had to come up with a new title.

My agent, editor, and I went through a variety of alternate titles, some of which were awesome but not right for this book (Die and Stay Dead, Wanted: Dead and Alive), others of which were kind of Hollywood generic (Dead Rising, Dead Ready). Finally, we found one we could all agree on. So the new title is… (drumroll please)

Dying Is My Business

I kind of love it. It echoes the title of Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business, and it also has a very hardboiled, Mickey Spillane feel to it, which is the direction they wanted to go in rather than a more traditionally fantasy-sounding title.

The change will take some getting used to, certainly. I’ve been calling the novel Not Dead Yet since I started writing it a couple of years ago, and I’ve been talking it up under that name, too, including in press releases. But I think the new title works. I’m happy with it.

So look for Dying Is My Business from St. Martin’s Press in the fall of 2013!