Cover of 24-Page Booklet from History Press

The contract I’ve just signed with History Press was a hard one to negotiate and, truth to tell, we are not completely through with our “discussions.”  The last item to be decided, as with most books and with most publishers, is the title.  My editor and I have already had a bit of discussion about it, but the matter won’t be settled until “around the time of manuscript deadline” which is September 4th.

My original thought was to call the book “More Ghost Stories from the Long Beach Peninsula” but, from the get-go, it was not acceptable.  How about having “eerie” or “haunted” in the title, they suggested.  I wanted it to sound more like a continuation or a sequel to the last book.  They did not.

In fact, the whole idea of a “sequel” seemed off-putting to them.  But, to their credit, they listened to my take on the matter resulting from the years Nyel and I owned the Bookvendor in Long Beach.  Ultimately, they decided to give the book a chance — title to be duked out at a later date.  As I think my stories are more “unsettling” than eerie and the settings are more “historic” than haunted, there will probably be a lot of duking.

The working title that they have suggested is “Historic Haunts of the  Long Beach Peninsula” which isn’t even accurate as I see it.  It seems to mean that the book is about places that have been haunted historically — or at least that’s the way I read it.  Of course, they haven’t actually seen any of the stories yet…

Meanwhile, my editor wrote:  Regarding the title, that was changed by the publication director and as I put in my contract email to you, it is not the final title. This was a tricky project to get approved because we have never done two haunted books covering the exact same location before and he wanted to make a clear distinction between the two books for the editorial board. Currently, it is the placeholder, and once we work through all the details of the images and manuscript together, I can go to bat for you regarding the title wording.

Wow!  With the 291 titles in their Haunted America series, they’ve never done a sequel!  This book will make its own history!  Hard to believe.  I am pleased beyond all measure!