Hi and welcome!
One of the things readers ask me about a lot is creating titles. Writers tend to either love or hate titles and I fall into the former category. You may know that in my day job I own an advertising and PR agency and I think of title creation a lot like writing an ad headline. It needs to point to the essence of the story while attracting and intriguing. In face, titles are so important to me that I seldom write much of a book before I have the title. Just as an ad could never be created without having the headline first, I have trouble writing a book until I know the title. It guides the story. On occasion, though not often, the title comes before the story.
A lot of people have read my popular Balls to the Wall series. The first book in the series, Volley Balls, was 
originally called David and Goliath. But i didn’t want to offend anyone, so a short way into the book i thought, hey, my heroes are volleyball players. Why not call it Volley Balls. I didn’t realize i was starting a franchise — and a naming convention people would love. A character in the first book — Rodney– needed his own story. I thought about him and realized he was a real firecracker. A Fire Ball! And the story became Fire Balls. BUT, i didn’t have my second hero figured out. It was the title that suggested he should be a firefighter. I started playing with all the words that logically went with Balls. Beach Balls suggested the story of scuba divers who meet (and do a lot of other stuff) under water. Snow Balls became a winter story with my heroes going skiing. The titles preceded the books.
With all that said, I had a problem with the title of Winter’s Wolf. I originally called the book The Wolf Who Came Back. I liked the title, but the problem was that the wolf who comes back in the story is not my hero, it’s his father. When I mentioned this to my beta readers, they agreed that the title was misleading. I told them that I had been playing around with the hero’s name, Winter. One of my beta readers suggested Winter Wolf, which I agreed was wonderful, but there were already many books with that title. That’s when lightning struck. I went back to her and said, “What do you think of Winter’s Wolf?” She loved it! And so did all the other beta readers. The reason for that all-important apostrophe will be evident when you read the book. I hope you enjoy Winter’s Wolf!
On April 1st, we’ll be revealing the cover for my upcoming release, KNIGHT OF OCEAN AVENUE. This was a book that got its name as i wrote. I’d played with a couple titles i didn’t like, but i couldn’t find the books real title. Then, my one hero calls the other his knight! Bingo. Since the story takes place in Laguna Beach and Ocean Avenue is a real street in Laguna, the title leaped in front of my eyes. That title led me to the names for the other books in the series — Knave of Broken Hearts (which releases August 3rd) and Prince of the Playhouse which comes out in 2016.
That’s a little about Title Magic. Thank you for coming by!