If I'm honest I'll admit that George and the Dragon pretty much named itself.

It's obviously a play on the legend of St George and the Dragon and as the main character is called George precisely because of this legend the title was easy to come up with.

There were other considerations as well. I wanted the book to 'catch' passing traffic so the title ticked this particular box as well.

The title is also simple and should give the reader an idea that the book quite heavily features dragons. When you factor in the cover design it becomes clear that the book is also set during World War II.


There are other things that have come out of this that I have also found equally useful. I get to ride on the back of the hash tag fervor for St George's day for example.

So all in all I'm very happy with the title of my debut novel but it's lead to a bigger problem!

What do I call the sequel?

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SPOILERS!

The working title for the sequel has always been:

George and the Griffins of Malta.  

The main reason for this is there were going to be three Griffins born on Malta and called Faith, Hope and Charity.


They were to be named after a mythical trio of Gloucester Gladiators who were responsible for the defense of the island during the Siege of Malta.

However, I just found that the story with the three Griffins in it didn't work and took the focus away from other developments in the story line.  So if I kept this title it would now be George and the Griffin of Malta.

However, the story of the Griffin is not George's so the title is a little misleading.

This novel is really the story of several different main characters on both sides of the war so any title named George and is only really selling part of the narrative to the reader.

I'm also not sure I want to go do the "Harry Potter and the...." type title. After all it's already been done.

Next up was an attempt to keep the same style/pattern so I came up with:

Excalibur and the Ark.

For me this is ticks a couple of important boxes.  It would attract searches for both 'The Ark' and 'Excalibur' and both feature in the novel. Although the Ark isn't the Ark you think it is!

It also set a precedence that all books in the series are going to be named in the same way; A and the B

I'm not sure but I think that's going to be a little restrictive in the future as I'm already tripping over it now.

So next up I changed it up slightly and made an attempt to factor in keys from the main stories of the book. So I came up with something like

The Griffin, the Ark and the Queen.

or alternatively.

The Griffin, the Island and the Throne.

More recently one of the three main narratives has changed a lot, partly due to the three Griffins but there are other reasons as well. What it means is that there is a different element of evil that features as part of each of these stories.

Given this I went all the way back to:

George and the Unveiling of Evil.

Not quite liking the use of 'George and...' I've also considered:

Evil Unleashed 

and

Evil Unveiled

Evil Unleashed rang a bell but it turns out it's a rather poorly rated move. A search for the term Evil Unveiled reveals it is used as part of an anti-pedophile online campaign.

So I'm still no further forward in my quest for a title of the book. Time will, I hope, provide me with the answer.

Phil