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After some recent beta read feedback, I decided a few weeks ago to revisit my first horror novel The Wolves of Wallace Point for some minor revisions, edits, and corrections. The beta reader had enjoyed the novel but commented on some aspects that I thought were worth at least considering and since it has been a few years since I wrote the thing the only way to fairly evaluate this feedback was by reading the entire manuscript from front to back.

Plot, setting, and the mechanics of a story are pretty much the easiest things for me to craft, I work a little bit more on dialog, though this beta reader had praised that in this novel, and struggle the most with the apparently simple elements of titles and character names. I often joke that there is a blood-stain spot on the wall next to my desk where I routinely bash my head in search of those things. As such none of my novels have ever had titles for the chapters. Coming up with 20 or 30 titles was simply something hardly worth the effort.

While revisiting this book, which is written in the 1st person point of view, the character’s voice in chapter one leapt out with a title for it, A Priest at an Orgy. Once my fevered brain latched onto that concept I couldn’t shake it, but you can’t title only one chapter, either they all have titles or none of them do. So the process began that while I re-read the manuscript, making tiny adjustments here and there to the prose, I tried to keep my senses tuned for sardonic and ironic things that protagonist said or thought, like the orgy commentary, that might serve as a title for the chapters.

And now, 27 chapters later, I have titles for each and every one in the book. Most I am satisfied with, some I think I need to revisit again and see if something better doesn’t hide within the text, and a couple, like Fuck David Lynch and Camp Crystal Lake I am very happy with even if their applicability tickles only me.

Now, I have a new epilog to write, with a new ending sentence and mood that came to me last night and after that some serious thought about self-publishing the thing.