On Thu, 30 Oct 1997, Michael Marc Levy wrote:
> Which leads one to ask how Nalo ever got away with using an old island
> song title like Brown Girl in the Ring for an SF novel?
NH: [lol] Was just wondering that myself as I read your post. I'd been
using it as a working title, but it grew on me. And I guess props go to
Betsy Mitchell (editor-in-chief of Warner Aspect) for not suggesting I
change it for _Voodoo Queens of the Forgotten City,_ or something.
Probably best to ask Betsy, but my sense is that Warner Aspect is
consciously trying to broaden the readership of sf, so maybe they're
trying to make it more likely that people who normally wouldn't consider
genre fiction might pick their titles off the shelf. I won the Warner
Aspect First Novel contest because Warner Aspect and C.J. Cherryh liked my
writing; however when Betsy realised after I'd won that I am
Afro-Caribbean, she was very pleased; potential for reaching a whole new
market, I guess. I'd like that.
Maybe there's also the fact that _Brown Girl_ combines elements of sci
fic and fantasy, so a title won't classify it easily.
BTW, "Brown Girl in the Ring" is actually a ring game that I played as a
child. The people forming the ring sing the song while the child in the
middle performs a trick that the others try to copy. The object of the
game is to make it a challenging trick. The line from the song that
goes, "Show me your motion," essentially means "Show us what you can
do." It seemed an apt metaphor to me for a protagonist who has to learn
"what she can do" really quickly or perish.
But there are many sf titles that don't scream genre.
>
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