I Need a Title

[kaasirpent]

No, not for this post. For the novel I'm currently working on. It's tentatively titled Necromancer at the moment, but that's dull.

Since the bad guy is doing all his killing with fire, I thought it would be prudent to rename it to something involving, you know...fire.

You don't have to beat me over the head with a brick but four or five times until I get the point.

So. Titles involving fire, burning, incineration, cremation, flames, conflagrations....

The story is an urban fantasy very much in the same vein as Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series, but with a slightly less "noir" feel. More like...Criminal Minds meets The Dresden Files. But not exactly.

The bad guy killed a known necromancer (hence the working title) and an as-yet unidentified second person by incinerating them in flames so hot, nothing but ash was left. He then killed an infamous prisoner and a guard using the same method, but in broad daylight in a prison cell.

He has just burned down a bar where the prison guard was last seen, presumably to prevent any information about the guard's whereabouts from getting to the cops.

So fire is his preferred method of murder, and he uses magic to do it. Powerful, dark magic.

The only title I have come up with that doesn't suck so bad it creates a window into another universe is Dark Fire, and I don't really love it, either.

So, help me LJ-Wan Kenobi. You're (not really, but kind of) my only hope.

Comments

[hoo.livejournal.com]

Bad names are so much easier to come up with than good ones. He kills with fire? I give you, "Pyrocide"

[kaasirpent]

P. U. :)

But it's better than some of the ones I came up with. :)

[thespian.livejournal.com]

Scorch.

[kaasirpent]

Hmmm. Scorcher could actually work. I write that down. :)

[feuervogel]

I don't have clever ideas for titles. I don't even have a working title for the thing I'm working on at the moment :P

Dark Fire evokes a Dresden-esque tale, at least, so it's on a right track...

[kaasirpent]

Yeah, I feel like I'm on the same street as the right idea....

[territan.livejournal.com]

Ashes of the Angry Dead

A Hot Trail of Clues

Wrath of the Pyromancer

The Detective Saw Red

Inflamed

Okay, I admit, I don't know if any of these will stick to the wall, so to speak. But you asked, so I threw.

That last one I selected because it's a synonym for "angry." It could also work for a porno, albeit a really disgusting one.

[kaasirpent]

I so, so didn't need any of the mental images associated with that last one. So, so.

[marshaldillon.livejournal.com]

Similar to yours, but _Dark Flames_ might work a bit better.

Going with that, you can go the flames route with:
Flames of Passion (though might draw the wrong crowd)
Flames of Darkness
Flames of Malice
Flames of ...

Actually the first thought that came to mind, Firestarter, was already used by Stephen King.

[kaasirpent]

Heh...that gave me another idea, though. You know how the media loves to give little nicknames to serial killers?

When these killings go public, the media should call him "The Cremator" or "Fireman." Or something along those lines.

Hmmm. Maybe that could be the name of the book, as well. Hmmm.

[marshaldillon.livejournal.com]

A couple more:

- Torch
- Tinder
- Inferno

[happy-buddha.livejournal.com]

The Ash That Remains...

I kind of like the combination of the dark imagery of the ash with the feeling that you can't avoid it because, you know, it's already happened.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

"incinerating them in flames so hot, nothing but ash was left"

Is this an unusual sort of fire, in the world of the book? I'd think it would be pretty hard to do, especially in public and/or on the scale of burning up a whole bar. So as a reader or investigator, I'd be looking for the means he used to make such fires. Some unprecedented sort of fire-magic?

So what occurred to me, would be some take on 'spontaneous combustion' - a claimed phenomenon that may or may not have really happened, at odd Dickensian times, for no known cause, but thought to have some sort of psychological (ie magic?) cause?

Could someone in the book talk about 'harnassing spontaneous combustion' even sarcastically? Spontaneous Annihilation?

Or something on 'holocaust'? Spontaneous Holocaust?

Or something related to the sort of heating or melting that's done in a 'crucible'? Chemical term for reducing to ashes?

[kaasirpent]

Yes, it is unusual. He uses powerful, dark magic to create the fire so that it's hot enough to cremate a human body (or two, as the case has been so far) in just a fraction of the time it would normally take.

One of the characters is just about to make an off-the-wall suggestion, although I hadn't thought of SHC.

Both "crucible" and "ashes" are definitely in the mix.

Thanks. :)

[friend-soscho.livejournal.com]

So I was putting sunscreen on Lily an Hour after I read this. I started to think I was putting burn blocker on her head. So I started to think of your book, and burn stalker was what came to mind.

[buckeyebrain.livejournal.com]

Are you intentionally avoiding the obvious???? :-)

[kaasirpent]

Heh! No. :)

[kaasirpent]

Come to think of it, part of the initial impetus to start this story (mostly it was to overcome a blockage in another story) was hearing someone use the phrase "die in a fire" and getting that o.O look as the opening scene sort of popped into my head.

[wordsmith101.livejournal.com]

I often get titles by going to bartleby.com and searching keywords in the verse or other databases. Even if you don't find the perfect title, it gets the brain venturing down the right pathways. :)

[craftsman.livejournal.com]

Black Flames

[buckeyebrain.livejournal.com]

Sorry to veer off topic. I'm going through your Recent Posts, and also a few relevant tags. For the life of me, I can't find your post about the Alton Brown 10th Anniversary show. I just finished watching it and want to compare to what you wrote.

[kaasirpent]

That would be because I didn't do a post on the Alton Brown show on either here or FaceBook. I just told you guys about it on TIM. :)

[buckeyebrain.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm an idiot. :)

[kaasirpent]

Nah. I had to check. I remembered writing a bunch of stuff, and since it wasn't on LJ or FB, it had to be TIM. :)

Some Silly Sparks

[izmeina.livejournal.com]

Some more suggestions from Izzie. A bit out of our element here - rather more fond of earth and water
Scorcher has already been snatched so here's what we've got left on the list

The Burning Times
The Burning Man
Infernal Flames
Flame Wars
Scorcher
The Cremator
The Incinerator
Ashes to Ashes
Fahrenheit 666
Ring of Fire