A still shot taken from the commercial I was watching TV this holiday season (something I don't do very often) and a commercial for a new TV movie caught my eye. It began with a shot of a glacier that was all blues, grays, and whites. It looked very familiar.
The movie is a SciFi drama about a man who replaces himself with a carbon copy clone.to protect his family from loss after he's diagnosed with a terminal illness. Not a familiar scenario for me at all.
But then I saw the title: Swan Song, and found it too familiar for comfort. I've got a novel with the same name. The picture on the cover is too close to the image from the commercial.
The movie is a SciFi drama about a man who replaces himself with a carbon copy clone.to protect his family from loss after he's diagnosed with a terminal illness. Not a familiar scenario for me at all.
But then I saw the title: Swan Song, and found it too familiar for comfort. I've got a novel with the same name. The picture on the cover is too close to the image from the commercial.
One cannot copyright titles. I could write the Bible, or Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and get away with it. In fact, there are many books, musical CDs and movies titled Swan Song. They range in subject matter from the story of a retired hairdresser who escapes from a nursing home to give a former client her final hairdo, to opera singers in Nazi Germany, to Welsh boys saving wildlife habitat. Nearly all are about death, or the end of a culture, playing on the old myth that swans sing most beautifully before they die.
So while I could not be angry at the title and image, I could worry that people who'd watched the move would think my book was related, buy it and be disappointed.
So while I could not be angry at the title and image, I could worry that people who'd watched the move would think my book was related, buy it and be disappointed.
I decided the best thing to do was change the title and cover of my novel. I have now pulled the old version from Amazon. I have six copies that I will sell at a reduced price. On January 12, the new version will become available to purchase in ebook format. You can preorder it now here, and it will automatically show up on your reading device on January 12. I will roll out a new paperback sometime in the next month.
The new version is entitled The Last Song of the Swan. It's currently available for preorder. I will reveal the cover soon, too, first to my email list, then on social media, and finally on my website. People on my email list will also have the opportunity to download the book for free.
My novel is a dual narrative story, which means it has two different narrators. One is Helen Bowie, a modern high school senior who has to read Beowulf in her English class. When she reads that Grendel, the monster in Beowulf is a fallen son of Cain, she begins to wonder what kind of monster that makes him. Helen is also the kind of girl who champions the underdog, so when a new student arrives at school and is immediately ostrasized because he looks like the images of Middle Eastern terrorists that show up on the news, she's compelled to champion him and prove to the student body that the new boy is no monster.
The other narrator is Hrunting, a girl whose world is changed when a hero arrives and challenges the relationship between her clan and another local group of people who are different from them. Like Helen, Hrunting tries to champion her neighbors and convince everyone that they are not monsters just because they look and act differently.
The Last Song of the Swan is not an easy book. It's written to make the reader think about the origins of prejudice and exclusion and what we can do about it. This novel doesn't end happily, with all the bad guys thwarted. How could it in a world that is even more divided now than ever before? I am hoping that giving it a new title and a new cover will help this book. I think it has a big job to do.
The Last Song of the Swan is not an easy book. It's written to make the reader think about the origins of prejudice and exclusion and what we can do about it. This novel doesn't end happily, with all the bad guys thwarted. How could it in a world that is even more divided now than ever before? I am hoping that giving it a new title and a new cover will help this book. I think it has a big job to do.
Jennifer Bohnhoff lives and writes in the mountains of central New Mexico. You can read more about her and her books here, at her website.
