David Cristofano

At her blog, novelist Joshilyn Jackson put 3 questions to David Cristofano, author of The Girl She Used to Be. One of their exchanges:

JJ: Can you talk a little about the significance of your title and how you came up with it?

DC: I am one of these writers who always liked to invent the title of a book with nothing more than a concept of the story, before even a single word was written. It always seemed like a fun thing to do (like imagining who would play the characters of your story on screen). The original title of my novel was NOWHERE MAN, because at the time it was told from a man’s point of view. Later, after it became apparent the story must be told by a woman, I temporarily changed the title to NOWHERE GIRL, and it just sort of stuck, and was even acquired with that title.

But during the editing phase, the publisher decided NOWHERE GIRL might mistakenly send the message that the book was a YA title. Not to mention the similarity to GOSSIP GIRL, among others. So I was asked to come up with a list of new potential titles. You would think with all the practice I had in the discipline of title invention that I might have come up with a viable replacement, but the best I could do—after weeks of banging it around—was a list of abysmal, flat-lined possibilities that I ultimately submitted with great hesitation. In the end, it was the publisher herself, Jamie Raab, who penned the winner.

And for what it’s worth, I can’t imagine who would play the parts of the characters on screen either. Go figure.

Read the other two Qs & As.

--Marshal Zeringue