Still working on Fatal Invasion. It’s amazing looking back at how long I have lived with this story. No Escape, the short story that started the series, was published in 2017. Work on Fatal Shadow started later that year, so I have been working on the series for eight years. Back then, it was called The Knotted Man. Glad I changed it. Often my first draft titles change. The first draft of the Golden Rule Duology (A Bright Power Rising/The Unconquered Sun) was rather apt but very cumbersome The Two-Thumbed Hand. Fatal Shadow‘s sequel changed from Lesser Evil to Greater Evil, because I came to realise the latter had much better. Gilded Treason was Gilded Cage for a long time, but the original title, I felt at least, was a little too generic. It almost became Gilded Snare at one point. I try to pick titles that don’t bring up too many books by the same name. Obviously, if Stephen King or Brandon Sanderson picks one of my titles for their work, there’s nothing I do except chalk it up to bad luck.

Name changes can also happen to short stories. No Escape was originally called Prey. Hoard was called The Hoarder, but I changed it to move the focus on the main character rather than the villain. One Moonlit Night was called How to save the Earth? for a long time which was not really what the story is about. On the flip side, many of the other short stories had their names fixed from the first draft: The Fate Healer, Murder Seat, the Alienity stories and so on. I suppose it’s just easier to get to the heart of what a short story is about.