The Title Poll

Well, I think editing for the Spring anthology is now done at long last. I’ll start shipping them out tomorrow. For the contracts I’ll need a title so while the authors are considering their edits (and maybe making changes) we have a few days to decide on the title.

I have been all around the block on poll software. The one on WordPress seems to only allow three options so we’d have had to do it by elimination rounds. I don’t like that, I’d rather we all voted at once so I don’t have to split the options.

There are options for polls online but they want more information/access than I am willing to give. So it’s a simple list, put a vote in the comments, just a number will do (I check spam daily because the Spaminator gets overzealous sometimes, so don’t worry if it doesn’t show at once).

The winning title suggestion gets a free copy when the book is published. Unless it’s me or Roobee, in which case the one that gets the most votes gets the free book. I will go with whatever title wins this poll.

I have had to leave out a couple of options. Springtime for Handcock and Germoline, from Delcatto, raised a smile but I might risk a lawsuit from Mel Brooks. If you haven’t seen ‘The Producers’, you really should. A couple of others, while viable suggestions, I could not even begin to imagine a cover for. And that would have to be fairly fast.

This is the most relaxed anthology of the year. It has to come out in spring but it’s not tied to Easter so doesn’t have a tight deadline – and spring is currently on its second attempt at acutally appearing. I did consider holding back a couple of weeks and calling it ‘The Clotted Bloods of May’ but that might be far too harshly accurate, given current events. So that won’t be in the list.

Right, without further diddly-doo, here are the options. I haven’t put names to them, just vote in comments with a number or a title (one has two options) and we will close this at midnight on 19th April (GMT, aka PBT, Proper British Time).

1 Dark Spring
2 The Cold Spring stories
3 The Dark Rites of Spring
4 The April Halloween
5 The Lies of March
6a Hopeless Springs Eternal
6b Hopeless Springs Infernal
7 Slinky and the Weak Spring
8 The Common Cold Spring Anthology (Covid edition)
9 Time for Dead
10 Dante’s Spring
11 The Ghosts of Spring
12 Spring Daze: Stories of safe and effective insanity
13 The Dark Ides of March
14 The Awokening
15 Clout is out
16 Tulips and other variants
17 Spring Tied

Okay, just comment with a number and I’ll add them up manually. This is the first crowdsourced title for an Underdog Anthology, but if the daft lockdowns continue it might not be the last. Ideas for covid-related titles are getting thin – we’ve had ‘Tales from Loch Doon’, ‘Mask-Querade’ and ‘Coronamas’ already.

The cover image will work with the title. The choice is yours.