Q: A friend on Facebook asked, “What’s the story behind naming your book Blue Mountain Rose?
A: Fun Fact: This book started as a Word document named “Scenes From the Summit Theatre.” It was a collection of story fragments from a fictional theatre company in my hometown of Flagstaff. The town is at 7,000 feet on San Francisco Mountain in Arizona, and its high elevation gave me the idea of calling this theatre “Summit.” But that name didn’t stick for long. It wasn’t romantic enough for the story I was beginning to write.
Back in the early days of the Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival, when I was involved with the board, we wanted to build our own outdoor stage. It would have looked a lot like the Adams Memorial Theatre in Cedar City, Utah. We even took a trip up there to tour the old theatre, which had been decommissioned. We wanted to see if it might be feasible to move some of it to Flagstaff and rebuild. (It wasn’t.)
When FlagShakes drew up plans for the classical outdoor theatre we envisioned, that stage was called the “Mountain Rose.” The original Rose was an Elizabethan playhouse, built in 1587 outside of London. Some of William Shakespeare’s earliest plays were performed there. FlagShakes added the word “Mountain” in homage to San Francisco Mountain. (Our town’s nickname is “Mountain Town.”)
I really liked the name “Mountain Rose” for a theatre, so I gave it to my fictional stage. By this time, I was deep into plot development and starting to understand what my book wanted to be about. It was time to find a title. So I started a new Word document called “Book Title Ideas for Summit / Mountain Rose.” I was thinking about titles, not just for the book I was developing, but for future books if this becomes a series. I played with some classic phrases from Shakespeare, and other ideas.
Here’s what that document says:
“I like Mountain Rose; Unfortunately, Mountain Rose is the title of two books on Amazon, though neither is likely to be confused with this
the first book in a trilogy often has a title that becomes the title of the trilogy
So mine could be the Mountain Rose Trilogy
Muse of Fire; this title is used quite a lot
All the World’s a Stage; this one is also used quite a lot
I want to call this book Mountain Rose and figure out the rest later
The Mountain Rose
His Mountain Rose (too sexy)
Ghost of the Mountain Rose (too scary)
An Honest Ghost (comes from Hamlet) too dark; has been used
Fair Mountain Rose: this hasn’t been used [as a book title], and the other titles in the series could be other modifiers such as true, good, wild, but I don’t know that those are different enough from each other. Maybe this works in a Mountain Rose trilogy, with titles such as:
Blue Mountain Rose
Muse of Fire and Rain
This Worldly Stage
Blue Mountain Rose (grief) blue roses symbolize unrequited love
Red Mountain Rose (love)
…”
If you read the book, you might see a connection between one of the characters and the idea that blue roses symbolize unrequited love. I hadn’t remembered that until I read the document just now. The imagination is a powerful thing!
FYI: If this book becomes the first in a series, it will be interesting to see what the other titles are. I’m as curious as you are, dear reader. (Those books haven’t been written yet.)
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