Now, though, I can’t imagine this book with any other name. The working title was The Devil and the Rose, which my agent loved but others thought wasn’t specific enough. I love the title, but it was a mess getting there: my team and I had a document with 75 options, and we went back and forth for weeks. On another, it was customary at the time for condemned prisoners to pay a monetary tip to the executioner-a weird, grim factoid that hints at how some of my characters seal their own fates. (My friends know I'm an incorrigible pun-lover.) On one level, my spies are searching for heretics and traitors, so the secrets they uncover will tip off the hangman about his next victim. A Tip for the Hangman is a pun to that effect. The goal of the title was to sweep the reader up into the dangerous world of Elizabethan espionage: full of secrets, impossible choices, and people who can be swayed for the right price. How much work does your title do to take readers into the story? When not writing, she enjoys good theater, bad puns, and fancy jackets.Įpstein new book, A Tip for the Hangman, is her first novel. A Michigan native, she now lives in Chicago, where she works as a copywriter. in creative writing and Renaissance literature from the University of Michigan. in fiction from Northwestern University and a B.A.
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