So, I think I have to change the title of my novel. I came across this book the other day, a memoir called Happy by Alex Lemon. It's about how he has brain bleeds, and how it changed him, and it's getting some attention. "Happy" was his nickname. That's what my novel was going to be called, Happy, because it's the first name of the main female character in the novel. Because it's ironic, as a title, given the subject matter. Weirdly, I had recently even envisioned a cover a great deal like the one Lemon has, with the letters dripping. But there you go.
Anyway, I thought I better think of a new one. The Bad Man. The short story upon which the novel is based is "You're a Bad Man, Aren't You?" The central question of the story is whether or not the main character is a bad man or not. It's hard to know sometimes. Especially when you're the man.
There's an old Western with that title. And Lynyrd Skynyrd shed tears for the bad man. But that's OK.
I changed the epigraph, too. It's from Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream: A Forensic Psychiatrist Illuminates the Darker Side of Human Behavior by Robert I. Simon, MD.
"One cannot listen for so many years to patients and to criminal defendants revealing their inner lives without coming to the conclusion that bad men and women do what good men and women only dream about doing."