Late last week, I received the first email of the production process from the publisher. This is definitely an exciting thing, even if it is still fairly preliminary and even though the need to invest significant energy at an unspecified date in dealing with suggested edits still looms over my intense work schedule for the coming month. However, the publisher has come back with somewhat different titles for the books than I originally submitted. In some ways this is a good thing, as the titles I submitted were long and clunky and I was never entirely happy with them, and the new titles are simpler, cleaner, and definite improvements in a number of practical respects. However, I was taken by surprise by the fact that the words “talking radical” have been removed completely from the titles. There is no particular reason why that phrase needs to be in there in terms of the books themselves, but I have invested considerable energy in putting together this site under that banner. As well, while I suspect the new titles are a bit more consistent with how the publisher intends to market the books, I still need some way to refer to (and talk up) these books as one thing, one accomplishment.
After reflection and consultation, I have decided that I am not going to try and argue the change, but rather I am going to proceed such that my own work to promote the books will still treat Talking Radical as the name of the overall project, and Gender and Sexuality: Canadian History Through the Stories of Activists and Resisting the State: Canadian History Through the Stories of Activists as two products of that project. (I have some ideas for things I may wish to do once my current brief foray into studenthood has ended, and at least one of those could conceivably be fit under this now-expanded understanding of the Talking Radical banner.)
Anyway, I’m off to make the relevant changes of language to the static pages on the site and to reply to the email from the production team — it is my one chance to make suggestions about cover design, and I want to make it count. Yay!
