Madeline news: Book Proposal

Co-author M.J. Van Deventer and I officially have sent the book proposal for the Madeline Webb project to an agent.

Madeline Webb at her murder trial in New York in 1942.

I met the agent at the Atlanta Writers Conference early this month. At her urging, we’ve tweaked the name of the book. The original was Madeline Gets Life; Pals to Die, a play on the New York tabloid headlines that screamed the news of her murder conviction in 1942.

The agent liked Madeline Gets Life but said Pals to Die didn’t tell the reader enough.

There’s a formula for naming nonfiction books. Most use a punchy main title followed by a subtitle that explains what the book is really about.

So you get

Blood & Ink: The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder That Hooked America on True Crime, by Joe Pompeo

and

Deer Creek Drive: A Reckoning of Memory and Murder in the Mississippi Delta, by Beverly Lowry.

(We reviewed both books on this blog.)

Here’s the new title we came up with for our book:

Madeline Gets Life: Love, Murder, and the Trial that Shook Wartime New York

Tell us what you think!