One of the hardest decisions I had to make in writing the Ashmore’s Folly<\/em> Trilogy was one of the most important:<\/p>\n What in the heck was I going to call this thing? Or things, once I broke it into three?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The Ashmore’s Folly<\/em>\u00a0part was easy. It had been Brandon’s Folly<\/em>\u00a0to me for a long time, and indeed, that was a title on the shortlist when it was still all one long story. (Why Brandon? Because Richard was Richard Brandon for years and years, until someone pointed out that it was one letter off Richard Branson, who couldn’t be more different from\u00a0my Richard). Not only is Richard’s folly with Francie a prime mover in this story, but I had in mind a grand architectural folly as well. So Ashmore’s Folly<\/em>\u00a0came naturally.<\/p>\n Here are some of the titles I assigned to the one long story over the years, in no particular order:<\/p>\n Once I decided to split the story into its three natural sections (I will discuss how I made the split in another post), I then had to come up with not one but three titles. The trend for trilogies is to tie the titles\u00a0together with a word or phrase (think of Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, Fifty Shades Freed<\/em>). So I started playing with ideas. Since this trilogy is really one long story in which the hero comes out of stasis and the heroine journeys to become the woman she was always meant to be, I explored\u00a0words that suggested the hero’s journey. “The Journey Home” was already a chapter title in the first book, and it fit that chapter so well that I did not think it belonged on the entire book. And then, for some reason, the word “all” came into mind.<\/p>\n One of my favorite songs from a musical is from Kismet<\/em>: “And This is My Beloved.” The lyrics, “All that can stir, all that can stun, all that’s for the heart’s lifting” kept running through my mind, as if the universe were saying, “Listen up here!” I could imagine Laura singing that song with all the love she had felt across the years for Richard. So I listened.\u00a0And\u00a0I decided that “All” should be the unifying word in the trilogy titles.<\/p>\n I wanted the theme of loss. Some of the characters are living half-lives, unable to move beyond self-inflicted\u00a0losses. Ironically, as well, the character who is the most successful in worldly terms thinks of herself as a “loser” and has come to accept that as her fate.<\/p>\n I also wanted to convey\u00a0the idea of wandering, as I felt that\u00a0more than one character was wandering aimlessly through life. And then — even though I really don’t care for Tolkien — it put me in mind of his phrase: Not all who wander are lost<\/em>.<\/p>\n But, in the first part of my story, those who wander through their lives\u00a0are<\/em> lost. Richard loses his parents in Chapter 1 and now stands alone, the last of his blood. Laura loses her father in Chapter 2, she lost her mother soon after birth, and she has long since\u00a0lost the sister closest to her. Chapter 3 brings a shocking loss. Then there are the lost souls: Julie, certainly, and Diana as well. Francie is long since lost. Meg loses\u00a0her identity, her sense of her place in her family.<\/p>\n Richard and Laura are lost as well, both trapped in static existences, successful in their public lives but unable to move beyond the terrible mistakes each made when they were young.<\/p>\n In fact, of the major characters, the only one who is not<\/em> lost is Lucy Maitland.<\/p>\n This was the easiest. In an important scene, Lucy says that “something always gets broken.” A lot breaks in this book — loyalties, family, property. By the end of Book 2, an entire artificial existence, carefully constructed by a master strategist who could not escape his own destiny, breaks wide open.<\/p>\n As this title is still tentative, I will add to this discussion later. Suffice it to say that “fire” and “burning” are thematic, as Laura goes through a trial by fire (a crucible, so to speak). The Catholic idea of purgatory lies\u00a0very much beneath the surface.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the hardest decisions I had to make in writing the Ashmore’s Folly Trilogy was one of the most important: What in the heck was I going to call this thing? Or things, once I broke it into three? Ashmore’s Folly The Ashmore’s Folly\u00a0part was easy. It had been Brandon’s Folly\u00a0to me for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lindseyforrest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lindseyforrest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lindseyforrest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lindseyforrest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lindseyforrest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.lindseyforrest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lindseyforrest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lindseyforrest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lindseyforrest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Ashmore’s Folly<\/h3>\n
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All Who Are Lost<\/h3>\n
All That Lies Broken<\/h3>\n
All That Burns the Dark<\/h3>\n