I need your thoughts, please. The kid's chapter book I wrote is called The Psychic Cat. It's about a cat named Zach who can see ghosts. When a new cat moves into the neighborhood he goes to Zach for help with a haunted basement. Zach not only finds ghosts but he also finds a bigger problem threatening the entire neighborhood! Da da dun! It's up to Zach, his friends, and their new ghosts buddies to protect their families in time. That's my basic pitch, minus the sounds effects.
However, The Psychic Cat was always more of a working title because I basically ran out of creative juice at the very end of writing, and I thought, at the very least, the title will give an instant clue about what the book's about. So I was wondering if you all out there could weigh in on title suggestions. I'd really like to write this character as a series so I'm thinking about Zach and the Haunted Basement for the first book.
But at the same time I'm wondering if that type of mystery title is overdone? What do you all think? Especially those of you who may have been reading to your kids.
To get an idea of the flavor of the book here is the first page/intro. (P.S. Critique is always welcome!)
Chapter One
My name is Zach. I’m psychic. I’m
also a cat.
Humans
usually don’t think animals can be psychic. Either that or there are those few
humans who think ALL animals are psychic. Those are the goofy ones who are
always following us pets around waiting for us to predict an earthquake or
something. But animals can be psychic too, and I’m one of them. I see ghosts.
It’s
not nearly as scary as it sounds. Ghosts are just like people. Or rather, the
ghosts are just like animals. Those are the ones I see–the ghosts of animals. As
far as I can figure human psychics see other human ghosts and animal psychics
see animal ghosts. I think it’s due to a communication issue. I mean, humans
can’t understand us animals, right? And we really can’t talk to people. Every
once in a while I’ll see a human ghost… but believe you me, there’s certainly
no discussions of the weather going on.
Being
psychic doesn’t have much to do with my day-to-day life. I live in a great
house, in a great neighborhood, with the best little girl a cat could have. Her
name is Samantha and she never welches on the affection. I get lots of petting,
great food, and plenty of sunny spots to nap in while she’s in school. The edge
of the neighborhood butts up right against forest and foothills, so if you
really want to explore or even just commune with the real wildlife you don’t
have far to go. Not that I go looking. I know the good life I have and it sure
as heck beats living out of dumpsters. Or, yuck, hunting birds.
Yep,
there’s plenty of adventure to be found without the ghost thing ever raising its–ha
ha–dead.
But
somehow that ghost thing always seems to find me…
My first thought was of Lilian Jackson Braun titles (which in themselves are riffs on Heinlein), like “The Cat Who Saved the Neighborhood.” My second thought was of the “Church Mice” series, something like “Samantha’s Cat in the Basement” But my third thought is to obfuscate what the book is about, so something like “Basement Zach,” “The pets of,” or “The Animals in the Basement” (I seem to be pretty stuck on the basement thing). You could also go for more artsy titles (always a favorite of mine), like “Talking with Animals” or “Brave Cat.”
By “The pets of ____,” I’d meant to insert a [street name here] for the blank, but I used angle brackets, and typepad took that to be html and stripped it.