The Teumussian Imperative

I had a train of thought that ended with deciding I really do need a new title.

So far all I've found is things that I don't want to do. Referencing one of the names of the protagonist is easy to imagine; "Birth of Athena," "Athena's Choice," "Athena's War," etc. Or "Penny Bright," "A Penny Saved," etc. "Fox," too...but all I can think of is "Fox and Hounds." The only connection of the Fox to Greek myth is a fairly obscure myth about a giant fox that eats babies.

It is hard to explain the main reason I don't like this. It has to do with how the protagonist relates to these names. She doesn't think of herself as a Penny or a Fox or an Athena. The latter is a character she plays, the former is a name she was saddled with (in her words, it was better than "Penelope.")



I'm also generally against artsy titles that quote too obviously from mythology or the classics. Any kind of "Wine-dark Sea" title is a non-starter. I might make an exception for Shakespeare, except by the time you leave behind the ones everyone has used ("By any other name," "Slings and arrows," etc. etc.) you are on lines so obscure only another die-hard will even recognize they are from the Bard.

(The other difficulty in quoting from, say, Homer, or even Octavian, is that these are all translations. Outside of a few extremely popular and probably apocryphal "Veni, vidi, vici" stuff you are left with, again, having to explain that you are quoting from someone.)



I'm also against having too much of a pun. Besides the fact that I'm going quirky, not comic, the obvious-pun titles I've encountered are most usually short hand for murder mysteries. Generally of the "cozy" type, even if they do take place in more exotic locales than the Vicar's Tea Party.



Really, I keep coming back to artifact-centric titles because nothing says more clearly that this is archaeological in intent. Not historical fiction, not action, not science fiction, not a romance, but specifically a story in which a two-fisted intellectual has an adventure while solving a puzzle centered around history, culture, and language.

So maybe the best bet is to revisit the available artifact words but surround one of them with stronger action verbs. "Quest" or "Hunt" or "Adventure" or something.