The Wagon Wheel of Time?

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I read here and there about what publishers are publishing a lot of now. Those can sometimes be opportunities for despair. A down-side of a market-driven approach is that broad readership is not always the best indicator of quality. Though, to strike back at the snob in us, it’s not always an indication of tripe either. This book called The Lord of the Rings has sold a few copies.

One of these popular categories for fiction these days is Amish Romance. You heard me: Amish. Romance. The Romance category in general mystifies me somewhat, and I have many memories of scoffing at the titles of some books of people I’ve been around–in ignorance, it must be admitted. Historical Romance was always a big hit with many ladies I knew growing up.

Just make some combo of the following words and you can come up with a title.
Love. Wind. Hope. Promise. Prairie. Softly. Gently. Whisper. Choice. Season. Did I already say Wind?

Anyway, I think my sister was reading some Historical Romance one day when we were kids and I was making one of my usual forays into misnaming the book using some combination of the words above.

And I got it right on. First try. Having never seen the book.  That was a happy day for me. I think my sister even laughed.

I will allow that Fantasy probably sounds just as strange to people who don’t read it as Amish Romance sounds to me.

Anyway, the point of this isn’t to alienate the entire reading public, but to announce my intention to almost totally cave to trendiness in publishing and yet hold on to something of my own inclinations.

I am starting an Amish Fantasy series.

Your mission? To help me name my first book. Best Amish Fantasy book title in the comments section gets a hug from me, and an autographed copy of my autograph (that’s right, I will autograph my autograph and give it to you).

So help me out here. What’s a good name for the first in the series?

Note: This post was not intended to be hurtful either to Amish people, Amish Romance readers (which apparently is everyone), or Fantasy readers, or the readers of the Lost Ark. The views in this post do not necessarily represent the opinion of the staff and management of the Rabbit Room, S.D. Smith, or any of his slush funds, shadow governments, or multinational corporations, or his chain of hot-dog stand/tanning beds.


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54 Comments

  3. Emily Hilleke

    My favorite Amish romance title is “The Betrayal.” So simple – I’m ashamed to say I was surprised at the end.

    May I suggest “Sarah’s Apron”, “Rebekah’s Cap”, “Rachel’s Cape” for a series?
    Or “The Promise Ride”? “Lost Reins”?

  9. Paula Shaw

    Then, there’s the long-winded kind of title: “Hope’s Choice: How the Prairie Wind Whispers Softly of the Gentle Promise of Love”. Did I get all the words in? That should be a grand read, albeit long. . .

  10. Jodi B.

    “Buggy Across the Galaxy” or maybe “Aliens in the Hay Bales” should do it, but they definitely lack pzazz. I’ll be thinking about this all day…

  12. Aaron Roughton

    Obadiah’s Wormhole
    The Mennonite Conspiracy
    Journey To The Center Of The Fields
    The Chamber Of The Missing Mustaches
    Ultimate Rake Fighter
    First Barn On The Moon: A Space Trilogy

  13. Charlotte

    “Bonnets fade into Oblivion”
    “Softly call the Buggy”
    “Gray Space”
    “No TV in the Atmosphere”
    “The Missing Apron of Sarah Wincock”

  14. Jonathan Rogers

    Do we get to vote? I’m loving Charlotte’s “Softly Call the Buggy” and Aaron’s “Chamber of the Missing Mustaches.”

  15. Matt

    “The Sword in the Buggy”
    “Knights of Lancaster”
    “The Dragon in the Barn”
    “The Elf in the Black Hat”
    “A Fantasy Unplugged”
    “The Farmer and the Faerie”

  17. Chad Ethridge

    I had to check out the official Amish website to get a few ideas!

    “Passion and Piety”
    “Frowned Upon Behavior”
    “Forbidden Behavior”
    “Breaching the Ordnung”
    “Bundles of Hope”

  18. Micah

    “The Shadow of the Barn Raising”
    “Matha’s Magic Bonnet”
    “The Two Silos”
    “The Soft Wind Brings Doom’
    “Obadiah and the TV of terror”

  20. Matt C

    YES! I love some of these. Thanks for making me laugh! Perhaps you might consider:

    “An Unencumbered Beard”
    “Electricity Without Electricity”
    “Herbie the Love Buggy”

    And to sink really low:

    “Amish You Were Here”

  22. Ron Block

    @ronblock

    Would Bikini Buggy Wash: Vixens from Venus be inappropriate? I realize after the fact that I am including Scienti-fiction in the Fantasy category, but I hope it won’t get me kicked out of the Rabbit Room.

  23. Tony Heringer

    I’m going with Chad’s approach:

    “The Children of Amman”
    “Planet Plain”
    “Rumschpringe”

    But could we do better than Weird Al?

  25. Drew

    Side note: my wife once lived in a heavily Amish area of Our Fair State, and her neighbor, an older, single Amish lady, would wait until it was dark, then fire up her gas mower to cut the lawn. If she saw buggy lights coming down the road, she turned off her mower and hid until the buggy disappeared into the distance, then went back to her mowing.

    Sometimes she would dress up in “English” clothes, put on a wig, and go to the nearest casino.

    Rebel Amish.

  27. Micah

    I’m loving this. I think Chad’s “Breaching the Ordnung,” and Aaron’s “A Dinner Bell Ringeth” are my favorites so far.

  32. Aaron Roughton

    Russ, I was just wondering when we’d hear from you. Now I want you to hand the keyboard to your wife and let her hammer out some more milk spewing suggestions. Hilarious.

  36. kevin

    “The Shunning of Jakob Swenson”

    “A Swiftly Churning Butter”

    “The Ordnung Alliance” The story of technological meltdown in the US and Amish rise to power… because they still know how to do stuff.

    “Matthew Lapp and the enchanted Hatband” Of course, this one kinda means the story has to be about a hatband… unless you haven’t solidified a plot yet…

  40. Charlotte

    Thanks for the vote, Jonathan! I am really liking Mennonite in Black and So You Think You Can’t Dance. LOL Btw, What’s an ordnug?

  42. Peter B

    There are many fine contenders, but I’m still all over Ultimate Rake Fighter.

    Charlotte: as you can learn from the For Richer or For Poorer (the original Amish romance movie), “ordnung” is a German word meaning order/organization/arrangement and refers to both an autonomous community of Amish and the rules that govern said community.

    *sigh* Apparently my creativity has departed in favor of pedantry today.

  44. Dan K

    being from the Amish country I absolutely love this thread.

    Too many Mennonite
    The Mennonite Mafia
    Chakey Unleashed
    Chakey in Charge
    Lancaster, I don’t even know her.
    John Jacob Stoltzfus, his name is my name too
    The Big Scrapple
    Let’s get ready to Scrapple
    Lard Times
    Shoo Fly Pie of Love

  45. Dan K

    I should fill in some definitions:
    “Chakey” is an Amish term for friend/buddy.
    Scrapple is the mystery breakfast food.
    Shoo Fly Pie – I best heard as pecan pie minus the pecans. (molasses, brown sugar, etc).

  46. Ron Block

    @ronblock

    I like Mennonite in Black and So You Think You Can’t Dance, which could have made chocolate smoothie come out my nose if I wasn’t being careful.

  47. E

    Hysterical thread. I can hear applause to “So You Think You Can’t Dance.”

    How about:

    Credenza Caress
    Sea Without a Shore (stolen from AP)
    Carpenter’s Night

    By the way, if you call them the Amish (long A as in “hay” instead of the “ah” sound)… they don’t think it is funny at all.

  49. Charlotte

    Ohh…. thanks, Peter! Hey- I learned something on this thread! Now I feel like this time spent on crazy book titles was justified! 🙂

  50. Charles Churchill

    First of all, there is no such thing as a fantasy book. You have to do a series…

    The Plowblade Saga
    A Sowing of Meidung
    A Deluge of Bonnets
    Ordnang Summer
    A Harvest of Beards

  51. Charles Churchill

    The Churning of the Ancients
    The Shunt of Time
    Eternal Rumspringa

    My personal favorite:
    The Man Who Shunned Time

    (Also in my earlier post, I meant to say, you have to have a theme for the whole series)

  54. Jodi from WV

    “Dragon’s Fire, Maiden’s Candle” and “The Man Who Shunned Time” sound like actual book titles, I’d probably read those =)

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