Twists, Turns, and Titles

Twenty-four years in the writing--a lifetime in the making. There is an enormous sense of relief to finally release this book after so many permutations--and titles.

Initially, this book was called The White Pole. It was to be the biography of my father's extraordinary life, a promise I kept to my father when I was a little girl. But as the story grew from the posthumous discovery of his tapes, I realized there was more to the story, and my own story began to unfold. As a spiritual component emerged, the name changed to Another Mountain, Another God. A visit to Poland and I changed the title to Under the Carpathian Moon, and as the ending became less romanticized, so did the title--to simply Carpathian Moon. But there was treachery to come and subsequently a new title, Dancing on Ice.

Then the book took a dark turn with a different title: Bad Faith. But that was an indictment of faith and the people who live by faith, and though no longer my kind of faith--I couldn't deny theirs. Then the storyline emphasized my time on The 700 Club and the title became The Black, The Blonde, and The Baptist. Ultimately, the story, the chapters, and the titles came together under a theme, and in a restless sleep flying to Seoul, Korea the title--Chiseled--came to me, suggesting a triple entendre: the art of sculpting, the emergent property of that being sculpted, and cheated.