Shimmers on Painted Water sounds like a Japanese movie, so, for a fantasy novel, I’d give that one a miss 😀

Time of Random Rain… hmm, dunno! Sorry to be so unhelpful!

~Chris
The Book Swede

And *laughs* I have found out I am writing books about beef cattle (droughtmaster), watercolour paintings (waterpainter), lawyers and lawn sprinklers(rainmaker). Grisham apparently wrote a book about lawyers called Rainmaker.

Thanks for your help everyone – I appreciate it.

By the way, ‘Rainmaker’ in Australia is a brand or model of a lawn sprinkler.

I prefer “under” to “beneath” if you go with that title, though Jenny’s advice on that makes sense. I like “Rain Lords” much better than either “Drouthlord” or “Droughtmaster”, as it sounds more poetic, but also it feels more powerful to be able to call the rain as opposed to causing a drought (though I realise it amounts to the same thing in practice!).

I like Shimmers on Painted Water, and prefer it to anything with “waterpainter” in the title, as that word feels awkward to me (and makes me think of watercolour painting, which I guess is not what it’s about).

I like Time of Random Rain, but if it’s what they’ve been fighting against, what about something like “To Defy the Random Rain”.

But you may have trouble with just a 1 word title for bk 2 when the other titles are longer.

For what any of that is worth!

My problem with “Beneath (Under) a Quarted Sky”, is that it’s meaningless. It tells the potential reading nothing, which is a bad move in book 1 of a series when you’re trying to suck in new readers. You might get away with it later, but I wouldn’t chose that for a title likely to jump off the shelf at people.

“Rain Lords of the Scarpen” makes a much better title for the same reason. It tells the reader that there are lords, they have something to do with rain and they live in a place called the Scarpen. (It wasn’t an accident that Trudi made bucketloads with a book called “The Magician’s Guild” you know…LOL)

And my problem with the word “drought” isn’t because of where I live, Glenda. We don’t get droughts in the desert, or suffer water restrictions. It’s the rest of the country, in the grip of the worst drought on record and suffering water restrictions, that might have a visceral reaction to the concept.

It’s the same logic that had the publishers going ga-ga over my original idea of calling “The Immortal Prince”, “Suicide of the Immortals”