Name That Book!

If you remember from my year-end review post on December 16, last year I finished a story I tentatively titled "Back to Life."  Shortly after I finished the first draft, I asked Rusty Webb if he would make me a cover for it.  But I asked him not to include a title because I wasn't sure that title is the one I really want to go with.

Not the actual cover.

I've wracked my brain (by which I mean I thought about it while driving home and while sitting on the can) and about 5 months later I still can't think of anything better.  I even tried looking around at song titles on Amazon just to see if anything would pique my interest.  Nothing really did, except for a song called "Steve is a Stephanie" which would fit, but might give people the wrong idea.  In that search I did find titles (at least working titles for now) for the other two books in the series:  Song for Stephanie and Elegy for Stephanie.  So not only does the working title of the first one not have much razzle-dazzle, it also doesn't fit with the other ones.  Maybe I should go with something like "Stephanie is Born" or "Birth of Stephanie" or "Stephanie Begins."

Anyway, for lack of any better ideas, I'm going to open the floor to suggestions.  Maybe I should promise another $25 gift card; I bet that would get you all putting your thinking caps on.  I might have to try that later.

I suppose it would help if I told you what the story (whatever it's called eventually) is about.  Here's the perhaps dumb/cliche premise:

When it begins, Detective Steve Fischer is 50 years old.  He's divorced and estranged from his only child, his daughter Madison.  One night while he's getting skunked in a bar on the anniversary of his divorce, one of his snitches happens in to buy some cigarettes.  Steve finds out from the snitch that mob boss Artie "Lex" Luther and some hired goons are knocking over Lennox Pharmaceuticals.

Detective Steve Fischer
(Imagine he smells like a frat house after a kegger...)

 Against better judgment, Steve goes there by himself to check out the situation.  He gets there just as Luther and gang are arriving.  When a few guards are killed, Steve decides to intervene and try to prevent further bloodshed.  He manages to stop the hired goons, but Luther escapes along with some fancy experimental drug known as FY-1978.  Steve follows Luther to a boat and there's a struggle.  During the struggle, Luther--for lack of a handier weapon--injects Steve with the drug.  Steve's body goes limp and then Luther shoots him in the head before dumping Steve in the harbor.

Stephanie Zale
(Look how cute Steve gets!)

The next thing Steve knows, he's waking up on a pier in the harbor.  But there's something different about him:  he is now a she.  Not only is Steve a woman, but he is also a lot younger now, only about 18.  She manages to get back to her apartment only to find one of Luther's goons burning the place down to cover Luther's tracks.  With nowhere else to go, Steve turns to her partner on the police force, Jake.  She convinces Jake who she really is and they decide to start looking into what happened.

Madison Griffith (formerly Madison Fischer)
(See the family resemblance?)

From there Steve gets renamed Stephanie Zale and pretends she's a runaway Jake is helping to get on her feet.  Stephanie starts having to adjust to life as the opposite sex, part of that being she needs some clothes.  She goes to a thrift store run by a woman named Grace and then meets Grace's partner Madison--who of course is Steve's daughter.  Under the guise of Stephanie, Steve forms a friendship with Madison and Grace while also trying to locate Luther and find out more about this FY-1978 drug.

And so the working title of "Back to Life" was because not only does Steve literally come back to life, but also figuratively comes back to life by starting a new life as Stephanie.  But again it seems kind of generic of a title to me.  So maybe you all can think of something better.  Or not.  Or maybe you just need more incentive...