Titles: The Most Difficult Part of Writing

By this point, most of you know that I pretty much adore writing fiction. I don't know if I mentioned in my first post that when I was still brainstorming the ideas for my first book, one of the first things I came up with was a title. I aptly entitled it, "The Moon Goddess of Ellendale." Pretty girly, right? For a thirteen-year-old girl, it was perfect! Elegant, flowing, and graceful, it had everything I wanted. This title conveyed a curious fact about my character (the way she shone in the moonlight) and was just as effluent as I wished to be....

However, I soon realized that I wanted to broaden my audience to not only girls ages 12 to 18, but boys as well.... and Thomas quickly informed me that such a title would NOT attract a boy of ANY age. So I set to the task of seeking out a title that would not only be beautiful, convey the right information, and fit my enigmatic puzzle, but also appeal to the male crowd. I found that "The World Forbidden" was very eye-catching, intriguing, and rolled off the tongue quite well.

I ran into another problem: this is not the only book. As you can see with my labels, the book I have written is book 2. I have a prequel I'm in the process of working on now and five sequels ahead of me which I already have the blueprints for. Being a series, I wanted the titles to connect in some way. For example, when I chose "The Moon Goddess of Ellendale" for Book 2, I also entitled Book 4 "The Daring Duo." I had decided that the titles of each book would also be titles that the main character themselves possessed within the book. When my first one changed, I wanted to be consistent with the other 6; I had to change them. So, when I changed Book 2 to "The World Forbidden," I hit a road block. The idea behind my main character "living a world forbidden" was that she went against the council of her wise friends for most of the book. How could I do something like that with Book 4? I thought "The World Broken" would be quite sufficient. However, "forbidden" conveys an outside force (aka: her family and friends) forbidding the main character. In Book 4, "broken" describes the two main characters. The methods which I was utilizing became suddenly more complex. I have found that this unique difficulty not only rests with these two books, but with the entire series. I have come up with alternative titles for them all, but I don't like the one for Book 2 as much as "The World Forbidden."

Here's what I'd like to hear from you: Am I over-thinking this? Being overly analytical? Too picky? What do you think about the titles I have presented? Are they too cliche? Too girly? Too..... something?????? Let me know what you think! I need your help!!!!