Twelve Days of Christmas 2024, Part II: The origin of the title “Goodbye, Butterfly”

*The cover, back and spine of “Goodbye, Butterfly.” The second print includes “A riveting true story” on the cover.*

“What’s the title?”

In the years leading up to the release of “Goodbye, Butterfly: Murder, Faith and Forgiveness in a Small Kansas Town,” that was the question people asked more than any other. For six years, I didn’t have an answer.

Book titles are tricky. They are also incredibly important. Without a good title, you’re probably not going to sell many books. And that’s where the tricky part, at least for me, came in to play.

Before “Goodbye, Butterfly” actually became a book, it was really just an idea in a Promotions Writing class at Washburn University. I was more than halfway through graduate school, and the Mass Media department was kind enough to shape undergraduate classes for grad credit, which typically meant writing longer papers and more extensive projects than the rest of the class.

During that class in the Spring 2016 semester, I pitched building a marketing plan, with collateral, to the professor of the course, Dr. Rick Duet, for a potential book about Brenda Michelle Keller, who was murdered in Dover, Kansas, in 1991.

Much of my work during that class was mapping out press releases, advertisements, book pitches, videos and social media to promote a book about Brenda, Dover and her family (Much of it incorporated into a successful marketing plan eight years later). I naively set a timeline of finishing the book in less than a year (it ended up taking more than seven years).

As part of the marketing plan, I tinkered with book titles and cover designs. In that class, I landed on “Death in Dover” and a cover that featured Brenda’s headstone. Obviously, that is not the title or cover of the published book.

It became clear early in the research process that I was not going to use Brenda’s marker on the cover. After meeting with her parents, family and friends, it seemed exploitative. It was also obvious that the title wasn’t going to be “Death in Dover.” That was confusing (there are plenty of Dovers on the planet, and, frankly, it was boring).

The title and cover went to the backburner in 2017 and stayed there for more than five years as I meticulously researched Brenda’s case, wrote multiple drafts and edited/refined the story. I realized as the book entered the final phase at the beginning of 2023 that we really needed a title.

Nothing I came up with sounded good. Several ideas just didn’t fit. Then, in the spring of 2023 and a few months before we met with our publisher, Clovercroft, the title came to me in a dream. I don’t remember any details, but I woke up at 3 a.m. and texted myself “Goodbye, Butterfly: Murder, faith and forgiveness in Kansas.”

When I woke up several hours later, I read the text and realized that we finally had a working title. Within a few days, we had the final title.

I’m still occasionally asked about the title. I realized early on that “Goodbye, Butterfly” won’t register with everyone who sees the cover. But the book has always been about honoring Brenda’s legacy, and the title is a nod to a story she wrote not long before she died. It is also included on her headstone and at the end of the book:

“Once upon a time, there was a boy. The boy had a very favorite spot under a tree. One day, he was sitting under his tree when he saw a very pretty caterpillar. It had a yellow stripe down his back and was all green. The boy took the caterpillar home and put it in a cage. The boy fed his caterpillar leaves every day. One morning, the caterpillar was not in the cage, but there was a little oval-shaped ball. The boy took the cage downstairs and showed it to his mother. His mother said that it was a cocoon. The boy put it back up in his room and went outside to his favorite tree. He sat and thought about his caterpillar. How he wished he could play with his caterpillar under his tree. He lay in the leaves and thought of all the different caterpillars. Soon, his mom called, and it was time to eat. After supper, he went to bed and dreamed about caterpillars. He waited several weeks, and the caterpillar didn’t come out. One day, the boy was sitting in the pile of leaves under the tree, and the cocoon began to wiggle. The boy watched, and soon he saw a little bit of cocoon start to split open. Soon, he was looking at a very beautiful butterfly. The boy opened the cage door, and the beautiful butterfly flew away. The boy shouted, ‘Goodbye!”

Hence, the final title: “Goodbye, Butterfly.” Once that was settled, the cover design came together easily, and we settled on a simple black background with a large monarch butterfly seemingly popping out of the book. I’m proud to say I learned design at my alma mater utilized those skills to design my own cover.