Q. How did you come up with the subtitle for Night Shift?

A. That was the idea of Dave Greene (my editor).  We’d been through a lot of changes on that.  The original subtitle “On a mission crossing borders in the night,” was directly from the outline of the book.  Dave felt it best to be more direct in the subtitle, since the title itself is less revealing.  And he felt that “cultural line” expresses more clearly the cross-cultural theme of the book.  I thought he hit a homer on the final (Crossing the Cultural Line for the Kingdom).  

I still like “crossing borders,” which is a section title in the book.  To me “borders” is metaphorical, but I think some readers will limit it to its literal meaning.  With “cultural line,” the idea is more vague and thus conveys a broader meaning of crossing any type of cultural line, which is my point.  This is one of many good reasons why writers have editors!