Blurb

The shoes didn't fit. It was an omen.













Friday, September 21, 2012

The Be-otching Blurb

Yes. Folks. The writing of the blurb is the biggest Be-otch I’ve come across as a writer. Putting the novel together and making changes have been easy-peasy. But the blurb creation is making me feel like a total moron. And I thought techi-things could only make me feel that way, not anything-writing.

Here’s my initial blurb…well, one of the many firsts.

Eighteen year old Lila is a psychic/medium who’s been taught not to trust her own instincts. Her dead gram tries to warn her not to marry Max Butz, but her mother, argues, implying she’s delusional and that Max will take good care of her. Hours after the nuptials, Max shows his true colors and Lila escapes through a bathroom window in her wedding dress and the too-small secondhand shoes her mother bought. Following the advice of her dead gram she steals the groom’s car and discovers guns and drugs hidden in the trunk. Max and his creepy friends come after her. To survive she must learn to trust her intuition and the otherworldly help of her dead gram and a past love.

So I posted this in a group I belong to on Facebook.

This reads like a book report a comment read.

Well, I belong to a live critique group that has been guiding me…more like the blind leading the blind. While we’re all pretty good at editing and analyzing each other’s stories, we miss the mark on blurbs. Maybe this explains why one of my critters has been rejected after several agents and publishers have read her query letter. It’s a lot like a book report.

Anyway, I had more comments on my book report.

It should pull people in without giving away too much.

Read the back jackets of other novels.

Read movie advertisements.

Okay. So I did last weekend. I pulled books off my shelf and researched Amazon.

Watchers-Dean Koontz

On his 36th birthday, Travis Lornele hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever, who will let him go no further into the dark woods.

That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life. What he finds is a friend? A dog of alarming intelligence? and a threat that could only have come from the darkest corners of man’s imagination.

Risk of Infection-Tom Conrad

3 billion people were no longer seeing a glimpse of a cool Britannica façade, of Union Jack clad cheerleaders leaping from open top red buses, of athletes using traditional pork sausages as skipping ropes, and William Shakespeare impersonator doing the long jump. 3 billion people were concentrating on infection. Britain was infected!

Desperation-Stephen King

There’s a place along Interstate 50 that some call the loneliest place on Earth. It’s not a very nice place to live. It’s an even worse place to die. It’s known as Desperation, Nevada.

Final Hours- Norma Beishir

Could you live a lifetime in 24 hours? Jaimie Randall thought he had it all, until a close brush with death brought him face-to-face with the one thing that was missing from his life. Now facing his own morality once again, he has two choices. One chance to live, or one to set things right in his troubled life.  

After reading more than these, I wrote this:

Lila should have listened to her dead Gram’s advice the morning of her wedding, “Take off that dress and those shoes. And run.”  When she finally decides to listen, she gets caught up in a deadly run for her life. Will she survive the honeymoon?

So what do you all think. Yes? No? Tweak it more?

I’ll be loppity-lopping 1 to 9 today and 9 to 5 tomorrow. I’ll do my best to keep up with commenting back.

Hugs and chocolate,

Shelly

Friday, September 7, 2012

Dove Chocolate and A Storyboard

“Forget the rules and play by your heart.” That’s what the inside of my Dove chocolate read yesterday. I took that as a sign to keep going forward. I also got an e-mail from an author friend of mine yesterday encouraging me, letting me know she had my back.

Right now, I feel overwhelmed with the whole process of self-publishing. And, too, my MS is in the hands of the proofreader who reported back not long ago that there was a minor problem with my file. It came up in Chinese. Holy schmoly! But I was also informed that the problem has been taken care off recently. Schwoo!

By the time this is over and Secondhand Shoes has been unleashed for public purchase and viewing, I’m sure I will have eaten a ga-zillion bags of Dove Dark chocolate along with cartons of Publix natural peanut butter. I eat a spoonful and one piece a day either after dinner or right at three P.M. Yesterday, though, I ate two. I don’t handle being overwhelmed well.

But I have been busy.

IMG_0498

I’ve got a storyboard going on. The ideas are scattered here and there. And I’ve written the second book two times already, but I’m not happy with either one. However, I like a lot of the ideas. Especially the title, Combat Boots. Tonja over at Tonja's Musings inspired me. She left me a comment a few blogs back about what shoes she wore to school in the eighties.

Anyway, in the middle of getting spurts of ideas, I got a another one for a thriller and that one is coming along nicely. I guess you could say, I’ve fallen head over heels with that one for the moment and am working on its fourth draft. It works well.

I’m also working on a short time travel piece for a book of anthologies. If interested, you can go to Three Cents Worth, Martin T. Ingham has put out a call out for short stories.

Also, Gwen Gardner and Pal are putting together a blogtour.

Blogtour badge for PIP

CLICK HERE if you want to be a part of it.

I need to go now. I’ve a got a long day of hair lopping ahead of me. 1:30  to 9 P.M.

Hugs and Chocolate,

Shelly