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